Ojibwa Children

Education and responsibilities of Ojibwa Children

Hundreds of years ago Ojibwa children didn't go to school, but that didn't mean they didn't receive an education. They had practical lessons in every skill that they would need to live a healthy...and happy...life.

Parents, grandparents and other family members taught age appropriate skills that would not only allow children to provide food clothing and shelter for themselves and others, but also to implement those skills in a way that didn't harm the environment and didn't interfere with the health and well-being of others in the community.

Although there was a distinct division of labour in the culture...men provided food and protection, women provided shelter, clothing, cooking and much of the child rearing...when growing up, Ojibwa children were taught the fundamentals of every skill needed to survive. Even in my childhood, any self-respecting six year old knew how to set a snare to catch a rabbit and it was a rare twelve year old who couldn't be relied upon to safely go out on his/her own with a rifle to hunt small game or birds.

Dodem governed society

Dodem...the clan system that governed Ojibwa society...was organized in such a way that every Ojibwa child knew from the outset what his or her special responsibilities to the community would be.

Clan affiliation was through the female line. There were seven clans (and seven subsections) and each clan had a responsibility to the society as a whole - caregiving, protection, foresight, spiritual guidance for example.

Also, each clan nurtured a special gift that members were expected to bestow when they saw the need. For instance, the gift that was given to members of the deer clan was kindness. Mothers of the deer clan would teach their children the many ways of being kind. Their children were taught that throughout their lifetime, whenever they recognized a situation in which a little kindness might diffuse an argument or lift another's spirit, it was their responsibility to find a way to interject a little compassion or gentleness into the situation.

Ojibwa children were expected to be obedient and helpful. I was one of those kids and I did my best to change the rules...sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

My family never lived on a reserve. Dad was a trapper and he hunted and fished for food. Mom was in charge of things domestic. There was no welfare safety net to help out in case of injury or ill health so everyone had to pull together to make life work. As kids we were expected to help out by hauling water, bringing firewood into the cabin, or gathering food.

The food business was often delegated to me. All Ojibwa children of my era who were living in the bush knew how to recognize the various edible plants and roots.

We didn't have to gather food because we were poor...Dad sold his furs and we regularly made purchases at the town's general store or from Eaton's catalogue...but until I started school we were never closer than twenty five miles to town so it was just practical to go outside and see what was tasty.

Children were never perfect...

Hauling water was drudgery...though relatively easy in the summer months. I hated wash days because we'd have to bring in about forty pails from the lake. A winter wash day was a horror. By December the ice would be so thick that it wasn't possible to chop a hole through it so we'd have to melt snow.

Which brings me to the obedient part of my Ojibwa childhood. The forty pails of water needed for a summer wash day translated into about four hundred pails of snow in the winter...or so it seemed!

And my mother never allowed us to get the snow from around the cabin...that was yellow snow where the dog's pee'd she said.

We were supposed to go out into the middle of the lake to bring in fresh clean snow. She regularly stuck her head out the door to see where we were coming from because I must admit we'd been known to bring in the odd bit of yellow snow in times past.

One day my brother and father were off on a hunting trip, and I was expected to bring in enough snow by myself to allow my mother to do the wash! How unfair!

Necessity being the mother of invention I decided that if I dragged a blanket out to the middle of the lake I could pile at least ten pails of snow onto it and drag it all back to the cabin...making only forty trips. Good idea, right?

And I'm not stupid...I knew enough to use my brother's blanket instead of my own. I was sure he and Dad would be gone for a couple of days at least and no one would be the wiser. Of course, with that timetable it was OK to leave the soggy blanket in a heap in the corner...which I did.

But as fate would have it, the hunting party took down a deer on the first afternoon and came home by nightfall.

Everyone was mad at me!

My mother yelled. My brother screamed and my father allowed him to have my blanket. I had to sleep on the floor in my parka beside the stove.

How cruel!

How unjust!

But now that I've got even sixty years later by telling you my side of the story, I'm beginning to feel a bit better.

Sibling rivalry had been a fact of my life since my brother had been born. In the Ojibwa culture it was generally the men who were in charge...but, dear reader...I was born first and nothing on this world, above it or under it was going to make me give up being number one!

Ojibwa children might have been just like the children in your family after all.