Kinship and Clan System

Love Medicine can be sort of confusing at times because there are so many different characters. Well the Chippewa's actually have a very complex understanding of kinship. As with any bifurcate merging kinship system, siblings generally share the same term with parallel cousins, because they are all part of the same clan. But the modified system allows for younger siblings to share the same kinship term with younger cross-cousins. Complexity wanes further from the speaker's immediate generation, but some complexity is retained with female relatives. For example, ninooshenh is "my mother's sister" or "my father's sister-in-law"—i.e., my parallel-aunt—but also "my parent's female cross-cousin". Great-grandparents and older generations, as well as great-grandchildren and younger generations are collectively called aanikoobijigan. This system of kinship speaks of the nature of the Anishinaabe's philosophy and lifestyle, that is of interconnectedness and balance between all living generations and all generations of the past and of the future. - Wikipedia