Together We Survive: Ethnographic Intuitions, Friendships, and Conversations 9780773597860

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TogeTher We Survive

MCgiLL-QueeN’S NATive AND NorTherN SerieS (in memory of Bruce g. Trigger) Sarah Carter and Arthur J. Ray, Editors

1

When the Whalers Were Up North Inuit Memories from the Eastern Arctic Dorothy Harley Eber

11 When the North Was Red Aboriginal Education in Soviet Siberia Dennis A. Bartels and Alice L. Bartels

2

The Challenge of Arctic Shipping Science, Environmental Assessment, and Human Values Edited by David L. VanderZwaag and Cynthia Lamson

12 From Talking Chiefs to a Native Corporate Elite The Birth of Class and Nationalism among Canadian Inuit Marybelle Mitchell

3

Lost Harvests Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy Sarah Carter

13 Cold Comfort My Love Affair with the Arctic Graham W. Rowley

4

Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty The Existing Aboriginal Right of Self-Government in Canada Bruce Clark

5

Unravelling the Franklin Mystery Inuit Testimony David C. Woodman

6

Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 James R. Gibson

7

From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare The Story of the Western Reserves Helen Buckley

8

In Business for Ourselves Northern Entrepreneurs Wanda A. Wuttunee

9

For an Amerindian Autohistory An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic Georges E. Sioui

10 Strangers Among Us David Woodman

14 The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council with Walter Hildebrandt, Dorothy First Rider, and Sarah Carter 15 This Distant and Unsurveyed Country A Woman’s Winter at Baffin Island, 1857–1858 W. Gillies Ross 16 Images of Justice Dorothy Harley Eber 17 Capturing Women The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West Sarah Carter 18 Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project Edited by James F. Hornig 19 Saqiyuq Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women Nancy Wachowich in collaboration with Apphia Agalakti Awa, Rhoda Kaukjak Katsak, and Sandra Pikujak Katsak

20 Justice in Paradise Bruce Clark 21 Aboriginal Rights and Self-Government The Canadian and Mexican Experience in North American Perspective Edited by Curtis Cook and Juan D. Lindau 22 Harvest of Souls The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632–1650 Carole Blackburn 23 Bounty and Benevolence A History of Saskatchewan Treaties Arthur J. Ray, Jim Miller, and Frank Tough 24 The People of Denendeh Ethnohistory of the Indians of Canada’s Northwest Territories June Helm

31 The Heavens Are Changing Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity Susan Neylan 32 Arctic Migrants/Arctic Villagers The Transformation of Inuit Settlement in the Central Arctic David Damas 33 Arctic Justice On Trial for Murder – Pond Inlet, 1923 Shelagh D. Grant 34 The American Empire and the Fourth World Anthony J. Hall 35 Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, and Mary Houston

25 The Marshall Decision and Native Rights Ken Coates

36 Uqalurait An Oral History of Nunavut Compiled and edited by John Bennett and Susan Rowley

26 The Flying Tiger Women Shamans and Storytellers of the Amur Kira Van Deusen

37 Living Rhythms Lessons in Aboriginal Economic Resilience and Vision Wanda Wuttunee

27 Alone in Silence European Women in the Canadian North before 1940 Barbara E. Kelcey

38 The Making of an Explorer George Hubert Wilkins and the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913–1916 Stuart E. Jenness

28 The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher An Elizabethan Adventure Robert McGhee

39 Chee Chee A Study of Aboriginal Suicide Alvin Evans

29 Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture Renée Hulan

40 Strange Things Done Murder in Yukon History Ken S. Coates and William R. Morrison

30 The White Man’s Gonna Getcha The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec Toby Morantz

41 Healing through Art Ritualized Space and Cree Identity Nadia Ferrara

42 Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing Coming Home to the Village Peter Cole

54 Kiviuq An Inuit Hero and His Siberian Cousins Kira Van Deusen

43 Something New in the Air The Story of First Peoples Television Broadcasting in Canada Lorna Roth

55 Native Peoples and Water Rights Irrigation, Dams, and the Law in Western Canada Kenichi Matsui

44 Listening to Old Woman Speak Natives and Alternatives in Canadian Literature Laura Smyth Groening

56 The Rediscovered Self Indigenous Identity and Cultural Justice Ronald Niezen

45 Robert and Francis Flaherty A Documentary Life, 1883–1922 Robert J. Christopher 46 Talking in Context Language and Identity in Kwakwaka’wakw Society Anne Marie Goodfellow 47 Tecumseh’s Bones Guy St-Denis 48 Constructing Colonial Discourse Captain Cook at Nootka Sound Noel Elizabeth Currie 49 The Hollow Tree Fighting Addiction with Traditional Healing Herb Nabigon 50 The Return of Caribou to Ungava A.T. Bergerud, Stuart Luttich, and Lodewijk Camps 51 Firekeepers of the Twenty-First Century First Nations Women Chiefs Cora J. Voyageur 52 Isuma Inuit Video Art Michael Robert Evans 53 Outside Looking In Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series Mary Jane Miller

57 As affecting the fate of my absent husband Selected Letters of Lady Franklin Concerning the Search for the Lost Franklin Expedition, 1848–1860 Edited by Erika Behrisch Elce 58 The Language of the Inuit Syntax, Semantics, and Society in the Arctic Louis-Jacques Dorais 59 Inuit Shamanism and Christianity Transitions and Transformations in the Twentieth Century Frédéric B. Laugrand and Jarich G. Oosten 60 No Place for Fairness Indigenous Land Rights and Policy in the Bear Island Case and Beyond David T. McNab 61 Aleut Identities Tradition and Modernity in an Indigenous Fishery Katherine L. Reedy-Maschner 62 Earth into Property Aboriginal History and the Making of Global Capitalism Anthony J. Hall 63 Collections and Objections Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario, 1791–1914 Michelle A. Hamilton

64 These Mysterious People Shaping History and Archaeology in a Northwest Coast Community Susan Roy 65 Telling It to the Judge Taking Native History to Court Arthur J. Ray 66 Aboriginal Music in Contemporary Canada Echoes and Exchanges Edited by Anna Hoefnagels and Beverley Diamond 67 In Twilight and in Dawn A Biography of Diamond Jenness Barnett Richling 68 Women’s Work, Women’s Art Nineteenth-Century Northern Athapaskan Clothing Judy Thompson 69 Warriors of the Plains The Arts of Plains Indian Warfare Max Carocci 70 Reclaiming Indigenous Planning Edited by Ryan Walker, Ted Jojola, and David Natcher 71 Setting All the Captives Free Capture, Adjustment, and Recollection in Allegheny Country Ian K. Steele 72 Before Ontario The Archaeology of a Province Edited by Marit K. Munson and Susan M. Jamieson

73 Becoming Inummarik Men’s Lives in an Inuit Community Peter Collings 74 Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America Nancy J. Turner 75 Our Ice Is Vanishing/Sikuvut Nunguliqtuq A History of Inuit, Newcomers, and Climate Change Shelley Wright 76 Maps and Memes Redrawing Culture, Place, and Identity in Indigenous Communities Gwilym Lucas Eades 77 Encounters An Anthropological History of Southeastern Labrador John C. Kennedy 78 Keeping Promises The Royal Proclamation of 1763, Aboriginal Rights, and Treaties in Canada Edited by Terry Fenge and Jim Aldridge 79 Together We Survive Ethnographic Intuitions, Friendships, and Conversations Edited by John S. Long and Jennifer S.H. Brown

Richard J. (Dick) Preston, resting on the boughs, 2012

To g e T h e r W e S u r v i v e Ethnographic Intuitions, Friendships, and Conversations Edited by John S. Long and Jennifer S.H. Brown

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston | London | Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2016

ISBN 978-0-7735-4610-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7735-4611-0 (paper) ISBN 978-0-7735-9786-0 (ePDF ) ISBN 978-0-7735-9787-7 (ePUB) Legal deposit first quarter 2016 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Together we survive : ethnographic intuitions, friendships, and conversations / edited by John S. Long and Jennifer S.H. Brown. (McGill-Queen’s native and northern series ; 79) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-7735-4610-3 (bound). – ISBN 978-0-7735-4611-0 (paperback). – ISBN 978-0-7735-9786-0 (pdf). – ISBN 978-0-7735-9787-7 (epub) 1. Cree Indians. I. Long, John, 1948–, author, editor II. Brown, Jennifer S. H., 1940–, editor III. Preston, Richard J. (Richard Joseph), 1931–, honouree IV. Series: McGill-Queen’s Native and northern series ; 79

E99.C88T63 2015

971.004’97323

C2015-906108-3 C2015-906109-1

Set in 10/13 Minion Pro with Gotham Book design & typesetting by Garet Markvoort, zijn digital

for riChArD JoSePh PreSToN iii

Contents

List of Figures

xiii

Acknowledgments xv Tribute Foreword Preface

xix xxi xxv

J o H n S . Lo nG AnD JE nnifER S .H . BRown

Introduction: Richard J. Preston on Friendship, Family, Community, and Commitment 5 J o H n S . Lo nG w itH RiC H ARD J. PR ESton

Part one: Making a Living, Changing Community 1

Creating Jobs and an Eenou Social Economy

45

H A Rv Ey A. fE it

2

Architecture without Rooms: Cree Dwellings and Social Order

71

A D Ri An tA nn ER

Part Two: images, Textures, Dreams, and identity 3

Beaded Hoods of the James Bay Cree: Origins and Developments C AtH o BE RHoLtzER

93

4

A Token of Remembrance: The Gift of a Cree Hood, Red River Settlement, 1844 107 L AU R A PE ERS

5

Anishinaabe Doodem Pictographs: Narrative Inscriptions and Identities 130 CoRy w iLLM ott

Part Three: Songs and Narratives 6

John Kawapit’s Hunting Songs

169

StA n L. Lo Uttit

7

Cultural Structures of First Nations Imagination: A Social Science View 181 R E Gn A DARnE LL

Part Four: indigenous rights, Compassion, and Peace 8

A Roadmap for Reconciliation and Justice: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 205 J E n n ifE R PRE Sto n

9

Compassionate Landscapes: Caring for the Great Community of Persons 221 SU SA n M . PRESto n

