Pembina Plains Ojibwa

Pembina Plains Ojibwa  |  First Peoples  |  Ojibwa/Chippewa/Saulteaux

The Pembina Plains Ojibwa originate from primarily the Anishinaabe/Ojibwa and New France mixed-heritage Aboriginal peoples of the Great Lakes region (often called Saulteaux/Soto, meaning People of Sault Ste. Marie) who, as a consequence of European westward expansion in North America, began moving from their traditional historic homelands to the Pembina region from the 1650s, and increasingly so following the American Revolution in the 1780s. The language of these ancestral Ojibwa and polyethnic mixed Indian/French heritage Aboriginal peoples from the Great Lakes was both Anishinaabemowin and a form of "country" French. The Ojibwa/Chippewa/Saulteaux peoples came to the Pembina region because it was a geographic gateway to the northern Great Plains within the old French Regime and the last open range within the British sphere after the American Revolution. Here, a quasi-independent life with liberty yet existed and new economic opportunities were possible.