Ojibwe

The Ojibwe, Anishinaabe (also called Ojibway or Chippewa), hold Ojibwewaki, a homeland sweeping the Great Lakes, the northern plains edge, the subarctic and the northeastern woodlands from Quebec to British Columbia. Some 320,000 strong, the most numerous people north of the Rio Grande, they count Saulteaux, Nipissing, Mississauga and Oji-Cree among their nations, organised in 125 bands. Anishinaabemowin, their Algonquian language, carries the migration story westward along the lakes to the place where food grows on water: wild rice, whose harvest by canoe anchors the late-summer year with fishing, sugaring and hunting. Clan dodems, the Midewiwin Grand Medicine Society and birchbark scrolls order spiritual life. The fur trade, the Dakota wars that pushed the Sioux onto the plains, and the treaties that cut the lake country into reservations all passed through Ojibwe hands; the 125 bands elect councils that run schools, ricing camps and language nests defending the homeland still.