10 Are You Crying because the Way Is Hard? Linking Cree and Quaker

Concerns in Dick’s Life Journey

243

R i C H A RD t. MCC U tCH Eo n AnD RiC HA R D J. PR ESton

Note on Terminology

283

Selected Writings of Richard Joseph Preston III Contributors Index

299

xii ContE n tS

295

287

Figures

Frontispiece: Richard Joseph Preston III at the grand opening of Aanischaakamikw, the Cree Cultural Institute at Ouje-Bougoumou, Quebec, in 2012. Photo by Betty Preston 0.1 Map of the western James Bay region showing Mushkegowuk territory today. Drawn by Weldon Hiebert, contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada 2 0.2 Map of the eastern James Bay region showing Eeyou Istchee territory today. Drawn by Weldon Hiebert, contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada 3 1.1 Map of the Waswanipi region, 1968. Courtesy of Harvey A. Feit, drawn by Kathryn Killackey 55 2.1 Archaeologists’ miichwaapt under construction. Photo by Adrian Tanner 72 2.2 The maahkii. Photo by Adrian Tanner

77

2.3 Interior of the communal lodge. Photo by Adrian Tanner

79

2.4 Part of the hunting group outside the communal lodge. Photo by Adrian Tanner 79 2.5 Abandoned communal lodge. Photo by Adrian Tanner 2.6 The matutisaanikamikw. Photo by Adrian Tanner

80

81

3.1 James Bay Cree beaded hood. In the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum, photo by John Gavin 92

4.1 Northern Cree woman’s hood. Collected by Bishop George Jehosephat Mountain, in the private collection of Donald Ellis, photo by Drew Davey 108 4.2 Map of Montreal–James Bay–Red River connections. Courtesy of Laura Peers, drawn by Theodore Papaioannou 110 4.3 Detail, northern Cree woman’s hood. Collected by Bishop George Jehosephat Mountain, in the private collection of Donald Ellis, photo by Drew Davey 118 5.1 Aboriginal Chief, Chippewa, the Eclipse, or Wabumagoging, 1849, by Cornelius Krieghoff. Courtesy of the McCord Museum, M 1878 139 5.2 Birch bark cutout of bears, 1998, by Anny Hubbard. Courtesy of the artist 142 5.3 Travellers’ message, c. 1913–23, by Nawajibigokwe. Courtesy of the Bureau of American Ethnology, reproduced in Frances Densmore, Chippewa Customs (1929), fig. 19, 178 145 5.4 Hudson’s Bay Company diplomatic belt and pipe, 1920. Courtesy of the HBC Collection, HBC 1254 and HBC 96-13, copyright of the Manitoba Museum, photo by Amelia Fay 156 5.5 Ziibiwing Cultural Society logo on t-shirt, 2000, by Steve Pego. Photo by Cory Willmott 149 5.6. Pictograph of a puberty vision, c. 1830, by Seth Eastman, after Catherine Wabose. Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum Library, reproduced in Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (1851), plate 55 151

xiv f iGU R E S

Acknowledgments

As editors we are grateful to many who have helped to make this book a reality: Jacqueline Mason, our editor at McGill-Queen’s University Press, for unflagging support of this venture; the MQUP Publications Review Committee and the editors of MQUP ’s Native and Northern Series; copy editor Robert Lewis for suggesting improvements that strengthened the prose and for cheerfully answering numerous queries; anonymous reviewers who provided helpful suggestions and perspectives; the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) for a generous last-minute donation toward the cost of this volume; Dr Patrick Deane, president of McMaster University, for an earlier contribution; the late Gerti Diamond, who supplied her “from the heart” tribute; Brian Craik for the Foreword and for help with occasional queries about etymology and usage of specific East Cree words, among other matters; Betty Preston for the frontispiece photo, which was taken in 2012 at the grand opening of Aanischaakamikw, the Cree Cultural Institute at Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec, where she and Dick delivered the balance of his collection of artifacts, research notes, and documents as a donation to this beautiful museum; Renée Fossett for preparing the index; Doug W.T. Cheechoo, special projects officer, and Barb Duffin, GIS /information manager, Mushkegowuk Council, for an up-to-date map of the Mushkegowuk territory; cartographer Weldon Hiebert for the maps of Cree communities; Marguerite MacKenzie, who advised us regarding consistent up-to-date double-vowel orthography, serving as our unofficial Cree-language editor; Ron Oberholtzer for permission to reprint his late wife Cath’s classic essay on Cree beaded hoods; and Emily Farrell for editorial assistance in 2011–12. We are thrilled that Eeyou artist Tim Whiskeychan, who designed the Royal Canadian Mint’s 2015 limited-edition silver five-dollar coin, agreed to have his original art appear on the cover of this book. Tim calls the watercol-

our “Our Way of Life.” He has explained to us, “It reflects the old stories my dad used to share. He was a humble man, as I knew him when I was young. He was funny and had so many interesting stories. The elders are my source of inspiration and they are the carriers of knowledge of their territory.” Dick Preston adds, “Tim is showing what he believed was in his father’s mind, and that also is the mind I was trying to discern as an ethnographer: what life looked like to the old-time Crees.” Our appreciation extends, as well, to each of the contributors, without whom we would not have this book. Finally, we wish to express our deep gratitude to Richard J. Preston III , whom we value as a colleague and friend. He is an outstanding listener, and he cares about getting things right. As a good Quaker, he appreciates the importance of silence and of ensuring that others have the chance to speak and be heard. He has been really good at that for a very long time. John S. Long recalls: Alan Johnson, principal of North Bay Teachers College in 1971–72, excused me from at least one final exam so I could attend a conference in Montreal, where I heard Dick Preston and John Murdoch speak about Cree education in northern Quebec. I accepted a teaching job, and unknowingly a life-changing direction, in Moose Factory in 1972–73. A few months later I mailed Dick a few pages I had written, from archival sources, about a situation that had arisen when Treaty No. 9 commissioners excluded several families at Moose Factory in 1905. In his brief reply, he said it would be interesting to know what stories people might have about this. I presented an early draft of a dissertation chapter at the Thirteenth Algonquian Conference in Toronto in the fall of 1980, where I also heard papers by both Dick and Sarah Preston. Dick was friendly, in his patient you-can-learn-a-lot-here way, like other Algonquianists to this day. I began attending more of these conferences, seeing Dick on a regular basis. The mentoring began. I came to know Dick better when John Murdock invited us to participate in a series of workshops in the 1980s, including one in Waskaganish. Their aim was to develop a culturally relevant social studies curriculum for the Cree School Board. Dick was also an unofficial advisor for my 1986 doctoral dissertation. When McMaster University’s Technology Assessment in Subarctic Ontario project (see Introduction, this volume) brought Dick north to Mushkegowuk territory in the early 1980s, he regularly visited me there and, later, in Schumacher. We became colleagues and close

xvi AC Know LE D G M En tS

friends. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was working for the Mushkegowuk Council, Dick provided important insight into treaty making at a workshop I organized, and he came to my aid when I asked him to help me out in a curriculum workshop. I worked as a consultant, researcher, and neutral facilitator in the late 1990s. One task was trying to help the New Post First Nation (now Taykwa Tagamou Nation) and Ontario Hydro to settle past grievances. We called on Dick to provide a second opinion on the cost of the disruptions caused by Ontario Hydro interventions in the New Post territory. Today, Dick and I regularly participate in conference calls, meet, and exchange emails as part of a collaborative project known as the People of the Moose River Basin, helping the Moose Cree First Nation (and our colleague Stan L. Louttit, author of chapter 6 in this volume), Taykwa Tagamou Nation, and Ontario Power Generation to write a people’s history of the region. Jennifer S.H. Brown remembers: I trace my acquaintance with Dick Preston and his work back to April 1969, when he gave a paper, entitled “Eastern Cree Songs: The Expression of Personal Symbolism in the Use of Culture Patterns,” for the Northeastern Anthropological Association (drawn from a report he submitted to the National Museum of Man). Analyzing thirteen hunting songs he had recorded at Fort George on eastern James Bay, Dick told his listeners about how he came to understand that, “When hunting is accompanied by singing, the songs add power to the ability of the hunter. In an essentially mental way, the songs influence the animal, making the hunt more successful.” The paper elaborated upon this deep relationship between human and animal persons with an empathy and insight that led me to keep my purple mimeo copy of his text for fortyfive years, to follow its author’s work as best I could, even though from a distance, and to meet and converse when opportunity offered. His contributions are a treasure house for Algonquian studies. Thanks, Dick. You and your students have helped us to better understand Algonquian peoples. And you continue to help make the world a more compassionate place. John S. Long Jennifer S.H. Brown

ACK n owLEDGME n tS

xvii

Tribute

It is an honour to provide this tribute to Dr Richard J. Preston. In the mid1960s I worked for Dick, translating numerous reel-to-reel tapes of Cree accounts of history, values, and culture. He always encouraged my keen interest in the knowledge of my people and our history. Working for Dick was very much a learning experience for me. While translating for him, I stayed with his family. I felt very much like a “big sister” to his five children. I felt adopted into his family. As a result of our ongoing friendship and communication, I am known to them as “Gertz.” At the signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement by the Cree in 1975, many recognized and credited our Cree elders for its success. I acknowledge Dick Preston as one of those elders for his anthropological studies of the Cree. He is called Preston ’She’yuu (Preston Elder), no longer simply an naapeu (that man). I credit surviving my residential school experience to having two strong families, my Cree family and my non-Native one. Thank you Dick for sharing your genuine knowledge of my people and for the continuing sense that I am very much a part of your family. Gerti (Gertz) Diamond Waskaganish, Quebec, 2015

Editors’ note: Sadly, Gerti passed away before the publication of this book. In Dick Preston’s words, “She was a rare leader, with a combination of abundant energy, enduring friendship, and great good humour. She was loved and respected in her community of Waskaganish and beyond – and will be missed. She spoke honestly and without rancour and, as her sister Agnes said, was always on time for meetings.”

Foreword

When anthropology student Dick Preston arrived in Waskaganish in 1963, it was a Cree community in transition. Elders could receive the federal oldage pension. The community had a federal health clinic, a federal elementary school, and a provincial game warden. English-language radio was the main source of outside information. There was weekly plane service, on floats in the summer, and there were three radio telephones. Few jobs in the community were available for local Crees. Those who had them were, for the most part, descendants of Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC ) employees or of Revillon Frères “company families” who worked in the canoe factory, the saw pit, or the blacksmith’s shop, looked after the post garden, or tended the farm animals. A few people spoke English with the Orkney accent of some of their ancestors, despite having been born in the community. When local wage employment opportunities declined due to changes in transportation and manufacturing, some of the unemployed turned back to the ancestral way of life on the land. Most older Crees spoke little or no English. Most Crees lived in maahkiih (canvas-covered tent frames) or in one of the few crowded houses that had been built by Waskaganish community members in the 1950s, using materials supplied by the Indian Affairs district office in Moose Factory or produced at the community sawmill. There were also a number of older HBC buildings. John Blackned, the elder who eventually befriended and collaborated with Dick Preston, making his lifework possible, lived with his wife, Harriet, and their sons, Mark and Eddie, in one of them – a wind-blown, unpainted, grey, weathered, two-storey house. John was a hunter and seemingly unilingual in Cree. He also had considerable skill in carpentry, and the Hudson’s Bay Company would always turn to John when it needed a new building or repairs to an existing structure.

