The Anishinabe tribe, also known as the Ojibwa, Ojibway or Chippewa (though the latter they intensely dislike), is the third-largest tribe in North America, surpassed only by the Cherokee and the Navajo. The name Anishinabe is often translated as "first people".[1] At one time the tribe occupied a territory spanning from east of Lake Huron to the mountains of Montana in the west. A large portion of the tribe migrated to the state of Minnesota in the mid-seventeenth century, eventually pushing the Dakota tribe to the south and west of the state and claiming the northeast for their own.[2]

Anishinaabe camp by Benjamin F. Upton, 1870

Today, the Anishinabe populations are concentrated in the reservations of Minnesota and Wisconsin (the Minnesota Chippewa and Lake Superior tribes, respectively), though there are also reservations in Montana, Michigan and the Dakotas. Canada recognizes over one hundred full or part Anishinabe settlements, located in Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan.[3]

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  1. http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/mncultures/anishinabe.html "Natives Peoples of Minnesota: Anishinabe"
  2. http://www.mnchippewatribe.org/a_brief_history.htm "A Brief History of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe"
  3. A Native American Encyclopedia by Barry Pritzker