Ononharoia

Ononharoia (Feast of Fools)

The Ononharoia (literally, “turning the brain upside down”), referred to as the Feast of Fools by early missionaries, was an annual dream-sharing festival of the Iroquois. According to Jesuit observers, during the Ononharoia, “men and women rushed madly from cabin to cabin, acting out their dreams in charades and demanding the dream be guessed and satisfied” (Wallace, p. 66—see Sources). The dreams shared at the festival expressed some desire—not infrequently sexual or aggressive in nature—and were related in the form of a riddle. Often the community supported the dreamers in fulfilling their dream wishes, although violent, aggressive desires against other members of the community were more frequently acted out in pantomime. Twentieth-century writers have observed that traditional Iroquois dream speculation has much in common with the ideas of Sigmund Freud, particularly the notion that dreams reveal repressed desires that, if not dealt with in some fashion, poison the psyche of the dreamer. From this perspective, the Ononharoia was an occasion for what could be characterized as community psychotherapy.