Years earlier, when the HBC no longer needed that two-storey house, the post manager was going to sell or trade it to someone in the community. John is reputed to have insisted, in English, “My hammer, my house.” John Blackned had been born in the late nineteenth century and brought up at a time when the Hudson’s Bay Company was losing its grip on the fur trade monopoly it had once enjoyed. He was a grown man when the beaver population collapsed in 1929, coincidentally the same year as the stock market crash. Non-Native trappers had decimated entire species that the Crees depended on, using poison bait and other techniques. Local hunters were reported to be afraid to go to their trapping grounds, knowing that there were no beavers or foxes and that other animals might be unsafe as food. HBC manager James Watt and his politically connected bilingual wife, Maud, negotiated with Quebec and Canada to create a beaver preserve, managed by Crees. The once-depressed beaver population slowly recovered, and by the mid-1940s Cree prosperity and living conditions had improved as well. Like all small communities, Waskaganish also had a rumour mill. The grist for its mill, however, was not only romance. It also included enituuhuunaanuuhch (hunting). Elders were respected as teachers and as repositories of traditional knowledge, tipaachimuwinh (stories of past events), and aatiyuuhkaanh (mythological stories). Some elders were also renowned for their spiritual powers to the point where they sometimes became caught up in interfamilial arguments, and as these elders aged, others might become fearful of their powers. At first, Dick Preston didn’t have a specific research project or problem in mind, and he sometimes wondered why he was there. He did, however, have an intuitive mind and a caring, patient way about him. When Dick and his family accompanied community members on short trips out of the community, he began to acquire some appreciation of Cree culture and being on the land. Then he was introduced to John Blackned. John was loved, revered, and also feared in Waskaganish. He told Dick about the kusaapihchikin (shaking tent) and about traditional beliefs generally. However, John did not perform the shaking tent ritual and was a staunch Anglican. He narrated a rich corpus of aatiyuuhkaanh and Dick recorded them. Dick asked questions whose answers might have seemed self-evident at times, but the answers revealed the hidden meanings of these traditional stories. At the end of one of Dick’s visits with John, interpreter Anderson Jolly remarked that he was glad to have heard John talk about a certain canoe accident because Anderson had never heard the story. Dick was stunned by the comment since Anderson lived quite close to John. He could have asked John

xxii foR Ewo R D

to tell that story at any time, one might assume. However, communications and interpersonal relationships could be complicated in Waskaganish, and asking was not always appropriate. Elders had knowledge of traditions that had come down from time immemorial, but the adoption of Christianity by the Crees – some people argue – provided a spiritual shield against the weight of what they may have seen as the dark side of tradition. Whereas anthropologists and traditionalists may want to keep the old stories, some community members want to be rid of them. One of Dick’s greatest gifts to the Crees was his dissertation, first published in 1975 as Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events and then in an enlarged version by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2002. He took the tipaachimuwinh and aatiyuuhkaanh that John had given to him and the nituuhunikamuwinh (hunting songs) of other elders, and he interpreted and explained them for a younger generation of Crees who were upcoming leaders; having attended residential school, they might otherwise have been estranged from the traditional Cree culture and worldview. One of the book’s main themes is the social relations between people and aweysiisach (animals). Dick explains Cree mythology, as narrated by John, in a way that allows the reader to engage with the animal characters in the stories. Aatiyuuhkaanh explain the evolution of human-animal relationships. The animals express human sensibilities; their shared humanity – or perhaps I should say their shared animal nature – binds animals with humans in an evolving but gradually more distant coexistence. Animals and humans start out speaking to one another and cohabiting, but then they lose that ability. Cree hunters observe this changed relationship every day in a social exchange. Rituals are performed when circumstances demand, particularly when humans eat nitouweyimaakanh (“the wanted ones”). The rituals of killing, cutting up, cooking, and consuming the animals must be followed in order for the animals to continue in the relationship. Individual hunters had, and some still have, private interpretations of this relationship and of their roles in the rituals. Success in hunting was dependent upon a hunter’s private songs and other practices. Many people are very much aware of aatiyuuhkaanh, tipaachimuwinh, and nituuhunikamuwinh in the Cree communities today, where copies of Cree Narrative are commonly found and Dick’s influence continues. Mind’s Eye: Stories from Whapmagoostui, a 2013 publication by the Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute, cites Dick’s book as a key source in explaining to the reader the relations between the hunters and the animals in that community. This is a great honour.

fo REwo RD

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Dick’s approach to learning from “the other” is one that anthropology students should emulate. When researchers are respectful, like Dick and his family members, we say, nimiyututemimeuikunaan (“he or she is on terms of good friendship with us”). If people don’t know and understand the traditional stories in a community, it is difficult to speak about them with credibility. It is our duty to understand and respect those whose traditions provide the stuff of intellectual exchange. This book is a fitting tribute to Dick Preston, my teacher and mentor, a true friend of the Crees. Brian Craik Director of Federal Relations Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) 2015

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Preface JohN S. LoNg AND JeNNiFer S.h. BroWN

In the summer of 1963, anthropology student Dick Preston made a serendipitous arrival in Rupert House (now Waskaganish), Quebec. John S. Long’s introduction describes this seminal event and traces Dick’s and his family’s growing commitment to Cree friends there (some of whom became as close as family). The trajectory of Dick Preston’s career took him through Cree territory both in northern Quebec and adjacent Ontario, as did the work of some of his students. Rupert House looms large, however, because that is where Preston’s career began. He has seen it change tremendously over five decades; today it is a modern community with road access north and south.1 Several of Dick’s colleagues and former students provide the core of the book. Following Preston’s pioneering lead, all contributors to the volume have worked with Aboriginal communities in collaborative and respectful ways, incorporating Aboriginal oral histories and cultural perspectives, informed by long-term relationships with community advisors. In part 1, “Making a Living, Changing Community,” anthropologists Harvey A. Feit and Adrian Tanner focus on how Crees made a living and changed their communities thirty to forty years ago in the southern portion of their territory in Quebec. How did Crees cope with being overrun by massive economic disruptions, such as those experienced by the Crees of Waswanipi (“Light on the Water”)? As the community’s website explains, “In the 1950s the whole Waswanipi region opened up to outside exploitation as the Chibougamou copper boom resulted in the opening of a railway and a highway … Thousands of workers migrated to the surrounding region as mines opened in Desmaraisville and Matagami and sawmill operations began in Miquelon – all on Waswanipi lands. Waswanipi people became a minority on our own lands” (Cree First Nation of Waswanipi n.d.). In chapter 1, Harvey A. Feit examines recent oral histories by Waswanipi Eenouch, as well as several Cree and anthropological

reports from the 1960s and 1970s – prior to Canada’s first modern treaty, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975 – to describe how Waswanipi men and women chose or shaped wage employment opportunities to continue making a living in ways that were compatible with an Eenou miyupimaatisiiwin (“wellness”) (Adelson 2000; see also Morantz 2002, 202). Adrian Tanner begins chapter 2 by describing seven types of seasonally adaptive dwellings used by a family of Iinuu hunters, not yet caught up in Canada’s post–World War Two “settlement process,” as they moved about their hunting range near Mistassini in the late 1970s. Tanner argues that the shift to government-designed houses in government-designed settled communities was a trigger for widespread “social suffering,” some of it attributable to fundamental changes in the organization of domestic space (see the discussion of Waskaganish in “Note on Terminology,” this volume). Tanner, echoing Feit, describes how Crees coped with these challenges in distinctly Eenou ways – particularly when supported by a modern treaty. As Tanner notes, “One measure of their relatively successful adaption to urbanization is that the Quebec Iinuu’s suicide rate is similar to that of the overall provincial population.” Part 2, “Images, Textures, Dreams, and Identity,” begins with a reprint of the late Cath Oberholtzer’s definitive article on the distinctive beaded hoods – miichisashtutin, plural -h (MacKenzie 2015) – once worn by Cree women of the James Bay region. Oberholtzer, who died on 18 August 2012 at the age of seventy-two, was a kind and generous scholar who became an authority on Algonquian art as evidenced in clothing. Dick Preston (2012) remembers how his former student exuded a “blend of humour and intelligence” that was “exceptional and wonderful – [these being] the two most fundamental human gifts making a balanced and very likeable, even lovable person.” This chapter, reprinted from the Papers of the Twenty-Second Algonquian Conference (Oberholtzer 1991), was chosen as best representing her work.2 Oberholtzer’s (1994, iii) research aimed, as she said, to “recontextualize, … rehistoricize and … facilitate the symbolic repatriation of East Cree material culture” found in North American and European museum collections, providing us with insights into the “social history of both the artifacts and their makers.” The title of this volume is borrowed from the title of Cath’s dissertation, which, as she explained it, “refer[red] not only to the … world view of the Cree,” who survive through collaboration, “but also to the objects that have survived and … are now source material for reconstructing the past.” East Cree women once wore decorated hoods in rituals before and after the hunt (and while travelling)3 – and men wore decorated clothing while hunting – to please the spirits of the animals on which they depended for sur-

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vival. The designs were revealed in dreams, symbolizing and acknowledging “a transfer or bestowing of power from the guardian spirit to the dreamer” (Oberholtzer 1994, 228). Although a hunter’s success relied on his skill and on the generosity of spirit-helpers, Oberholtzer reminds us that “it was his wife’s skills as seamstress and artist that had the invaluable potential for enticing the animals to give themselves to the hunter” in a “synergism of … complementary and interdependent roles” (227, 231). As Oberholtzer notes, the (sometimes richly appliquéd) hoods of present-day parkas may remind us of the beaded hoods of more than a century ago (152). On a visit to Moose Factory in 2015, Don Cheechoo, the principal of Delores D. Echum Composite School, drew Long’s attention to his necktie, its Cree motif inspired by Oberholtzer’s research. Laura Peers takes up the topic of Cree hoods from another perspective in chapter 4. She examines the multifaceted significance of a hood presented to Bishop George Jehosephat Mountain on the occasion of his visit to the Red River Settlement in 1844. This hood, she argues, “meant very different things to its maker and to its collector.” It symbolized continuity of tradition – “identities and cultural boundaries” – maintained by Cree women relocated in a “densely multicultural … ‘contact zone’” far from their origins on the James Bay or Hudson Bay coast. In chapter 5 Cory Willmott shifts our focus to neighbours of the Cree, the Anishinaabeg of the Great Lakes region, examining the decline and revival of doodem (plural -ag), or clan identities, and their related images. “There has been a 225-year-old debate,” she explains, “surrounding whether doodemag are only or mainly kinship devices, or only or mainly spirit guardians” (Willmott 2015). In an attempt to reconcile ethnohistoric accounts of doodemag as ascribed kinship identities with fieldwork experiences of doodemag as acquired spirit guardians, Willmott finds “an increase in the spiritual functions of doodemag in the years since residential schools and other factors forcibly removed puberty fasting from the customary practice of the Anishinaabeg.” Today, she argues, “it is equally valid” for Anishinaabeg to inherit a doodem as it is for them to acquire one in a naming ceremony, both sources of doodemag “affirming their place among their human and spiritual relations.” Cree scholar-musician Stan L. Louttit grew up in Moose Factory during a period of great linguistic and cultural shift. His Omushkego father, the Reverend Canon Redfern Louttit DD , left Albany on western James Bay at the age of nine to attend residential school in Chapleau, Ontario, and studied theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto.4 He met his future wife, Agnes Gilpin of Eastmain, when he began his career as an Anglican clergyman on eastern James Bay. Louttit – who recalls his father listening to tapes of Cree singers in

