How Central Michigan came to honor, display Grandfather Teachings on helmets

Debwewin. Dabasendiziwin. Manaaji’idiwin. Zaagi’idiwin. Gwayakwaadiziwin. Zoongide’ewin. Nibwaakaawin. 

Truth. Humility. Respect. Love. Honesty. Bravery. Wisdom. 

Those are the Seven Grandfather Teachings, foundational pieces of culture for the Anishinaabe people, including the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation in mid-Michigan. These teachings have carried through generations of Anishinaabe, as these lessons handed down by the Creator inform how to live a good life in harmony with all other creation. 

“So the way that it was taught to us is that the Grandfather gave us these teachings, each with the unique and distinct ability to offer something to help better each individual human being,” Erik Rodriguez, public relations director for the Saginaw Chippewa, said. 

And this football season, in partnership with the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation, Central Michigan football has featured each of the seven teachings on its helmets, both with the words themselves, in both English and Anishinaabemowin, on the back rubber bumper and with drawings initially commissioned for the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinaabe Culture and Lifeways, which sit just above the facemask on the front bumper. 

Central Michigan and the Saginaw Chippewa are partnered in myriad ways. CMU employees and students are required to take a visit to the Ziibiwing Center, and the football program, along with its own educational efforts with the tribe, does an annual Traditions Day game where the Saginaw Chippewa bring a drum for a pregame ceremony. That’s scheduled for this Saturday when Western Michigan visits for a big rivalry matchup. The athletic teams are called the Chippewas.  

There’s no shortage of history and partnership between the institutions, and this latest addition on CMU’s football helmets is one borne out of head coach Matt Drinkall intentionally cultivating a relationship built on respect, curiosity and a desire to elevate and celebrate the connections between Central Michigan and the Saginaw Chippewa. 

“Whenever my time here ends as the head coach, I want it to — my goal is to be, ‘OK, the relationship with the tribe has never been better than now. The relationship with the community has never been better.’ Maybe a lot of people win more games, sure. That's hard to do, especially coming after some of the guys that have coached here before. It's hard to do that. But, like, getting the cultural piece right when everything else is so chaotic is really important to us.”

While each of the seven teachings make enough sense on their own, they must be taken and lived together, Rodriguez said. It’s not an a la carte proposition. 

“So when you look at that, you can't live by just one of them,” Rodriguez said. “If you think about wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility, and truth, you have to understand that to understand one of those is to know all of them and to leave one out, you're not embracing what it is to give you that full circle quality of life.”

And when Rodriguez and tribal elder Joseph Sowmick spoke last year and educated coaches on the Grandfather Teachings and the medicine wheel, another key component of Anishinaabe culture, Drinkall was taken in by the Grandfather Teachings. 

The CMU head coach wanted to be patient, though, and let his relationship with Rodriguez and others with the Saginaw Chippewa tribe develop over the course of his first year before coming with big asks. 

“The biggest learning curve I had, for me personally, when I got here was just how different the Native American tribes, culturally, are,” Drinkall said. “I mean, they're completely different. And you realize, ‘I don't know.’ Not through any fault, but just how uneducated I really was, and I imagine a normal person is, where you don't understand the nuances and complexities, or you're just not exposed to it.”

Plus, CMU honored legendary coaches Herb Deromedi and Roy Kramer, plus the 1974 national title team, with the helmet bumpers in 2025. But in the offseason, Drinkall finally came to Rodriguez and the tribe with the idea of putting something from their culture on the CMU uniforms. 

Eventually, though, after Drinkall had come to Rodriguez and said he wanted to find a respectful way to honor the tribe on CMU’s uniforms, Rodriguez and Co.’s brainstorming broke through with the idea of placing the seven teachings on the helmets. 

Knowing it’s a small space on the front helmet bump, Rodriguez took drawings in the Ziibiwing Center, commissioned to represent those teachings and done by the late Richard Bedwash, an Anishinaabe artist, and tweaked the colors to be in line with Central Michigan’s maroon and gold brand identity. 

He also suggested putting the teachings on the back of the helmet in both English and Anishinaabemowin. 

Eventually the idea went up the chain of command and tribal elders, along with CMU athletic director Amy Folan and president Neil MacKinnon, signed off without much need to convince them this was being done right. 

