Last Updated on April 19, 2025
In a world shaped by individuality, parenting can feel like one of the most overwhelming challenges we could ever face.
I know from experience. As a father, I was expected to be everything for my children: caretaker, teacher, provider, protector, disciplinarian, entertainer. So that’s what I did, alone, with little to no outside support.
We were never meant to raise children this way.
I can’t help but acknowledge that parenting looks profoundly different outside western ways. For one, it’s not an isolated task but a shared responsibility that is woven into community, kinship, and the land itself. Children are not seen as possessions, but as sacred beings who belong to a wider circle of care.
That is what I mean when I say “parenting in circle”: There is a sacred structure that guides children not just to survive, but to thrive for all generations to come. In this regard, parenting is not a burden, but a communal ceremony. And in returning to our own circles, we come closer to raising a generation that knows exactly where they belong.
In Western culture, parenting often takes place within a nuclear family that typically involves two parents.
I ended up taking on the role as a single “part-time” parent. And if I’m being honest, I was eager to face a challenge that glorified self-sufficiency.
But it turned out to be an exhausting ideal. The pressure to “do it all” not only wore me down as a caregiver—it severed me from the very network that could have sustained me and my children.
By contrast, Indigenous parenting is deeply relational. It recognizes that children thrive when they are held in a web of love—not just by parents, but by aunties, uncles, elders, cousins, and neighbors. Parenting isn’t a private struggle. It’s a shared, collective act of love.
Let us take a moment to briefly reflect on some traditional Indigenous ways.
1. Inuit Wisdom: Teaching Through Stories and Questions
Among the Inuit, parenting is guided by patience, modeling, and story—not punishment. Rather than scolding, parents will ask reflective questions like: Why did you do that? How do you think they feel? Did you get what you really wanted? These aren’t meant to shame a child but to nurture the process of becoming a capable and caring human being known as Inunnguiniq.
Children also learn by watching their elders and caregivers and by participating in just about every daily task you can imagine. In this setting, discipline becomes an invitation to think, feel, and grow, rather than something that wounds or silences.
2. Haudenosaunee Clan Mothers: Matrilineal Caregiving
According to Haudenosaunee culture, which is governed by the Great Law of Peace, clan mothers or Yakoyaner are entrusted with ensuring the well-being of their children. This includes mentoring families, safeguarding children, and transmitting cultural knowledge. This practice ensures that Haudenosaunee customs and values are passed on to the next generation.
However, it’s not just parents who raise children. It’s the entire clan. Aunties, uncles, and elders all participate in guiding young ones, offering wisdom, ceremony, and everyday care.
In this regard, children are never just one person’s concern.
“Passing on their knowledge allows Indigenous youths to be in balance with themselves, their community, and their environment.”Iakoiane Wakerakatste, Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation
3. Diné (Navajo): Hózhó and the Sacred Order of Life
Among the Diné (Navajo), parenting is centered on the concept of Hózhó—a philosophy that encompasses beauty, balance, harmony, and right relationships. Children among the Diné are taught from birth to live in Hózhó through storytelling, ceremony, and modeling.
For example, during the First Laugh Ceremony—a celebration of a baby’s first giggle—the child is formally welcomed into the community. Laughter becomes a key signal that the child is ready to be a social being. Caregivers reflect on their role in helping the child grow into one who contributes harmony to the world.
Western parenting is shaped by colonial, capitalist and patriarchal systems that emphasize:
These values permeate throughout schools, the media, and even well-meaning non-profit programs that offer short-term help to more effectively manage parenting as a private task for which you are individually responsible.
Of course, Indigenous parenting traditions aren’t perfect. And they have been heavily impacted by the colonial process that forcibly separated Indigenous children from their families through residential schools, foster systems, and policies like the Sixties Scoop. These acts created deep inter-generational traumas that interrupted the vital transfer of parenting knowledge that is similarly absent from many non-indigenous homes.
And yet—despite everything that has happened—many Indigenous families are reclaiming their teachings. Through parenting workshops, land-based education, language revitalization, and cultural resurgence, communities are remembering what was always there.
For the Cree of Saddle Lake, they are finding new movement towards the “Nehiyaw Way of Life despite being impaired by colonization, residential schools, and substance abuses. As authors of “The Gathering” note, “The Nehiyaw Way of Life has never died away, but is experiencing a re‐growth in Indigenous communities.”
Anishinaabe writer Joleen Banning highlights another revival in an article for IndigiNews that discusses how the Cradle Keepers Collective is revitalizing traditional parenting practices in many communities.
While I cannot condone co-opting traditional Indigenous parenting methods, I can look to them for inspiration and I can hold fast to the fact that parenting in circle is not just an Indigenous teaching. Rather, it is a human response to a specific need that was embedded in everyone’s DNA long before colonization fractured our communities and essentially privatized care.
In this respect, we can honor Indigenous traditions without co-opting them by listening, supporting Indigenous sovereignty, and reshaping our own families in a way that is responsive to our own needs.
For example, you can
When I was hitting rock-bottom, I started taking my children onto the land and showing them how to be respectful and mindful. I also began re-connecting with my extended family… and I’m not going to lie, it was a difficult path to walk.But now our own circle is getting stronger with each passing day. And it will continue to get stronger regardless of any setbacks that we face as a family.
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