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his study – opens part 3, “Songs and Texts,” with chapter 6, which shares the results of his “total and serious listening” to ten archival Cree hunting songs. The songs were recorded in 1978 and were performed by Cree-Naskapi elder John Kawapit, who made his living inland from Whapmagoostui (“Place of the Beluga Whale”), near the mouth of Great Whale River, on southeastern Hudson Bay. Stan discusses the cultural and spiritual significance of these traditional songs. His analysis, informed by his considerable expertise, enriches our understanding of Kawapit’s voice and music across the decades. There is a deep interest in traditional songs at Moose Factory among Crees like Gerald Chum (Keesic 2002) and Stan L. Louttit. Kawapit’s legacy lives on in other ways; it was his great-grandson, David, who initiated the Nishiyuu 1,600-kilometre walk from Whapmagoostui to Ottawa in 2013 in support of Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike (Galloway 2013; Obomsawin 2014). Regna Darnell closes this section with her discussion, in chapter 7, of “the transformation of oral tradition dependent on face-to-face communication into a new and productive form based on the technology of writing.” Darnell argues that the Americanist tradition, a legacy of the anthropologist Franz Boas, can help us to appreciate the “imagination and empathy” of “effective cross-cultural communication” – whether in the texts and life histories of collaborative ethnographies or in the wide range of Aboriginal authors in North America today. This chapter provides an important link between traditional Cree narratives, such as those that Waskaganish mentor John Blackned (see introduction, this volume) shared with Dick Preston, and those available today in the “mainstream” as novels, much-needed revisionist histories, or screenplays. Jennifer Preston leads off part 4, “Indigenous Rights, Compassion, and Peace,” with chapter 8, in which she describes her work with the Canadian Friends Service Committee (and other nongovernmental organizations) in collaboration with the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus (including the Grand Council of the Crees) to advance the human rights of Indigenous peoples at the United Nations. This chapter provides a helpful context for understanding the lingering disappointment and anger today over Canada’s less-than-tepid support for Indigenous rights. “While joining the global consensus adoption of the Outcome Document [UN 2014] at the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples in 2014, Canada was the only state in the world to provide an ‘explanation of vote’” (J. Preston 2015). Canada acknowledged its duty to “consult Aboriginal Peoples and, where appropriate, accommodate Aboriginal peoples, when the Crown contemplates conduct that might adversely impact potential or established Aboriginal or Treaty rights,” but it dismissed

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the notion that Aboriginal peoples had a right to “free, prior and informed consent.” That, Canada (2014) argued, would amount to a constitutionally unacceptable Aboriginal veto – a position that critics consider absurd (Cuthand 2014; Lum 2014). “Canada’s position violates the rule of law,” Jennifer Preston (2015) observes, “by ignoring the recent Supreme Court ruling in Tsilhqot’in Nation5 where the court elaborates on ‘consent’ and ‘control.’” In chapter 9, Susan M. Preston examines East Cree conceptions of landscape, extending Dick Preston’s interest in a “great community of persons” to include the land itself. Through hundreds of East Cree narratives, from the 1890s to the 1980s, she finds “the pairing of a sense of tragic loss … with a sense of compassion for the nonhuman persons who suffer.” Susan Preston argues that conventional environmental assessments need to recognize such profound “expressions of emotion” as legitimate factors in “decision making by analysts, civil servants, and politicians.” Notwithstanding the examples of successful adaptations to modern life described by Feit and Tanner, the effective international advocacy and statesmanship reported by Jennifer Preston, and the vital persistence or transformation of tradition portrayed by Oberholtzer, Peers, Willmott, Louttit, and Darnell, adoption of new ways almost always means some measure of regret over loss of the old ways of “belonging and acting” – in this case, not just regret for oneself and one’s people but also for a great community of persons that includes the land, the water, and all life (see Dick’s words below). In the final chapter in this volume, Richard T. McCutcheon shares a conversational interview he conducted with Dick Preston, focusing on the latter’s recent efforts as a Quaker to promote peace, a concern he links to Dick’s early formative influences and to his experiences in eastern James Bay. The linkage is a very strong one, as Dick has explained to John S. Long (Preston 2014): I invite you to compare my grasp of Cree tradition with my grasp of another tradition that I am a part of. I am a Friend … a Quaker. For that matter, I am a Quaker old man, with stories of my own. Like Cree stories, Quaker stories express a wealth of thought, an ethics of living, and a spiritual integrity. I only know a small part of the stories that go with my tradition, but my experience of Quaker tradition goes well beyond stories, into belonging and acting within a community, and [into] both conscious and habitual (out-of-consciousness) guidance ideals for the actual intentions and actions in my daily life. For a “traditional” Cree hunter, eating was a holy act, the ground of one’s practical life and one’s spiritual being. Eating was the tangible reaffirmation of the continuing practical and spiritual relations between

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humans who seek the animals that give themselves so that they and their families can live. That’s religious, both in practice and in ethics. Quakers believe that there is “that of God” or of the Christ spirit, in every person, and that this quality of spirit may be found by seeking deeply within one’s self and others, and it is our ethical responsibility to reach and nourish the spirit. This is both practice and ethics. So both Cree and Quaker traditions are spiritual. My experience with Crees shaped my approach to Quakers more than the reverse, at least in the early years, so I tend to think of it in a more symbiotic way rather than directional. They are different but intertwined processes of reflection about the human condition. I started regular attendance at Hamilton’s Quaker Meeting in 1971, eight years after my start with the Crees and five after my cultural epiphany with John Blackned’s stories. And both suited my personal character, I believe. Intertwined is a nice way to see it. Then, in the 1990s, my admiration for the Cree ethics of living well together led into my late-career peace activism [see chapter 10, this volume]. In both Cree and Quaker “seeking,” I think that it is too easy to imagine that I was deliberate, consciously planning a strategy or “methodology,” when in truth I was just doing what I, hesitantly, felt was right for the situation. I think the best “grounded methodology” must be intuitively felt rather than strategically planned. That is the radical leap between someone who practises techniques and someone who is able to internalize and let go. The book concludes with a brief section on terminology, a list of selected writings by Dick Preston, the contributors’ biographies, and a comprehensive index. We hope you enjoy it.

NoTeS

1 For an aerial photograph of the community, information on the James Bay Road, and a virtual tour of this far northern region, see respectively http://www. jamesbayroad.com/waskaganish/index.html, http://www.jamesbayroad.com/jbr/ index.html, and http://www.jamesbayroad.com/jbr/virtualtour/index.html. 2 Cath’s book on dream catchers (Oberholtzer 2012) was published posthumously. 3 For Lily Pepabano’s account, see the Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute website at http://exhibit.creeculturalinstitute.ca/?s=hood.

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4 The Reverend Canon Redfern Louttit received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater in 1977. McCarthy (2006) reprints part of an autobiographical story originally published in Carlson (1991). 5 We do not have space to discuss the decision here, but the court affirmed that the Crown has a “spectrum of duties” and stated, for example, that “The right to control the land conferred by Aboriginal title means that governments and others seeking to use the land must obtain the consent of the Aboriginal title holders. If the Aboriginal group does not consent to the use, the government’s only recourse is to establish that the proposed incursion on the land is justified under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982” (Supreme Court of Canada 2014, 76). See also Amnesty International (2014).

reFereNCeS

Adelson, Naomi. 2000. ‘Being Alive Well’: Health and the Politics of Cree Well-Being. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Amnesty International. 2014. “Landmark Supreme Court Decision a Crucial Step for Justice and Reconciliation.” http://www.amnesty.ca/news/news-releases/ landmark-supreme-court-decision-a-crucial-step-for-justice-and-reconciliation. Canada, Permanent Mission to the United Nations. 2014. “Canada’s Statement on the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples Outcome Document.” http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/prmny-mponu/canada_un-canada_onu/ statements-declarations/other-autres/2014–09–22_WCIPD-PADD.aspx?lang=eng. Carlson, Joyce. 1991. The Journey: Stories and Prayers for the First Nations. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre. Cree First Nation of Waswanipi. N.d. “The History.” http://www.waswanipi.com/en/ about-waswanipi/l-histoire. Cuthand, Doug. 2014. “Canada’s UN Stance on Native Rights Embarrassing.” StarPhoenix (Saskatoon), 3 October. htpp://www.thestarphoenix.com/touch/ story.html?id=10258477. Galloway, Gloria. 2013. “Nishiyuu: A Movement of Cree Youth Who Voted with Their Feet.” Globe and Mail, 25 March. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ nishiyuu-a-movement-of-cree-youth-who-voted-with-their-feet/article10327993. Keesic, Grant. 2002. “Chum Reviving Drum Teachings for Moose Cree.” Wawatay News Online, 17 October. http://www.wawataynews.ca/archive/all/2002/10/17/ Chum-reviving-drum-teachings-for-Moose-Cree_10143. Lum, Zi-Ann. 2014. “Canada Is the Only UN Member to Reject Landmark Indigenous Rights Document.” Huffington Post, 2 October. http://huffingtonpost.ca/2014/10/02/ canada-un-indigenous-rights_n_5918868.html. MacKenzie, Marguerite. 2015. Personal communication with John S. Long. McCarthy, Suzanne. 2006. “Redfern Louttit.” 2 June. http://powerscourt.blogspot.ca/ 2006/06/redfern-louttit.html.

