Family History
Alanis Obomsawin was born in New Hampshire on Abenaki Territory. When she was 6 months old, her mother returned to the Odanak reserve north east of Montreal where Alanis lived until she was 9. Théophile Panadis, her mother’s cousin, initiated Alanis into the history of the Abenaki Nation and taught her many songs and legends. Obomsawin and her parents then left Odanak for Trois-Rivières, where they were the only Native family. Cut off, speaking little French and no English, Obomsawin held fast to the songs and stories she had learned on the reserve. Alanis has one child, daughter Kisos Obomsawin, born in 1969.
Read more about this topic: Alanis Obomsawin
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or history:
“The value of a family is that it cushions and protects while the individual is learning ways of coping. And a supportive social system provides the same kind of cushioning for the family as a whole.”
—Michael W. Yogman, and T. Berry Brazelton (20th century)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)