The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, or Chippewa are an Anishinaabeg group of indigenous peoples in North America. They live in Canada and theUnited States and are one of the largest Indigenous ethnic groups north of the Rio Grande. In Canada, they are the second-largestFirst Nations population, surpassed only by the Cree. In the United States, they have the fourth-largest population among Native American tribes, surpassed only by the Navajo, Cherokee, and Lakota-Dakota-Nakota peoples.
The Ojibwe people traditionally have spoken the Ojibwe language, a branch of the Algonquian language family. They are part of theCouncil of Three Fires and the Anishinaabeg, which include the Algonquin, Nipissing, Oji-Cree, Odawa and the Potawatomi.
The majority of the Ojibwe people live in Canada. There are 77,940 mainline Ojibwe; 76,760 Saulteaux and 8,770 Mississaugas, organized in 125 bands, and living from western Quebec to eastern British Columbia. As of 2010, Ojibwe in the US census population is 170,742.
Ojibwe are known for their birch bark canoes, birch bark scrolls, mining and trade in copper, and cultivation of wild rice. TheirMidewiwin Society is well respected as the keeper of detailed and complex scrolls of events, oral history, songs, maps, memories, stories, geometry, and mathematics.
The Ojibwe people set the agenda with European-Canadian leaders by signing detailed treaties before they allowed many European settlers into their western areas. In 1745, they adopted guns from the British to defeat the Dakota people in the Lake Superior area, pushing them to the south and west.