Bear People Tsimshian

animal-spirit · Canada · North America

In Tsimshian and neighboring Northwest Coast tradition, the Bear People are a chiefly society who live in houses like humans and put on bear coats to travel as animals. The Bear Mother story tells how a woman who disrespected the bears was taken and married into the bear village, bore twin cubs, and how the bear chief taught the rituals of respect hunters still follow.

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