Inuit and Indian societies throughout present-day Canada were distinguished from European collectivities in a number of other ways, one of which was their insistence on individual autonomy.

      Among North American indigenous societies in general there was a powerful imperative to avoid imposing one’s will on another individual in any of the most extreme situations. This respect for autonomy was extended to young children, permitting them great scope for self-expression and preventing the use of direct, coercive techniques of behavior modification. Hence, the family’s and community’s efforts to educate the young as to acceptable conduct had to be carried out by the use of sanctions such as embarrassment and ridicule, and the more positive force of story and example.

      During this apparently carefree time of childhood, the youngsters of the Aboriginal community were in fact learning many things in addition to proper behavior that would prove vital to their success as adults. So, for example, what appeared to be play and recreation were often means of guiding the children’s occupational interests and honing skills that would be needed to make their way economically when they became adults. Games and amusement were, in fact, techniques for vocational training in Aboriginal society. For both genders, parental intervention in play was systematic and deliberate, if often unobtrusive and unnoticed. Fathers and uncles would make a boy his first bow, a small replica of the adult’s, and they would substitute successively larger models as the child grew and his strength increased. Mothers and aunts would make dolls and doll clothing for the girls and possibly a miniature-scraping tool as well. So natural did the process seem that in later life children often did not realize that they had, in fact been educated and trained by adult society.