ABSTRACT
Parenting and childrearing are central to all cultures due to their essential role in the physical, cognitive, and emotional development of the next generation. Much progress has been made in recent years in the documentation and study of parenting across cultures (Bornstein, 1991, 2012, 2015). However, there is scant information available on Indigenous parenting and child development, despite the fact that close to 370 million Indigenous people occupy 20% of the planet’s territory and represent as many as 5,000 different cultural groups across all continents (United Nations, 2013). We use the term Indigenous to represent all international individuals and communities related to, and/or who have continuity historically with, the First Peoples in Canada, the United States, the Americas, Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, and Africa, and those who preceded colonizing populations (Allan and Smylie, 2015). Indigenous parenting, while affected by universal historical features, is subject to both intracultural and intercultural differences, depending on, among other things, the Indigenous cultural group or assimilation policies of governments.
