The Anishinaabe (alternatively spelled Anishinabe, Anicinape, Nishnaabe, Neshnabé, Anishinaabeg, Anishinabek, Aanishnaabe[2]) are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States.

The Anishinaabe use of the clan system represents familial, spiritual, economic and political relations between members of their communities.

Within the Anishinaabe governance structure there are seven leader clans that each facilitate a specific role and have responsibilities within the community and to the rest of Creation.

Anishinaabe oral tradition and records of wiigwaasabak (birch bark scrolls) are still carried on today through the Midewewin society.

[9] This oral and written records contain the Anishinaabe creation stories as well as histories of migration that closely match other Indigenous groups of North America, such as the Hopi.

This migrating group split in many different directions as they headed towards the land of the rising sun and became the many Indigenous populations that now exist on North America.

After the prophets delivered their messages groups of people began to migrate westward to find the land where food grows on the water.

The ethnic identities of the Ojibwa, Odawa, and Potawatomi did not develop until after the Anishinaabeg reached Michilimackinac on their journey westward from the Atlantic coast.

Consequently, when the three Anishinaabeg nations are mentioned in this specific order: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi, it implies the Council of Three Fires as well.

[11] Through the totem-system (a totem is any entity which watches over or assists a group of people, such as a family, clan or tribe) and promotion of trade, the Council generally had a peaceful existence with its neighbours.

The Council met for military and political purposes, and maintained relations with other indigenous peoples, including both fellow Anishinaabeg: the Ozaagii (Sac), Odagaamii (Meskwaki), Omanoominii (Menominee), and non-Anishinaabeg: Wiinibiigoo (Ho-Chunk), Naadawe (Iroquois Confederacy), Nii'inaa-Naadawe (Wyandot), Naadawensiw (Sioux), Wemitigoozhi (France), Zhaaganaashi (Britain) and the Gichi-mookomaan (the United States).

Explorers, trappers, and other European workers married or had unions with other Anishinaabeg women, and their descendants tended to form a Métis culture.

[14] These men were professional canoe-paddlers who transported furs and other merchandise over long distances in the lake and river system of northern America.

French settlers in the region were primarily trappers and traders and rarely established permanent settlements due to the harsh North American climate.

[16] In 1715, French military officer Constant le Marchand de Lignery constructed Fort Michilimackinac, in part to regulate relations with nearby Anishinaabe Indians.

During the American Revolution, which partly resulted from opposition in the Thirteen Colonies to the 1763 proclamation, the Anishinaabe (including the Three Fires Confederation) mostly sided against the rebelling colonists.

Fighting in conjunction with British and Loyalist forces, the Anishinaabe fought in the Northern and Western theaters of the American Revolutionary War.

After the British defeat in the Revolutionary War, the Anishinaabe mostly sought peace with the new United States, though lingering tensions resulting from encroachment by American settlers continued to spill into frequent outbreaks of violence in the frontier.

A gifted storyteller and historian, he collected native accounts and wrote the History of the Ojibway People, Based Upon Traditions and Oral Statements, first published by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1885, some 32 years after his early death from tuberculosis.

[22] After the Sandy Lake Tragedy, the U.S. government changed its policy to relocating tribes onto reservations, often by consolidating groups of communities.

In addition to other issues shared by First Nations recognized by the Canadian government and other aboriginal peoples in Canada, the Anishinaabe of Manitoba,[23] Ontario and Quebec have opposed the Energy East pipeline of TransCanada.

[26][27] The relationship between the various Anishinaabe communities and the United States government has been steadily improving since the passage of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act.

This shifts the focus from extended family governance to groups of people who have a particular kind of strength to offer to the community.

[29] The stories can be adapted to fit specific community values and have been incorporated by organizations, schools, different programs, artists, individualists, and tribes.

"[34]: 184  They can further "include religious teachings, metaphysical links, cultural insights, history, linguistic structures, literary and aesthetic form, and Indigenous 'truths'.

'"[35]: 19 Beyond sharing cultural knowledge, storytelling traditions can help provide Anishinaabeg children "with the intellectual tools necessary to exercise authority.

The Trickster is a common character in Anishinaabeg storytelling and goes by many names, including Coyote, Raven, Wesakejac, Nanabozho, and Glooscap.

"[35]: 5  Stories involving the Trickster serve to "remind us about the good power of interconnectedness within family, community, nation, culture, and land.

For example, the Odawa, centered in Michilimackinac, grew corn in the summers and generally moved south in smaller family groups in the winters to hunt game.

They tapped sugar maples in the spring, and moved back to the main villages to prepare for the lake sturgeon spawning season and planting.