Our Sacred Children

              The Anishnaabe culture was one of the first to be discovered.  They maintained views on life and the world that guided their behaviour and shaped the futures of their children and relatives.  The Anishnaabe culture placed high values on ensuring education and well-being for their children and children were viewed as a sacred honour.  It was widely viewed that children were the most valuable resource their culture possessed (Hand, 2005).    

                One major Anishnaabe view is that of community collectivism.  This view of the world states that all living things are connected and everything from food, to special gifts, to stories are shared among everyone; when looking at children and caring for them, this was no different (Straka, 2012).  A lot of Anishnaabe families were very large with many children so it was not unusual for the aunties, uncles and grandparents to care for the older children in the family.  They were responsible for socializing them and teaching them the skills they would need to be contributing adults within their community.  This education process was necessary for the children’s healthy development, self-confidence and skill to ensure the sustainability of every individual and family in their community (Hand, 2005).  Anishnaabe people raised and educated their children so they would flourish into responsible adults that could carry on their culture appropriately, ensure their culture does not disintegrate or change into something different (McNeil, 1969) and ensure it was being passed down from generation to generation.  With these strong world views and sophisticated techniques for ensuring education and well-being of their children (Hand, 2005), it does not seem feasible that the Anishnaabe people would harm their children in any way especially when they hold such high expectations for their children’s future. 

                A social issue such as child abuse in Anishnaabe culture was greatly frowned upon and was seen as inappropriate for healthy conservation of the culture, people and relationships (Hand 2005).  The Anishnaabe people were very much spiritual and connected with their Creator; anything in their lives was seen as a gift given by the Creator and they should cherish and share these gifts among everyone.  This was no different when it came to the children, they felt that the Creator had granted them and the community the responsibility to care for and nurture all children.  Engaging in criticism, correction, coercion or any type of controlling behaviour, especially towards children was seen as an ethical breach in Anishnaabe culture.  In order to raise their children to be healthy responsible adults who will carry on the culture throughout generations, using physical discipline as a means of socialization was extremely rare.  Feelings of anger or sorrow were suppressed and any physical or violent outburst was never encouraged (Hand, 2005).

             The Anishnaabe people thought that everyone was inherently good and spiritual at their core (Straka, 2012) so the idea that anyone, let alone someone of their own culture would physically harm something they hold so sacred seems foreign and unnatural.  It is a contradictory concept to try to raise a child who possesses a strong sense of interdependence and responsibility by using any sort of physical, emotional, psychological or sexual abuse because essentially you would be inhibiting those qualities.  The idea of physical discipline being extremely rare (Hand, 2005) would essentially mean that there was no such thing as child abuse in the Anishnaabe culture. 

Kristin*

Hand,C.A., (2005, March). An Ojibwe Perspective on the Welfare of Children: Lessons of the past and visions of the future.  Children and Youth Services Review, 28, 20-46. 

McNeil, E.B., (1969).  Human Socialization.  U.S.A: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Straka, S., (September 2012).  Anishnaabek World View Powerpoint.