Seven Grandfathers Plus One Curious Grandma
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
A grandmother's first encounter with the Anishinaabe Seven Grandfather Teachings — and an invitation to learn together
This morning, I heard someone mention the Seven Grandfather Teachings. I couldn't recall hearing of them before, so I wrote the name down. I suspected I might not be the only one.
That's where this conversation begins, not with me as an expert, but as a grandmother who believes we're never too old to learn. We all start somewhere, and learning becomes richer when we invite others to pull up a chair: our families, our communities, and anyone else curious enough to join us. I came to these teachings as a guest and a learner, curious about what might happen when their wisdom sat beside my own life and community.
As I began reading, I learned that the Seven Grandfather Teachings are Anishinaabe principles passed from one generation to the next: Love, Respect, Bravery, Truth, Honesty, Humility and Wisdom. The Seven Generations Education Institute explains that these teachings are for anyone to honour and live by.
The more I read, the more I recognized values my own family and community have tried to carry, even in different words. I started thinking about what these teachings might reveal about how we love, how we tell the truth, how we face fear, and how we pass wisdom forward.
I realized we had much to learn — and much to talk about. So I kept reading.
Before the Teachings, There Was a Child
According to the story shared by the Seven Generations Education Institute, the Seven Grandfathers were spirits given responsibility for watching over the Anishinaabe people. They sent a Messenger to find someone who could carry important values back to the people. The Messenger found a baby and travelled with him around the Earth for seven years. When they returned, the Seven Grandfathers gave the child Love, Respect, Bravery, Truth, Honesty, Humility and Wisdom to carry back to the people.
The Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi shares another essential piece: none of the teachings stands alone. Each must be practised alongside the other six.
Love without truth can ask us to tolerate what harms us. Truth without respect can become a weapon. Bravery without humility can become arrogance. Wisdom without honesty can manipulate rather than guide.
Why? Because the Grandfathers said so.
The teachings keep one another in balance — which means living a good life may not be about mastering seven separate lessons. It may begin with noticing what happens when one of them goes missing.
That was reason enough to keep reading.
Love Should Not Require Disappearing
The Institute describes Zaagi'idiwin as unconditional love between one another and all of Creation. The phrase between one another held my attention; it suggests love is meant to move in more than one direction.
Many of us, particularly women, have been taught to measure love by how much we're prepared to give, forgive, absorb and survive. Black women are often praised for loving everyone through everything — even when that love leaves little room for us to remain whole.
But if Love must stand alongside Truth, Respect, Honesty, Humility, Bravery and Wisdom, it can't require one person to disappear so everyone else stays comfortable. Love may sometimes ask for sacrifice. It should not demand our erasure.
What might love look like if keeping ourselves whole were also part of loving others well?
Respect Is Not the Same as Obedience
The Institute describes Manaaji'idiwin as going easy on one another and all of Creation — again, something reciprocal. Yet respect is often treated as something that must travel upward. Children are told to respect adults. Patients must respect medical professionals. Tenants must respect property managers. People holding titles or power frequently demand respect without considering what they owe in return.
Many of us were raised hearing respect your elders — sometimes meaning listen to their wisdom, other times meaning stay silent even when something was wrong.
Respect that only travels in one direction starts to look like obedience. Standing beside Truth and Honesty, it can't require silence. Standing beside Humility, it means no one is above correction — no matter how much authority they hold. Respect should not require us to shrink so someone else can feel tall.
What changes when respect is practised as mutual care rather than demanded as proof of submission?
A Strong Heart Can Still Be Afraid
The Institute describes Zoongide'ewin, Bravery, as living with a solid, strong heart — the courage to face fear and challenge, not the absence of fear itself.
We often imagine bravery as dramatic and fearless. But some of the bravest acts look ordinary: filing a complaint when the institution holds all the power, telling a family truth that disturbs the peace, returning after failure, asking for help, setting a boundary with someone we love.
For Black women, bravery is often misread as anger, aggression or defiance — celebrated when it serves others, treated as a threat when we use it to protect ourselves.
A strong heart doesn't mean we're unafraid or unhurt. It means fear doesn't get to make every decision. Bravery beside Wisdom isn't recklessness. Bravery beside Love protects life. Bravery beside Humility needs no audience.
What might we finally say or do if we stopped waiting to feel fearless?
Truth Begins With What We Have Lived
The Institute describes Debwewin, Truth, as speaking only to the extent that we have lived or experienced something. That definition stopped me. It doesn't ask one person to hold the whole truth — it asks us to speak responsibly from what we know.