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Morantz, Toby. 2002. The White Man’s Gonna Getcha: The Colonial Challenge to the Crees of Quebec. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Oberholtzer, Cath. 1991. “Beaded Hoods of the James Bay Cree: Origins and Developments.” In Papers of the Twenty-Second Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 264–78. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1994. “Together We Survive: East Cree Material Culture.” P hD diss., McMaster University. http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/2572. – 2012. Dream Catchers: Legend, Lore and Artifacts. Richmond Hill, ON : Firefly Books. Obomsawin, Alanis, dir. 2014. Trick or Treaty? Documentary. National Film Board of Canada. https://www.nfb.ca/film/trick_or_treaty. Preston, Jennifer. 2015. Personal communication with John S. Long. Preston, Richard J. 2012. “Cath Oberholtzer (1940–2012).” Ontario Archaeological Society Arch Notes 17, no. 6: 15. – 2014. Personal communication with John S. Long. Supreme Court of Canada. 2014. Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44. http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/14246/index.do. United Nations (UN ). 2014. “Outcome Document of the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly Known as the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.” 22 September. http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/69/ 2&referer=http://www.un.org/en/ga/69/meetings/indigenous/documents. shtml&Lang=E. Willmott, Cory. 2015. Personal communication with John S. Long.

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TogeTher We Survive

fig. 0.1 western James Bay showing Mushkegowuk territory

fig. 0.2

Eastern James Bay showing Eeyou istchee territory

introduction: Richard J. Preston on friendship, family, Community, and Commitment JohN S. LoNg WiTh riChArD J. PreSToN

first impressions In late June 1963, a thirty-two-year-old graduate student in anthropology arrived by Norseman floatplane at the wooden dock at Rupert House – then Rupert’s House, and now officially Waskaganish (frequently glossed as “Little House,” but see “Note on Terminology,” this volume) – Quebec, on eastern James Bay. Richard J. (Dick) Preston (2002, 3) recalls being “both curious and naive, with hardly any idea of where we were going.” The community’s mostly summer residents, about 500 Crees (Eeyouch), were equally curious: “a crowd gathered and watched us come off the aircraft … Everybody watched, and nobody spoke. It was very quiet, and we felt quite noticeable and awkward” (10). The “we” included Dick; his first wife, Sarah;1 their first three daughters, Sarah, Alice, and Susan; fellow graduate student Lynn Joiner from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill); and their summer fieldwork supervisor, anthropologist Harriet J. Kupferer (3, 5). Kupferer and Joiner never returned, although the supervisor later published some of her perceptions. Kupferer’s (1966, 67) description of Chief Malcolm Diamond as rather hapless is at odds with Dick’s observations of the man’s “superb” leadership in the 1960s (Preston 2002, 17–20; 2014). Dick recalls Malcolm’s skill, and the beginnings of his own learning, when a community member “lost his temper, damaged his wife’s sewing machine, and said he was going to drown himself. Those around him were afraid. They called Malcolm, who waded out into the river beside him, and asked, ‘What will people think when they hear what’s been going on at Waskaganish [as Rupert House was known to the local

Crees]?’ The man considered this, turned back and went home. Malcolm had not addressed the man directly, instead asking a question about more distant people. This took the man away from self-centred thoughts, to consider” the impact of his behaviour on others – on “community” (Preston 2014). Rupert House was “a life-transforming experience” for the Preston family. Dick’s first visit stretched into seven consecutive summers (during which time a son, Rick, and a fourth daughter, Jennifer, completed the family). In following years, he managed four short winter visits and irregular return trips to the region. Sarah and the children were able to accompany him on only some of his subsequent visits – which became less frequent when his dissertation deadline loomed (Preston 1975a, 271; 2002, x, 16–17, 20). But the summer of 1963 and the deepening ties that resulted created life-long associations with Rupert House for all the Prestons, most tangibly for daughters Susan and Jennifer (chapters 8 and 9, this volume), and for their mother until her death in 1991 (S.C. Preston 1980, 1982, 1986, 1987, 1988a, 1988b; Blythe, Brizinski, and S.C. Preston 1985; R.J. Preston and S.C. Preston 1991). The “having no idea of where we were going” went beyond the inevitable uncertainty of beginning a cross-cultural journey. Dick later wrote, “I thought then, and think now, that a deep understanding of the idiom of another culture … can more likely happen when we are unbound by our own categories, and open to discovery and having our assumptions dislodged by the assumptions of another culture” (Preston 2002, xii). This “optimistic, humanist” outlook was grounded experientially in his earlier cross-cultural encounters in Korea (see chapter 10, this volume, and below) and intellectually in his appreciation for Edward Sapir, whose approach had fallen out of favour in the 1950s and early 1960s. As a graduate student, Dick read extensively on and was guided by theory, but he was cautious about over-relying on it (Preston 1966; 2002, xii, 68, 237). In 1963 Dick had a deeply felt intuition, an inspiration or aim that “was not defined clearly in my mind, and my method was to think about it a lot, … to see things from the native’s point of view” (Preston 2002, xiv). Decades later, he still recalled the “deep intuitive surge of recognition” he felt from reading Sapir’s “Culture, Genuine and Spurious” (1924). He “spent several days re-reading and thinking about that one small essay, phrase by phrase … I believe that I got to a level of grasping what he was thinking in the whole domain of personalized ethnography” (Preston 2008a, 198). Dick’s 1964 master’s thesis on Sapir (published in 1966 as the lead article in American Anthropologist), and his 1972 doctoral dissertation, published in 1975 as Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events, were harbingers of a “resurgence of interest in the humanist side of social sciences,” as he explains in the expanded

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second edition of Cree Narrative (2002, xi). If it was not very popular in the 1960s, Dick’s intellectual outlook proved by the early 2000s to be, “to [his] delight, quite consistent with current trends” (xiv). The Rupert House Crees didn’t know much about their new visitors and, while not hostile, were not overtly welcoming. Walking through Rupert House on their first day in the community, the Prestons were strangers, and people assumed that like other strangers they would never return. Dick recalls, “A small child saw us and ran bawling to her house. Her mother came to the door, looked at us, let the little girl in, and then shut it firmly … We later learned that one way small children were kept near home was with the bogeyman threat that ‘the white people will come and take you away’” (Preston 2002, 10–11). Very few non-Crees resided year-round in the community. When the Prestons arrived, the non-Crees in Rupert House consisted of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC ) manager, a game warden, two nurses (attached to the federal hospital at Moose Factory), an Oblate priest, a couple of elementary school teachers (Indian Affairs employees, gone for the summer), and Maud Watt (long-time widow of former HBC manager James Watt and the subject of William Ashley Anderson’s 1961 biography). Their houses had electricity and running water, whereas those of the Crees did not (5, 8–9, 11–12, 20, 259). Kupferer had written ahead of time to Chief Malcolm Diamond, introducing herself and her students and asking for an interpreter (Preston 2002, 5). The chief ’s second-eldest daughter, bilingual residential school graduate Annie Whiskeychan, may have responded to the letter, as her parents were unilingual Cree speakers (Preston 2014). It was also Annie who interpreted for her father, resolving the uncertainty over where the newly arrived Americans would live that summer. Dick thought they should live close to the Crees, but Malcolm wisely insisted that they should be nearer to the non-Crees, particularly Maud Watt, and Annie explained his position. Kupferer and Joiner each settled into a canvas-covered tent frame with wooden wall and floor, and the Preston family occupied a tiny house nearby (Preston 2002, 5–7; 2014).2 The man whom Malcolm Diamond chose as their interpreter and overall community liaison was Willy Weistchee. This selection, Dick says with understatement, “was fortunate. Willy was not only fluent in both Cree and English, he was also very intelligent and knew how to manage our sojourn so that we would learn about life in the area without intruding upon or irritating our host community” (Preston 2002, 5–6). By the following summer, Dick Preston considered Willy his “first good Cree friend[,] … advisor (‘Never get excited; never lose your nerve’), practical helper, interpreter, and teacher about life in this Cree settlement.” Willy’s death at thirty-three that second summer was a profoundly felt loss, from which his anthropologist friend learned much

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about dying well and grieving (R.J. Preston and S.C. Preston 1991, 150–1). At the time, Willy suspected he was a victim of sorcery, and Dick wondered if he was also at risk (Preston 2014).3 Acknowledging Anthropologist Antecedents If no other Cree in Rupert House knew what an anthropologist was, Willy Weistchee did. When Rolf Knight conducted fieldwork for his master’s studies at Rupert House, two years before the Prestons’ arrival, Willy was his interpreter – and the experience was not a congenial one for Willy (Preston 2014). Prior to Knight, a few anthropologists had taken some interest in Rupert House and the wider region. Their works provided Dick Preston with some sense of “where we were going,” or at least where others had gone. Alanson B. Skinner was the first, briefly visiting Rupert House from Moose Factory in the summer of 1908. He coined the term “Eastern Cree,” applying it too broadly to the Crees he met at Fort Albany and Moose Factory on western James Bay. As Dick commented, Skinner generalized his data from one side of James Bay “to cover the whole, making the east coast sound rather more influenced by the Ojibwa” (Preston 1975a, 268). For example, he postulated a widespread Cree Midewiwin ceremony and vision quest (Skinner 1911, 60–3). Dick, however, on reviewing Skinner’s monograph in detail with Cree mentor John Blackned, found no vision quest and no “group ceremonials” on eastern James Bay – a result “consistent with the presence of the high value of individual autonomy” (Preston 2002, 241).4 Skinner’s and Dick’s trails crossed in one instance: Skinner interviewed twenty-three-year-old Waswanipi-born Sam Iserhoff in 1908 and published a traditional story that Sam told him (Skinner 1911, 92–5). When Dick met the Reverend Canon Sam Iserhoff at Moose Factory fifty-eight years later, he tape-recorded the very same story (Preston 2002, 75). Dick asked about Skinner, and Sam replied, “Oh, yes, I remember that fellow. I was a young man then” (Preston 2014). John M. Cooper began visiting the James Bay region in 1923, conducting some fieldwork at Rupert House in 1932 and much more in the summer of 1934. His student, Regina Flannery Herzfeld (1904–2004), spent some time at Rupert House in 1937 and all of the following summer (Flannery and Chambers 1985, 2n1). Three decades later, Anderson Jolly of Rupert House had heard of Cooper, the man who “said he taught adults, and asked whether a Cree would stand, sit or lie down to urinate. The answer, from an old man after some pondering, was if a man was healthy, he would stand; if sick, he would sit; and if almost dead, he would lie down” (Preston 2014). Dick did not hear remembrances of Flannery as he spent his time listening to the men, for

