Anishinaabe

The Anishinaabe are a family of related Indigenous nations of the Great Lakes country on both sides of the Canada–United States border, including the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Mississaugas, Nipissing and Algonquin peoples. They speak Anishinaabemowin and other Algonquian languages, and their homelands, Anishinaabe Aki, reach from the Ottawa River valley across Ontario and the upper Great Lakes into Manitoba, Minnesota and beyond. Often confused with the Ojibwe alone, the name covers a much wider group of nations.

The name has many spellings, among them Anishinabe, Nishnaabe (used mostly by the Odawa) and the Potawatomi form Neshnabé; endings in -eg or -ek mark the plural. It is commonly explained as "the people", or as those on the good path given by the Creator. Not every speaker of the language uses it: the Ojibwe who moved onto the Prairies, called Saulteaux in French, call themselves Nakawē, and the closely related Oji-Cree call themselves Anishinini.

Anishinaabe tradition, preserved orally and on birch-bark scrolls kept by the Midewiwin society, tells of a long migration westward from the Atlantic coast, guided by the prophecies known as the Seven Fires, to the place "where food grows on the water", the wild-rice lakes of the Great Lakes. The Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi are said to have become distinct nations after reaching Michilimackinac. There they formed the Council of Three Fires, in which the Ojibwe were the elder brother and keepers of the faith, the Odawa the middle brother and keepers of trade, and the Potawatomi the younger brother and keepers of the fire; the Potawatomi elder Shop-Shewana, drawing on the scrolls, dated its founding to 796 CE.

Clans, or doodemag, usually named after animals such as the crane, loon, bear and marten, organised family, spiritual and political life, and marriage within one's clan was forbidden. Leadership was decentralised, with a strong principle of non-interference in other people's paths. Many communities farmed as well as hunted: the Odawa grew corn in summer, hunted in smaller groups in winter, tapped maple trees in spring and fished for sturgeon. They were renowned canoe-makers and long-distance traders. Teachings such as the Seven Grandfathers (wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility and truth) and winter storytelling, often featuring the trickster Nanabozho, carried moral and historical knowledge.

French voyageurs and traders were the first Europeans in the upper Great Lakes, and in 1715 the French built Fort Michilimackinac partly to manage relations with the Anishinaabe. Marriages between Anishinaabe women and fur traders helped give rise to the Métis. Allied with France against the British and the Haudenosaunee, most Anishinaabe fought for the French in the French and Indian War. Discontent with British policy then led to Pontiac's War, after which the Royal Proclamation of 1763 limited settlement. The Three Fires sided with Britain in the American Revolution and again in the War of 1812. Under United States removal policy the Potawatomi were most affected, and an attempt to move Ojibwe bands ended in the Sandy Lake Tragedy, in which several hundred people died.

Anishinaabe communities are recognised as First Nations in Canada and as tribes in the United States, where relations with the federal government have improved since the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Ojibwe is Canada's third most spoken Indigenous language, behind only Cree and Inuktitut, though Potawatomi has fewer than 50 speakers in southern Ontario. In 2017 the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario gained control over kindergarten-to-grade-12 education in 23 communities. A thunderbird emblem, designed by Nicholas Deleary in the 1970s, is widely used as a pan-Anishinaabe flag.

Our 1492 map draws an approximate Anishinaabe homeland, labelled Anishinabewaki, around the upper Great Lakes. Later maps show individual nations such as the Ojibwe, with the Cree to the north.