Anishinaabe traditional beliefs cover the traditional belief system of the Anishinaabeg peoples, consisting of the Algonquin/Nipissing, Ojibwa/Chippewa/Saulteaux/Mississaugas, Odawa, Potawatomi and Oji-cree, located primarily in the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada.
The Midewiwin (also spelled Midewin and Medewiwin) is the Grand Medicine Society of the indigenous groups of the Maritimes, New England and Great Lakes regions in North America. Its practitioners are called Midew and the practices of Midewiwin referred to as the Mide. The Midewiwin society is a secretive animistic religion, requiring an initiation, and then progressing to four levels of practitioners, called "degrees." A particularly powerful divergent third degree Midewiwin practitioners, known as Waabano or the "Dawn Society" were systematically imprisoned in mental hospitals by the United States government. Among the Anishinaabeg, a particularly powerful and well-respected spiritual leader who had reached the forth degree of the Midewiwin called a Jaasakiid or Jiisakiiwinini, also known as a "Juggler" or "Shaking-tent Seer," have in the past been hunted down and murdered by both Canadian and United States officials as being "individuals who endangers society."
