Family Ties in First Nations Communities

Women have played a key role in maintaining familial relationships in First Nations communities and in passing down family knowledge.

Many pre-contact Indigenous societies were matrilineal, meaning that descent (including wealth, power and inheritance) passed down through the mother. Three common characteristics across Indigenous groups were: gender roles were complementary and not ranked hierarchically; women could transcend gender roles; and women were important to the religious and spiritual content of their cultures.

Indigenous women also played a key role in passing down knowledge through oral histories. Rachel Shawkence, medicine woman and elder of Kettle and Stony Point, was a talented basket maker and keeper of knowledge. In an interview from the mid-1970s, Rachel shared this legend about a huge snake that might otherwise have been lost to history:

“The story that I heard one time, long, long time ago, that the people were scared… scared of the snakes or what. But there was a lady who sang with all her might, you know. Way down there some place, maybe it was in the Pinery or somewhere in a night, you know. She used whatever she had, you know — Indians always carry something with them to protect them and she put that there on a fire and she sang with all her might. And she was singing like to somebody from heaven, I guess, and there was a fire come down and it hit that snake and killed that snake.”