Many Quebeckers have Aboriginal ancestors without knowing it. While people were settling on the land, there were marriages between Aboriginal people and Europeans. The children born of these marriages are called “metis”.
Each Aboriginal people developed their own language. Some are similar, probably because they were spoken by common ancestors: these are said to be linguistic families. Differences between the languages arose from the environment, movements or the climate in which the different groups lived.
In Quebec, the largest family of Aboriginal languages is the Algonquian linguistic family: Cree, Innu, Anishinabe and Atikamekw are still used on a daily basis.