Woman Realizes She Might Not Have Her Fairy Tale Wedding As In-Laws Are Serious About Their “Pure Blood”

Dating outside your culture can open you up to new perspectives on people and the world. It helps you see things in a different light and broadens how you understand relationships. But it also comes with challenges you might not have been aware of.

An Italian woman who goes on Reddit by the nickname ThrowRAPerception135 moved to Canada a few years back and fell in love with a native Cree man there. But when he finally proposed to her and the couple began planning their happily-ever-after, his mother and other relatives stepped in, trying to block their marriage in the name of preserving his lineage.

"Indigenous peoples" is a collective name for the original peoples of North America and their descendants.

The Canadian Constitution recognizes 3 groups of Indigenous peoples:

These are 3 distinct peoples with unique histories, languages, cultural practices, and spiritual beliefs.

According to the 2021 Census, more than 1.8 million people in Canada identify as Indigenous, or roughly 5% of the country’s total population.

Canadian anthropologist Richard J. Preston says the Cree are the most populous and widely distributed Indigenous peoples in Canada. Other words the Cree use to describe themselves include nehiyawak, nihithaw, nehinaw, and ininiw. Cree First Nations occupy territories in the Subarctic region from Alberta to Quebec, as well as portions of the Plains region in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

According to the census data, 223,745 people identify as having Cree ancestry and 86,475 speak Cree languages.

Preston says that before the arrival of the Europeans, the Cree followed seasonal animal migrations to obtain meat for food and animal hides and bones for the making of tools and clothing. They traveled by canoe in summer, and by snowshoes and toboggan in winter, living in cone- or dome-shaped lodges, covered in animal skins.

After the Europeans came to the region, participation in the fur trade pushed the Swampy Cree west into the Plains. During this time, many Cree remained in the boreal forest and the tundra area to the north, where a stable culture persisted. They continued to rely on hunting moose, caribou, smaller game, geese, ducks, and fish, which they preserved by drying over fire. The Cree also traded meat, furs, and other goods in exchange for metal tools, twine, and European goods.

The anthropologist explains that during the late 1700s and the 1800s, the Cree who had migrated to the Plains changed rapidly and dramatically from trappers and forest hunters into horse-mounted warriors and bison hunters. Epidemics, the destruction of the bison herds and government policies aimed at forcing First Nations to surrender land through treaties, however, brought the Plains Cree and other “horse-culture” nations to ruin by the 1880s.

The Canadian government, under the leadership of Sir John A. Macdonald, actively withheld rations and other resources in order to force starving Plains peoples into signing documents and relocating them to reserves. There, the Cree sustained themselves by farming, ranching, and casual labor, and were subjected to further cultural destruction through decades of trauma endured in the residential school system.

Now, even with all the cultural nuance aside, some First Nations people are legally registered under what’s known in Canada as “status,” which is passed down through families under specific rules. This system includes what’s called the “second-generation cut-off,” meaning that if someone with status has children with a non-status partner, their children may still qualify, but the ability to pass that status on can weaken in future generations.

In this context, the family’s reaction likely isn’t about the relationship itself as much as it is about what comes after. They may be worried that if their son has children with someone who isn’t registered, their grandchildren—and especially great-grandchildren—might no longer be eligible for status. For them, that’s not just a legal technicality, but something tied to identity, community belonging, and the long-term continuity of their culture.