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Oral Traditions play an important role among many Indigenous communities in maintaining their cultural heritage and values. These traditions are crucial in preserving history, transmitting knowledge, imparting cultural values, maintaining linguistic diversity, and fostering cultural identity across generations. For Indigenous Peoples, the spoken word holds immense power and is seen as a primary medium to connect with the past, present, and future.
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Ribbon skirts are beautiful, symbolic pieces of clothing that have been worn since the early 1800’s. Along with other types of cloth, silk ribbons were introduced by colonial traders and over time were added to Indigenous decorations and ceremonial practices. (Metcalfe, 2010) “Ribbons were also appliquéd onto clothing, sometimes using a mirror-image design with ribbons of contrasting colors.
Two-Eyed Seeing or Etuaptmumk, the Mi’kmaq word for “the gift of multiple perspectives”, is a guiding principle developed by Mi'kmaq Elder Albert Marshall of the Eskasoni First Nation in 2004. It refers to “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing and from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing and to using both of these eyes together” (Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, 2012, p. 335).
Also known as Red Dress Day, May 5 honours the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, 2 spirit, and gender diverse people in Canada by encouraging learning and building awareness to end violence against Indigenous women, girls, 2 spirit, and gender diverse people.
There are species of cedar trees that are native to both eastern and western parts of what is now known as Canada. The Eastern white cedar grows in forested regions in the Maritimes, along the Great Lakes, and in the St. Lawrence forests in Quebec and Ontario (Owens, 2015).
The plant Devil’s Club (Oplopananx Horridium) “is widely used by many Indigenous peoples as it has been used for centuries to treat a wide range of ailments” as an “anti-viral” ...
Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights are complex and have many different aspects. Gregory Younging ([Cree]2018) provides an overview of Indigenous Customary Laws and writes that they are “intimately intertwined and connected with TK and form what can be viewed as whole and complete, integrated, complex Indigenous knowledge systems throughout the world” (p. 116).
The Métis are well known for their musicality and celebratory nature, seen through jigging and step dancing which is accompanied by fiddle music. Fiddle music is “similar to the culture of storytelling” because “fiddle songs and tunes often have personal meanings for their creator and their creator’s family” (Alberta Métis, Métis Fiddle). Like oral stories, “fiddle tunes” were not “written down” but instead would be “passed down in person from one generation of fiddlers to the next” (
While there are shared similarities in the berry fasting practice, Indigenous communities have their own traditional practices and protocols unique to their culture. According to Ojibwe Elder Liza Mosher, “a young woman fasts from strawberries and other berries for a full year when she gets her first menstrual cycle” (Wabano, “Strawberry Teachings”).
