Enchiyaang (Family)

For our 4th blog post in the Anishinaabe Laws, Customs & Traditions research report outcomes series, we’re discussing the most fundamental aspect of child well-being – Enchiyaang, Family. Family connects us, sustains us and guides us over the course of our lifetime. For Anishinaabe people, extended family is not only central for raising healthy children, but it is also the foundation to Anishinaabe governance.

Enchiyaang (Family)

The extended family is the basic unit of Anishinaabe governance, and it holds complex responsibilities for the wellbeing of children and families overall. Family relationships extend within and between communities, creating connection, communication, and systems of care and reciprocity. Anishinaabe child wellbeing laws need to reflect and support the dynamic networks of family support that children and youth can draw upon in times of vulnerability or struggle.

In the past, families were the primary sources of sustenance, education, and connection throughout each season. According to Serpent River knowledge keepers:

Great Lakes Anishinaabek (or Anishinaabeg) Indian children in the decades surrounding the founding of the United States would have known their own families and clans as the sources of their law and governments. For Anishinaabek children, their clan was their family, their family was their village, and their village was their government. In the summer, they likely worked in the fields near the beaches of the Great Lakes growing the Three Sisters of corn, beans, and squash. They may have learned how to hunt and trap in the wooded areas and fish in the lakes and rivers. They may have helped in the preservation of food for the winter. In the winter, lodging inland away from the harsh cold of the lakes, they listened to the stories and lessons of their elders. In the spring, they went with their families to the sugar bush and began to harvest maple sugar. And then they would return to the lakeshore to start the process all over again.

Given the central role families play in education and governance, the health and wellbeing of the family unit, and the broader community has a huge impact on the health and wellbeing of Anishinaabe children. Nogdawindamin’s Child Welfare Service Delivery Model describes the important role of Family and Families as:  

The physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health of the individual is dependent on the same good health of the family unit. The family unit’s good health is dependent on the good health of the community. Therefore, in assisting any one individual to achieve improved or enhanced well-being, that individual’s family and community must be simultaneously supported and assisted.

Anishinaabe ideas of family are expansive, extending to non-humans as well as to individuals within one’s clan. Although members of clans - or doodemag, may never meet and may be separated by geographic and even language differences, they are still considered to be closely related as siblings.

For Anishinaabe, people have two souls one that is unique to us as individuals, and the other that is connected and shared with the doodem. And, everything thing that is alive – i.e., animals, trees, etc., also have a soul. As individuals, our soul can travel to the afterlife. These two distinct souls (individual and doodem) connect us to our ancestors and to our descendants.

Children usually inherit their doodem from their father, providing a clear understanding of family relationships on an Anishinaabe person’s mother’s and father’s side of their family. While European cultures use the term ‘cousins’, for Anishinaabe, a mother’s sister’s children, or a father’s brother’s children are considered siblings. Also, each member of an Anishinaabe person’s doodem is considered an immediate relative. These distinctions are also described in Anishinaabemowin:

Instead of using a generic equivalent such as “uncle” to address either their father’s or their mother’s brothers, Anishinaabemowin speakers historically called their father’s brothers by one distinct term (ninmishoomenh) and their mother’s brothers by another (ninzhisbhenh). Each person shared a doodem with their father’s brothers and sisters but had a different doodem than their mother’s brothers and sisters.

Traditionally, Anishinaabe family relationships were necessary for Anishinaabe people to engage in economic relationships. For those Anishinaabe first to make contact with Europeans, trading could only be done with relations. At that time, Anishinaabe made a fundamental distinction between inawemaagen (relatives) and eyaagizid (foreigners). Relatives were people that Anishinaabe individuals had responsibility for and with whom they could trade. For these first encounters, Anishinaabe considered others either inawemaagen or a foreigner. However, it was common practice for Anishinaabe traders to hold a ceremony for a ‘foreigner’ to became inawemaagen. These economic ‘partnerships’ or alliances were the basis for all political relationships.   

These obligations can also be created or strengthened for those who hold certain roles within a family or community such as midwives or wet nurses. Wet nursing was a common practice in Anishinaabe communities, with wet nurses particularly holding a special bond with a child that was lifelong. The relationship between a wet nurse and a child was like adopting that child as part of that individual’s family. Nursing another woman’s child gave the wet nurse additional responsibilities toward that child. The child also had a special tie with the woman, similar to that with a close aunt. This example demonstrates that within Anishinaabe families, those who have cultural obligations, responsibilities and rights for the care of children may be quite broad. It was, and still is, necessary to recognize and support all of these relationships in order to promote the health and wellbeing of Anishinaabe children. According to Holly Johnston of Serpent River, the definition of family for Anishinaabe people is fluid and flexible, with the ability to adapt to changing social contexts:

I think the definition of family has changed over time. We need to include a definition as part of what we are doing. What is family? Is it a parent? One single parent? Is it two parents? Is it two-spirited parents? It could be whatever we decide it is going to be because the concept of family is changing.

Acts of care and support that include taking children into homes also result in the creation of more family relationships that children and youth can come to rely on in future.