“I think they all saw the opportunity,” Rodriguez said. “I think it starts much farther —  I guess it's weighted in the fact that under former presidents and former tribal administrations and the commitment to education behind the Chippewa nickname, we thought this was just yet another example of doing just that.”

That this partnership could pan out this way is a testament to both the decades of partnership between CMU and the Saginaw Chippewa, laying the groundwork that the other force driving this home: The relationship cultivated between Drinkall and his program and the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation. 

Drinkall admitted this week that he was particularly cautious of being overzealous at first and wanted this partnership to be rooted in substance, in something that not only resonated with him and his team — he feels like the teachings line up well with the holistic approach the CMU football program wants to take in being a positive force in the community in myriad ways — but also with community and world beyond. 

He mostly wanted to demonstrate to Rodriguez and others that he’s committed to this being something real and beneficial for both parties, something done respectfully and with deference to the history and tradition being honored. 

Basically, if the team he coaches is going to be called the Chippewas, Drinkall felt it was foolish not to try and best represent them by engaging them, listening, and taking positive action based on what he learned. 

“You don't have to worry about doing it wrong all the time because you have a genuine, sincere, authentic relationship together,” Drinkall said. 

Rodriguez credited Drinkall and his staff for their evident commitment to being respectful, curious and accountable when forging these partnerships

He also thinks the chance to spread the word about these teachings by putting them on the most visible single property for any university —an FBS football program — is a good mainstreaming of Anishinaabe culture that too often is overlooked and underdiscussed. 

“I would say coach Drinkall understands it,” Rodriguez said. “He gets the opportunity of what the support of the Saginaw Chippewini Tribe means to Central Michigan University. When we got to get to know each other and when he first came on board, I had the opportunity to sit down with him and really talk to him about the relationship, where it stands, some of the history behind it. And I think from the first interaction with coach Drinkall, he really said, ‘Wow, this is really impactful to me, and I wanna integrate this into my program.’ And so that sparked the opportunity for us to find ways, continued ways to educate coach Drinkall about some of the history, the relationship, but ways that he could utilize that.”

The players, too, have been educated on the teachings, and are taking to heart that they can live them, too. 

Some players have their teaching in English, and others in Anishinaabemowin, leading to at least a handful of words being added to the vocabulary. And the players have loved sharing a closer connection with the group whose name they bear. 

Angel Flores, CMU’s starting quarterback, is from Arizona originally, and one of his close friends growing up is of native heritage. The quarterback appreciated then the histories and traditions of his friend’s culture, and is glad to play a small part in celebrating another. 

“Going to his town and stuff and seeing like his rituals and everything, it's extremely important,” said Flores, whose helmet bears “RESPECT” on it in block lettering. “And I have deep respect for all of that. And I love that we were able to contribute to that.”

Offensive tackle Martin Koivisto, a Minnesota native whose helmet reads “LOVE” on the back, concurred. 

“Our mascot's a Chippewa,” Koivisto said. “That really, truly has power to it and a sense of belonging to it. So it's really cool to get to represent something so big, and so powerful.”

And while there might be some irony in a large man with “LOVE” on the back of his helmet shoving someone into the dirt on a football field, Koivisto said that all seven of the teachings can be applied to football and life — there’s never a bad time to be moving through life with love, humility, respect, courage, truth, love and wisdom. 

“It's pretty cool to get to, like, learn about their culture, their beliefs, and see what we actually represent when we go out there on Saturdays,” Koivisto said. 

And if there’s a bigger lesson in all this, it’s about not letting shameful chapters of history prevent better ones from being authored. 

It would’ve been all too easy to think about the ways people could be upset, offended or turned off by Central Michigan displaying the Grandfather Teachings on the helmets. And had CMU done it in a token, haphazard way and without consideration for its Saginaw Chippewa neighbors, it’d be just another instance of an American sports team reducing and/or belittling a culture. 

But this is not that. 

It’s a football team looking at an existing partnership and trying to further it, deepening a connection that has every reason to be celebrated, and elevating key pillars of a culture that, despite pre-dating even the idea of the United States of America, gets far too often marginalized. 

“I think this is another example that highlights the tremendous and powerful connection of the cultural foundation that we're creating,” Rodriguez said. “And it shows a deep commitment of the mutual respect that continues between a university and a tribal nation that is unparalleled, I think, when you look at everything else, as an example, in the United States.”