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Flannery had spent her days with the women. She was certainly remembered fondly at Moose Factory when she returned in 1985 (Flannery 1995, 56–64). Inland to the south and east, a contemporary of Alanson Skinner, Frank G. Speck, conducted fieldwork mainly in the Montagnais (now Innu) community of Pointe Bleu (now Mashteuiatsh), just beyond the James Bay watershed, “gather[ing] data from [Montagnais-Naskapi] men who had come from the interior.” Speck’s fieldwork began in the summer of 1908 and continued “until at least 1935 and possibly 1946” (Preston 1975a, 268). Closer to Rupert House, and still within the James Bay watershed, Edward S. Rogers and Jean H. Rogers spent a year near Mistassini in 1953–54 (270–1). Two other anthropologists exercised significant early influences on Dick Preston. Speck’s student A. Irving (Pete) Hallowell conducted fieldwork in the 1930s much farther west among the Ojibwe (Anishinaabeg) of Lake Winnipeg and the Berens River (e.g., see Hallowell 1992). Hallowell’s visits to Berens River communities extended over seven summers in the decade from 1930 to 1940, and his close relationship with William Berens paralleled Dick’s friendship with John Blackned (Hallowell 2010, 382; Preston 1992, 141). Dick, in describing his own progress as an anthropologist at Rupert House, tips his hat to Hallowell: Most persons who are familiar with northern ethnography will not be surprised to know that my first summer’s fieldwork was a failure, where I made numerous small social blunders and gathered a quantity of confused and scattered notes and observations. Many of the questions I asked received an “I don’t know” reply, and these minimal replies were appropriate. I had to learn what to ask and how to ask, and when to ask, and even more important, when to just keep quiet and listen patiently … The third summer saw the beginnings of interpretive syntheses of data, and in the years following, this ability has continued to grow and mature. The north has seen a great many visiting scientists, yet only a few have returned to develop deeper understandings. For ethnography, at least, it is almost exclusively the latter (Hallowell, for example) whose writings stand the test of time and the critical analysis of others. (Preston 2002, 65) More directly, when introducing a book chapter on conjuring at Rupert House, he writes, “The Ojibwa pattern is presented and analysed with excellence by Hallowell [1942] … Much of what Hallowell says is applicable to the East Cree, and his insights have been a major benefit to me in assessing my data” (Preston 2002, 80). He liked Hallowell’s notion of a continuum, rather

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than a dichotomy, for narrative categories, and he applied Hallowell’s concept of other-than-human persons – and a “great community” (see chapter 9, this volume) – to the Crees (169–71, 256, 265; see also Preston 1997). The second anthropologist was John J. Honigmann, who supervised Dick’s master’s and doctoral studies at the University of North Carolina (UNC ). Honigmann began his fieldwork in British Columbia among the Slave and Kaska, but he was no stranger to the James Bay region. He conducted fieldwork in 1947–48 and in the summer of 1955 across James Bay, at Attawapiskat (“It Is Open and Rocky”) (Ellis 1995, 454–5). In addition, he spent the summers of 1949 and 1950 north of Rupert House, at Great Whale River (now the twin communities of Whapmagoostui and Kuujjuarapik) on southeastern Hudson Bay (Preston 1975a, 270; for more on his fieldwork experiences, see Gulick et al. 1978; and I.G. Honigmann 1982). Dick’s initial visit to Rupert House was entirely serendipitous; the summer field experience would have been in Attawapiskat, a continuation of Honigmann’s research, but Kupferer refused to wear a skirt (de rigueur in Catholic Attawapiskat). So it was Rupert House, where Honigmann’s contemporary A.J. (“Moose”) Kerr – anthropologist, educator, and later chief of the Northern Science Research Group at Indian Affairs headquarters – had conducted research in 1947–48 (Kerr 1950; Usher 2010). Honigmann supported Dick’s request to stay a second season at Rupert House, while the rest of the UNC graduate students went on to Great Whale River. Dick appreciated this encouragement of long-term fieldwork, grounded in Sapir’s view of its importance (Preston 1966, 1127). “Individual personality as related to culture” was also an interest shared by the two men, with its roots in Sapir (Honigmann and Preston 1964, 158). Although Honigmann was emotionally distant and not as great an intellectual influence as Hallowell, he was a humanist who was unfailingly encouraging and supportive (Preston 2014). Rupert House to the 1960s Rupert House is located near the site of the James Bay region’s first modest fur trade post, Charles Fort, hastily constructed in 1668 by English strangers who arrived by sea and stayed for the winter. They traded for furs – with Crees (and their neighbours) who had been around “for thousands of years” (GCC 2011, 16) – and then departed. The success of the English-Cree venture led directly to the formation of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC ) in 1670 and the strangers’ return. Initially an important location for HBC traders, it faded into obscurity for a long time. But it was rebuilt in 1776, and by 1818 it had become

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the company’s “supply depot and pre-eminent trading centre of the eastern region,” serving an extensive inland network of posts (Francis and Morantz 1983, 22–4, quotation at 133; Morantz 2002, 38–9).5 Daniel Francis and Toby Morantz (1983) coined the phrase “partners in furs” to describe early fur trade relations in eastern James Bay. During the nineteenth century, a few Cree men became part of the labour force, working on the summer canoe brigades inland or cutting “hay” (nearby marsh grass), for example, while still living most of the year as hunters and supplying the HBC with furs, food, and other essential items (Francis and Morantz 1983, 151–2). Also important for their labour, and sometimes living year-round at the post, were the Cree and later Cree-European wives of company men, as well as their growing numbers of Cree-European children (Brown 1980; Francis and Morantz 1983, 151–6). By mid-century, Anglican missionaries based at Moose Factory had begun visiting Rupert House.6 Although their visits were irregular, the Crees embraced Christianity, incorporating it into their worldview, and Cree catechists and clergymen emerged. Missionaries vigorously discouraged the use of hand drums (Morantz 2002, 73–96); and the names of spirit-helpers became merged and simplified (Flannery and Chambers 1985), eventually blurring with the Christian creatorsaviour (Long, Preston, and Oberholtzer 2006; see also Craik 1979). In 1963 Rupert House was “still primarily a summer vacation community for hunters,” as it had been for a century and a half. As Dick observed, “for the more ‘traditional’ people the real home was still a series of fall, winter, and spring locations or camps in the bush” (Preston 2002, 12–13). During the summer, “Most of the adults were unemployed, and for them it was a time of ease, relaxation, socializing and casual planning ahead for the coming winter … and their summer activities included family trips out to some favoured site on the river for a day’s picnic outing, or along the James Bay coast for a week, more or less, at a fish camp … People were certainly not wealthy, but they got along well enough, and I did not see the marks of poverty” (13, 20). About eighteen Crees were regularly employed in the village, “year-round residents … relying on wages instead of, or in addition to, hunting” (12). Six worked at the HBC canoe factory and two at the store, three with the game warden, two at the nursing station, two at the Oblate mission, two at the school, and one at the J.S.C. Watt Memorial Hall. But most of the 500 people who summered at Rupert House were hunters who typically spent thirty weeks of the year in the bush. Some also found seasonal work as guides and cooks or as labourers on local projects instigated by Indian Affairs in Moose Factory. There was no band office; if you wanted to see the chief, you went to his house (12, 259n2).

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In addition to these resident and seasonal Rupert House Crees, a few “young families or single men lived ‘out’ at Chapais, Kirkland Lake or Virginiatown, for work at the mines” (Preston 2002, 12), a relatively new and widespread phenomenon across the north (chapter 1, this volume). Dick’s mentor, John Blackned, took a pragmatic and hopeful view of them: “I think if mines open up, many men will work depending on the money. If trapping is worth more than working in the mine, I think they will continue to trap. I think people will go where the money is. I think trapping will go for a while” (40). In 1963 when Dick wondered “why [more] people didn’t leave for the south,” Willy Weistchee gave him “a puzzled look and replied, ‘Because they like it here, I guess’” (11). Aside from jobs, however, another bigger force carried people away – residential school. Soon after the Prestons’ arrival, a twin-engined Canso flying boat – a World War Two plane that made a belly-landing with stabilizing floats under each wingtip – “brought the children home from residential school” (Preston 2002, 10). This displacement of the young had begun on a much smaller scale more than half a century earlier7 but had been ramped up by the 1960s. By that time, Cree children from Rupert House who were considered Anglicans – there was one Roman Catholic family – typically attended the Moose Factory Indian residential school (Horden Hall) and then, if continuing on, Shingwauk in Sault Ste Marie and/or the Mohawk Institute in Brantford. Most Rupert House families who lived in the bush did so in the 1960s without most of their children (Preston 2014). John Blackned, Mentor John Blackned had grown to adulthood in much earlier times. Born in about 1895, he was more than twice Dick’s age when he became his principal mentor (Preston 2002, 21–62). Dick’s words convey the warmth and rich serendipity of their meeting in 1963: I didn’t meet John until near the end of the first summer, when Willy took me to see his old friend. This first meeting set the direction of my entire career … John told the story of a man who showed contempt for a bear’s skull, and what happened. Willy translated. Other Waskaganish people I had recorded that summer were interesting, but this was different. The story was almost visible; the events unfolded in a way that I found fascinating, with detail that made it both understandable and a discovery of

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something new to me: an almost intangible feel for Cree traditional values … And so my apprenticeship began. (15–16) From then on, John, a unilingual elder from the community’s “conservative mainstream,” along with interpreters, took on “the task of [Dick’s] education, and was a patiently critical and highly aware teacher” over two decades, most intensively during Dick’s second and third summers (Preston 2002, 65; 1999b, 152). Dick looked forward with great eagerness to returning to Rupert House in 1964, planning to bring his conceptual intuitions “as close as possible to the level of the actual perceptions of individuals, in hopes of approximating or approaching the inherent structure of individuals-in-culture” (Preston 1966, 1127). His writings convey his profound commitment – lasting “over a full career” – to understanding what John was telling him and to determining how he could best convey this to others (Preston 1999b, 152). His growing understanding of, for example, Cree relationships with and respect for animals is apparent in “Ritual Hangings” (1964), his first published article. When Dick returned to Rupert House in the summer of 1964, his situation changed. He was no longer a stranger to the adults or a bogeyman to their children; against their expectations, he had come back and was tentatively becoming acknowledged as a neighbour and friend. As one sign of Cree acceptance, Malcolm Diamond’s son Charlie gave him the affectionate nickname ’She’yuu (a contraction of chisheiiyiyuu), which “literally means old man, and sometimes implies a person who takes it pretty easy, likes stories, observes the goings-on around him, and doesn’t strain himself in the bush or by chasing skirts” (Preston 2002, 15). Some forty years later, Dick commented on the sobriquet, “I like it. It was a friendly and accurate description, even though I was only thirty-three at the time” (15). People were pleasantly surprised that he could use an outboard motor and – being a Korean War veteran – knew how to handle a firearm (15). That first visit with John Blackned led, in the summer of 1964, “into a regular exchange of story-telling for the current rate of pay” (for John and the interpreters), and this in turn became “a willing collaboration with an increasingly mutual understanding of what we were doing” (Preston 1999b, 154). It was a turning point for John as well, Dick recalls, as he “became aware of my sustained interest and growing understanding of what he told me, against the backdrop of the similarity I bore to other [story] collectors he had known. He said he had talked with many white men, but I was the first who wanted to hear everything he had to say” (158–9; see, for example, Knight 2013, 176). The two men formed “a practical, enduring friendship.” Inspired by Sapir,