Institutions often arrange truth into a hierarchy: official records over lived testimony, credentials over the person who was actually there. Black women, disabled people, and others whose credibility is routinely questioned are often told that what happened to them is "just perception" — until someone with more authority confirms it.
But lived experience carries knowledge. Truth beside Humility lets me name what I lived without pretending to know everything. Truth beside Bravery helps me speak when what I know is inconvenient. Truth beside Respect reminds me someone else may hold another part of the story. We don't need perfect language, flawless memory, or institutional permission to start telling the truth about our own lives.
What truths have we learned to doubt because someone with more power refused to hear them?
Honesty Is More Than Not Lying
The Institute describes Gwayakwaadiziwin, Honesty, as living correctly and with virtue. The Nottawaseppi Huron Band adds that we must be honest with ourselves before we can be honest with others.
At first, Truth and Honesty seem like twins. But Truth asks us to speak from what we've lived; Honesty asks what we're prepared to do with that knowledge. We can avoid a direct lie while still hiding behind silence, omission or softened language. We can know something is hurting us and still call it manageable. We can call something peace when everyone's simply afraid to speak.
Honesty with ourselves isn't easy — survival often teaches us to minimize what hurts, or to accept what we didn't have the power to change. Sometimes honesty arrives slowly, once we're finally safe enough to face it.
Honesty beside Love doesn't need to be cruel. Beside Bravery, it lets difficult things be said. Beside Humility, it lets us admit when we were wrong. Honesty begins in the mirror — but it can't end there.
What might become possible if we stopped minimizing what we already know?
Humility Is Not Making Yourself Small
The Institute describes Dabasendiziwin, Humility, as thinking of oneself in relation to everything that sustains us. The Nottawaseppi Huron Band explains it further: we are equal to others — neither better nor worse — part of Creation alongside humans, plants and animals. That distinction matters.
Humility is sometimes used to tell people to lower their voices, hide their gifts, or make themselves smaller. Black women, in particular, are often warned against appearing too proud, too certain, too ambitious. But self-erasure is not humility. Pretending we have nothing to contribute doesn't honour the people and experiences that shaped us.
Humility beside Truth lets us speak about what we know. Beside Respect, it refuses to rank one life above another. Beside Wisdom, it reminds us there's always more to learn, regardless of age or achievement.
Perhaps humility doesn't ask us to become smaller, only to remember we're part of something larger.
Can we stand fully in our own worth without imagining it places us above anyone else?
Age Does Not Automatically Make Us Wise
The Institute describes Nibwaakaawin, Wisdom, as living with vision. The Nottawaseppi Huron Band frames it as the combination of the teachings and our life experience, and reminds us that wisdom comes in many forms, at every age.
Living longer gives us more experience, but experience alone doesn't guarantee wisdom. We can repeat the same lesson for decades without learning it. Age gives us stories; wisdom asks what we've understood, and what we're prepared to do differently because of it.
Grandmothers may carry wisdom, but we don't hold a monopoly on it. Children notice what adults have learned to ignore. Young people ask questions that unsettle long-held assumptions. Every generation sees something the others might miss. As well as maybe "Grandma Knows Best" was never meant to suggest Grandma knows everything, only that she's lived long enough to appreciate the value of a better question. Wisdom beside Humility keeps us teachable. Beside Truth, it makes us face what experience has actually shown us. Beside Love, it asks us to use what we know for the good of others. Wisdom may simply be deciding what to keep, what to change, and what we finally refuse to carry forward.
What have our years taught us, and what are we willing to do differently because of it?
The Chair Remains Open
I began this journey because I heard someone mention the Seven Grandfather Teachings and realized how little I knew. I finish this first exploration with more questions than I started with, and maybe that's the point.
These teachings aren't seven attractive words to admire from a distance. They ask to be practised together: Love without disappearing. Respect without obedience. Bravery that admits fear. Truth grounded in experience. Honesty that begins within. Humility without shrinking. Wisdom that stays willing to learn.
I'm grateful to the Anishinaabe teachers and communities who have carried these teachings across generations and made it possible for curious people like me to encounter them. Learning from another tradition doesn't require pretending our histories or experiences are the same. It asks us to listen carefully, honour where the knowledge came from, and consider what it reveals about the way we're living.
Seven Grandfathers met one curious Grandma — and left her even more curious than they found her.
The chair remains open. Which teaching will you carry away from this conversation?
Comments