Lesson 3 — Activity 2: The Way of Life before European Arrival
Completion requirements
Lesson 3 — Activity 2: The Way of Life before European Arrival
Warm Up
You know that Indigenous peoples, Canada's first inhabitants, included groups of First Nations and Inuit people who lived across the country.
In this activity, you will learn about some aspects of the way of life of First Nations before contact with Europeans.
In most Indigenous societies, family included a broad network of parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. This extended family was the basic unit of survival in Indigenous societies.
Each member of the family had an important role, and everyone was expected to contribute to the general welfare of the family. Usually, family needs were put ahead of individual desires.
Subsisting on the land would not have been possible without everybody working together. Young mothers and fathers took care of the daily
physical chores needed for survival. These included such activities as
hunting, fishing, gathering berries, and cooking, to name just a few.
This woman is making pemmican, a mixture of dried meat, traditionally bison pounded into coarse powder and mixed with an equal amount of melted fat, and occasionally different kinds of berries.
These women are in a Nootka canoe, whose graceful lines made it an excellent sea-going vessel.
Other parenting needs were traditionally undertaken by members of the extended family. Grandparents played a large role in caring for the children, freeing parents to provide food, clothing, and shelter. Grandparents also taught the children many traditional beliefs.
The education of children was the responsibility of both the family and the community. Members of the community with special skills taught all of the children.
Skilled hunters would teach the young boys the skills they needed to be good hunters. Others who excelled in their artistic abilities would teach these skills to the youth.