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Dick came to see John as an “authentic elder,” one “whose lived experience is harmonious with, or true to, [his] inherent or intrinsic cultural structure or historically emergent form” (Preston 1999b, 154, 158–9). As Dick’s learning deepened, he reached a startling breakthrough in 1965: The narratives, and John’s skill in the traditional Cree narrative style of precise understatement, had a cumulative, emergent effect on me. From a beginning as a novice collector of stories, I became a somewhat too-romantic enthusiast of what I first believed to be essentially contact-traditional lore. And then, as the empathetic connection developed between what John had to teach and what I had to learn, my ethnographic maturity led to a search, not for antiquity, but for patterning in the types of events and idioms of experience expressed in the accounts. I could take the accounts into my imagination, and say with fair-minded intellectual conviction [to myself], “That makes sense.” Making sense meant that, while it might or might not necessarily make sense to me personally, I could vicariously participate in the events of the stories – to the extent that I could appreciate that it made good sense to the persons involved. Given this particular narrative tradition, there was a positive, cognitive fitness in what was said. And in one specific moment during my third summer at Waskaganish, I crossed a threshold, and had a rush of intuition that came with these specific words of my inner speech – “that makes sense … and it really does!!!” This was more than romantic enthusiasm and more than empathetic and intellectual insight; it was an intuitive certainty. It was also a personal epiphany, and I was finally a committed seeker after deep cultural meanings, which I believe to be an essentially spiritual perspective.8 (Preston 1999b, 154–5, emphasis in original) Born-again Christian missionaries were starting to become accepted in the Cree communities (Preston 1975b), helping some village residents to find sobriety and a village-based form of self-discipline and hope (Logotheti 1991, 116, 126–43). But elders like John Blackned still recalled earlier beliefs with astonishing detail. Dick Preston discovered “fundamental changes,” as well as “fundamental continuities” (Preston 2002, xvi). Hymns, for example, replaced hunting songs but still embodied hope for the gift of deliverance – from despair, loss, or confusion, perhaps, instead of hunger – and the promise of personal relationships. Dick’s dissertation provided “a picture not of a lost culture but of the not-so-distant past of a living, evolving culture” (xvi).

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In the late 1960s Dick became frustrated when the chief and council at Rupert House were disrespected by outsiders, fearing that the well-being of the community was threatened (Preston 1968b, 1968c). As he later explained, “I got a little bit politicized. This was caused by witnessing the blatant ignoring of the Waskaganish chief and council by three different ‘southern’ educational authorities coming to survey parental opinion about the language of instruction … I wrote a letter to federal, provincial and Oblate officials pointing out that going through the existing community chief and council might be less divisive. But in a community of 500 people, three schools were provided – federal, provincial and Catholic, probably to keep peace between the competing school authorities” (Preston 2008a, 200). Malcolm Diamond’s son Billy, an involuntary residential school graduate (Diamond n.d.), succeeded his father as chief in 1970 at the age of twenty-one (MacGregor 1989). Billy was the first chief to have an office – in the upstairs sitting room in Watt Hall, the community centre named in honour of Maud Watt’s late husband (Preston 2014).9 The old HBC name Rupert House was eventually dropped in favour of its Cree designation, Waskaganish. (Dick further recalls that, prior to this change, signs in the community were switched from “Rupert’s House” to “Rupert House” by government directive soon after Billy became chief.) And it was not only Dick who visited people in their homes. Gerti Diamond’s skill in translation was crucial to Dick’s research. A bilingual residential school graduate, she lived with the Prestons for two years in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, patiently retranslating Dick’s tapes and contributing her own insights (Preston 2002, 66). The openness was reciprocal, and those research relationships at Rupert House became friend- and then family-based.10 An Emerging Scholar finds a Home By 1971, when Dick defended his dissertation, he had been an assistant professor of anthropology at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster for six years. His stated research interest was “to obtain a history of the traditional [Cree] culture and to record the dynamics of culture change from traditional life to participation in modern Canada” (Preston 1968c, 7). He was increasingly knowledgeable about the broader Quebec Cree region and beyond. Travelling north of Rupert House to Fort George, for example, he recorded three elders’ hunting songs for a chapter in his dissertation (Preston 2002, 194–208). His interest in applied anthropology was emerging as well. In 1967 he was invited to spend time near Shining Tree – halfway between Sudbury and

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Timmins, Ontario – with a winter family group of Rupert House trappers, and he wrote a report on this experience for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (see chapter 1, this volume). In 1968, at the behest of the Horden Hall school administrator in Moose Factory, who was concerned about some children’s low scores on intelligence tests, Dick wrote another report that explained how Cree children were traditionally apprenticed to adult roles and learned self-control by example within small family groups. He pointed out that the forms of social control exercised by peer groups and in classroom or dormitory settings differed radically from Cree custom, showing how Cree reticence and worldview – in addition to English being a second language – limited the usefulness of standardized tests.11 Dick’s notion of reticence went against the grain of anthropology; the prevailing term was “atomism,” and anthropologists argued whether or not it was a new phenomenon (caused by reserve life, for example). Kupferer (1982, 14) later acknowledged Dick’s contribution; atomism was too negative, suggesting an “inability” or “pathology,” whereas reticence was a welcome example of “accentuating the positive,” which Kupferer recognized as an ancient functional adaptation in the subarctic, thanks to Dick’s research (Preston 1975d, 26–7; 2002, 78–9).12 Our emerging scholar moved with his family to Canada and a position at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he remained on the faculty for twenty-five years. The Vietnam War was not a factor in their move. Rather, it was the pull of a like-minded colleague: “In 1969 … I heard Dick Slobodin give a paper on Kutchin concepts of reincarnation at a conference in Ottawa. His ethnographic sensitivity and basic humanity deeply impressed me, and I thought that his was the kind of insightful ethnography that I wanted to develop in myself. And with five northernists (Dave Damas, Ruth Landes, Bill Noble, Ed Rogers, and Dick Slobodin),13 McMaster anthro was unique in the entire world, and an ideal place for me.” The newcomer recalled a meeting of the department’s executive committee: “At our first meeting Dick [Slobodin] asked our permission to eat his bag lunch while we talked. This worked flawlessly until he brought out a huge carrot. We all looked at it and he said, ‘Too noisy, I guess.’ We protested that the carrot was okay, too. But he could be persuaded to eat it only if we each shared a chunk. We did. Kind of Indian, eh? Sharing that carrot made me realize that I had, indeed, come to the right place” (Preston 2001b, 105–6). A remarkable man with a “sensitive humanity,” despite years of adversity during and after the McCarthy era,14 Slobodin inspired others with “his rare blend of humility, humour, and pride” (Preston and Feit 2009, 9–10).

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Crees and Scholars in the Hydroelectric Era When the premier of Quebec announced the massive James Bay Hydroelectric Project15 in the spring of 1971 without consulting the Crees, he did not foresee their united opposition, or the support they would find. Dick Preston was one of several scholars – notably, at McGill University – who voiced concerns about the massive impacts of this huge project (Preston 1971). When Chief Billy Diamond came to speak about the James Bay project at McMaster University in 1972, a graduate student asked him, “‘Did you get our letter?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Billy, ‘did you get my reply?’” He explained to Dick that two students “had written him to ask if they could do something useful, since they found grad school useless. Billy had answered that he needed people to go to communities on the James Bay coast and interview Crees coming out from their winter hunt, tallying what they got and where, for the Cree legal defense” (Preston 2014; for an evocative description of the court case, see Richardson 2008). Dick recruited five students and sent them north in March 1972 (Preston 2001b). Since 1964 a team of researchers from McGill University had been conducting research in the Cree communities southeast of James Bay (Chance 1968; Salisbury 1986), among them Harvey A. Feit (chapter 1, this volume), who had begun fieldwork inland from Rupert House in 1968. Scholars at the University of Toronto were also becoming interested in the Crees of Quebec. Toby Morantz, now the pre-eminent historian of the Quebec Crees and Inuit, began her doctoral studies there in 1971; fellow student Adrian Tanner (chapter 2, this volume)16 began fieldwork around Mistassini; and linguist Marguerite MacKenzie extended her study of East Cree (at McGill) to a broader investigation of the Eastern Cree–Naskapi language continuum. Quebec argued that the Crees had no title to their homeland, but Quebec Superior Court Justice Albert Malouf agreed with the Crees that their rights had not been surrendered. The long-established pattern in Quebec of displacing Indigenous peoples without treaties (Beaulieu 2013) had come to an end. Working initially through the Indians of Quebec Association, the Crees of northern Quebec were granted an injunction halting the proposed intervention already underway within their homeland. Although Malouf ’s decision was suspended in a matter of days, pending the outcome of its appeal, Quebec decided to negotiate. John Ciaccia, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec and a former deputy minister in the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, was appointed as Premier Robert Bourassa’s personal representative and mediator in November 1973. In 1974 the Cree

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communities formed the Grand Council of the Crees (GCC ) of Quebec to represent themselves, signing an agreement-in-principle with Quebec that year (Morantz 2002, 251). At McMaster, Dick Preston began writing about Cree communities and culture for wider audiences and continued publishing along the lines of his earlier report for the residential school at Moose Factory, outlining some of the dilemmas faced by Cree students and explaining the reticence that he first experienced that first summer in Rupert House (Preston 1974; 1976b). He provided expert advice during the filming and editing of The Cree of Paint Hills (d’Ailly 1974), a documentary for The Nature of Things series, and much of the script came from a taped interview with Dick. When Cree Narrative (1975d), Preston’s deep exploration of traditional Cree culture, was first published, Regna Darnell (chapter 7, this volume), a student of Hallowell’s, deemed it “an extremely important book, both in the issues it raises and in the sensitivity of Preston’s discussion of Cree society as reflected in narratives. It is a welcome antidote to the older anthropological style of folklore analysis, which restricted itself to text. It is the kind of detailed ethnographic context and excursive explication provided by Preston that is likely to lead to progress in the analysis of meaning in culture” (Darnell 1979, 728). Working in concert with John Murdoch, “a young teacher of extraordinary intensity and determined demeanour,” Dick received $70,575 from the Donner Foundation to develop culturally based curriculum materials for the Cree Way Project, a concept that John had begun formulating at Paint Hills (now Wemindji) in 1970 (Preston 1979a). By 1975 the Indian Affairs school at Rupert House had an annual spring break for goose hunting, and Cree Way had produced almost 200 learning materials, most of them in Cree syllabics. It was John Murdoch’s brainchild, with his wife, Gerti Diamond, as initial cultural broker; later, her sister Annie Whiskeychan, their cousin Mary Bear, Daisy Moar, Clifford Hester, Eva Louttit, and Bobby Esau began working on the project (Murdoch 2014; Preston 2014). Students were “enthusiastic and interested in the materials, and the general atmosphere in the school is that learning is taking place.” The chief and council were pleased with the new curriculum, and the Grand Council wished to see it expand to other communities (Preston, MacKenzie, and Craik 1976, 66–9). Cree Way transformed the Rupert House day school; John S. Long regards it as one of the few schools, perhaps the only one, that was truly responsive to its home community under Indian Affairs administration. In February 1975 the Grand Council of the Crees asked Dick to report on educational problems in the Fort George high school – the first in the region, opened in 1972 (Morantz 2002, 215) – and its student residence.17 In these days

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before the Cree School Board was established, he found that everyone agreed there were problems, but no one appeared to be responsible: “Most people place substantial blame one or two rungs up the ladder of the educational bureaucracy. Since I talked with people at the top of the bureaucracy and found the same feeling, it is clear to me that solutions to problems are sought upward and outward, from the actual situation, out to Val d’Or, Quebec City, or are the fault of the whole of Western Civilization … the responsibility does not find a stopping place; it only disappear[s] over the horizon. Pessimism replaces effective action, and the problems continue and grow” (Preston 1975f, 13–14). Dick argued that “local responsibility for local problems” was the solution. Fort George was “an appropriate place to start the development of [community-level] Cree school boards,” supported by a regional board (13–16). The Fort George report was written several months before the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA ) was actually signed, but the agreement-in-principle stated, “Negotiations will take place with a view to the establishment of Cree school boards under provincial law” (3, 14–16). The following month, when Dick presented his report to the Grand Council, it immediately passed a resolution requesting that he carry out a comprehensive study of education needs in the Cree communities, as he had recommended (Preston 1975f, 17), so that education could be provided “from the community up, rather than from the Grand Council down” once the Crees were in charge. Indian Affairs took seven months to approve funding for the study and then insisted that it be completed before the end of the fiscal year. Meanwhile, Dick was involved in the Grand Council’s Working Group on Education, preparing recommendations (with assistance from Rupert House school principal John Murdoch) for the JBNQA ’s section on education. Dick suggested that each community have an education administrator position, “responsible to the local community, not to an outside authority,” and with “full-time responsibility for coordinating the many tasks relating to education which support the academic tasks of the teachers and principal” (Preston, MacKenzie, and Craik 1976, 115, 128); this was negotiated as section 16.0.20 of the JBNQA . The study of educational needs was funded, and then completed in five months, with Dick as its part-time supervisor and Marguerite MacKenzie as the main field researcher. Under Indian Affairs, Dick wrote, “until very recently there was no one responsible for curriculum supervision” in its day schools or for “gathering the appropriate materials that are adapted to life in the Cree communities,” and there was no “coherent, consistent curriculum.” He cautioned that, “Particularly in the early grades, the use of tests standardized in other cultural settings … will only serve to discourage and to point

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out negative aspects that may or may not actually be problems.” The report recommended an education administrator for each Cree community, involvement of the communities in recruiting teachers and principals, and teacher training “on-site, in the communities” (Preston, MacKenzie, and Craik 1976, 4, 84–5, 89, 126, 128–9; on teacher education, see also Clarke and MacKenzie 1980). The report also included an observation, which will surprise some readers today, about the residential school system. Residential schools produced Cree graduates, whereas the Indian Affairs day schools of James Bay generally did not; the residential schools were more successful because they “offered a coherent graded curriculum. Although it was not geared to the Cree cultural heritage, it was nonetheless administered in an orderly and effective way” (Preston, MacKenzie, and Craik 1976, 69–70; see also Morantz 2002, 212–20). This is the great irony of the residential school system: it provided the bilingual, bicultural leaders that the Cree communities needed in the 1970s (see also Redfern Louttit, in Logotheti 1991, 158). Dick was no fan of residential schools. His point was that Cree Way, and any future Cree school system, needed to have “a coherent graded curriculum” too. In 2014 the Cree School Board was attempting to do just that; as Abraham Jolly said, they were “build[ing] a strong Cree education system” with “set standards in each grade level” (in Cree School Board 2013, 8; see also Visser and Fovet 2014). Dick expanded on this in a report to the Ontario Department of Education in 1977, calling the success rate of these few residential school graduates “appalling” when compared with “hundreds of dropouts.” Dick argued that more than a bit of “cultural inclusion” was required. The language of instruction in school should be the language of the community (see Burnaby, MacKenzie, and Bobbish-Salt 1998). Native people needed to be employed “as ‘real’ teachers, not as aides,” particularly in the early grades. The “participation of parents, and shared values and understandings between teachers and parents” were essential for effective Native education (Preston 1977a). Those who had succeeded in the residential system were its defenders at this time, and into the 1980s (see Logotheti 1991), and some young Cree leaders conveyed such views to Dick: It is thought by some parents that residential schools did have something of value. They had peer groups where the students from a single community could stay together for mutual encouragement and for keeping a cheerful, social relationship for each of them18 … Another advantage with a residential school was that you could figure out the system. It had rules and regulations and they were not too hard to

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discover, and then one could figure out a way of living with that system. In some of the [day] schools in the communities, neither the children, nor the teachers, or even the principal are sometimes sure what the system is. (Preston, MacKenzie, and Craik 1976, 69–70, 80, emphasis in original) Seven parties signed Canada’s first modern treaty in Quebec City on 11 November 1975: the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec (upon the direction of their communities and the advice of their lawyers), the Northern Quebec Inuit Association, three Crown corporations (the James Bay Energy Corporation, the James Bay Development Corporation, and the Quebec HydroElectric Commission), the Government of Quebec, and the Government of Canada. More than two dozen supplementary agreements have been signed by the Crees of Quebec since 1975 (GCC n.d. a). The Naskapi joined the agreement in 1978. Ciaccia, the province’s negotiator, reported that provincial services for the Crees (and Inuit), such as education, would – under the JBNQA – be delivered through Quebec structures rather than through the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. External critics of the JBNQA later faulted its reliance on modified provincial structures (the dreaded “delegated authority” rather than a separate or sovereign level of government); but all the federal Indian Act offered at that time was paternalism without accountability, as Dick’s 1975 Fort George report eloquently described (Preston 1975f). His report on educational needs showed a real understanding of the provincial education system, realistically the only other option: “The provincial curriculum is much more flexible than most principals realize” (Preston, MacKenzie, and Craik 1976, 82–103). There would be a regional school board for the Crees, for example, but it would “answer to” Quebec’s Ministry of Education, whose “proper jurisdiction … [would] remain intact” (Ciaccia 1975, xvi). Section 16 of the JBNQA is devoted to the powers of the Cree School Board. It has the authority, for example, to “determine … the number of Native persons and non-Native persons required as teachers,” “select courses, textbooks and teaching materials appropriate for the Native people,” and “develop courses, textbooks and materials designed to preserve and transmit the language and culture of the Native people.” Under the JBNQA , the federal government provides 75 per cent of the costs of schooling, with Quebec contributing another 25 per cent – a significant increase (GCC 1975, 268–75). The Crees of Quebec had to suddenly design and develop their own school system – along with other new institutions like local government, health,

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social services, justice, and policing – as well as new communities. The island community of Fort George was relocated to the new mainland and renamed Chisasibi in 1981. Previously dispersed families created the new communities of Waswanipi in 1978, Nemaska in 1980, and Oujé-Bougoumou in 1992. Participating in the 1977 “Nemaska band consult,” a community-driven planning process that created a new Cree village, was clearly one of Dick’s most satisfying experiences (Preston 1982a, 2003a; chapter 10, this volume). Students, Colleagues, and Projects at McMaster Dick’s project on Technology Assessment in Subarctic Ontario (TASO ), funded by a 1982–85 research grant of $230,000 from the Donner Canadian Foundation – together with his project on Culturally Appropriate Economic Strategies in the Mushkegowuk Region, funded by a 1990–92 grant of $223,625 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada – became a focus for many of his graduate students during TASO ’s fourteen years of activity. This collaborative interdisciplinary McMaster-based research program, with Dick as its director, enlisted social scientists, climatologists, hydrologists, and biologists united in concern over Ontario Hydro’s imminent plans for hydroelectric development in northern Ontario, initially in the Moose River Basin. The Moose Cree First Nation had not been consulted by Ontario Hydro and, having suffered from earlier hydroelectric and related incursions in the 1930s and especially in the 1960s (Preston 1983a), readily supported TASO . TASO economists conducted cost-benefit analyses of the projects proposed for northern Ontario in order to assess “the likelihood that Ontario Hydro would have an economic incentive” to proceed (George and Preston 1992, 55–7). During the years leading up to the Canada–US free trade negotiations, the chiefs of the communities constituting the Mushkegowuk Council were concerned about Thomas Kierans’s proposal for a Great Recycling and Northern Development (GRAND ) Canal. His plan was to dam James Bay, somehow keeping out the salt water and allowing it to fill or overfill with fresh river water – which would be moved up and over the height-of-land and then down to the Great Lakes (Annin 2009, 60–3; see also Milko 1986). The Kierans scheme would have likely flooded every coastal Cree community in Ontario and Quebec. TASO economist R. Andrew Muller found the scheme was not “economically viable.” At their field station at Washiskogau Creek, near the mouth of the Kesagami River, TASO hydrologists also discovered a flaw in the logic of the plan: “the salt in Kesagami’s coastal marshes is leached up from early post-glacial sediments rather than deposited by incursions of

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tidewater from James Bay” – pumping out the existing salt water would not keep the bay salt-free (George and Preston 1992, 54, 57). Bulk water exports were not discussed in 1988 or in the 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement (MacDonald 2002, 237–8). Peter George (economist, dean, and later president at McMaster) and Dick examined the importance of work and wage employment historically within the western James Bay region (George and Preston 1987). George and Preston, with ecologist Fikret Berkes from the University of Manitoba and others, also documented the continuing significance of wildlife harvesting in the Cree economy (Berkes et al. 1992, 1994, 1995; George, Berkes, and Preston 1992, 1995, 1996; Hughes et al. 1993), examined the concept of co-management (Berkes, George, and Preston 1991; Berkes et al. 2009), and emphasized the importance of traditional ecological knowledge (Berkes, George, and Preston 1992). Under the auspices of TASO , McMaster graduate student Peggy Martin Brizinski wrote five TASO reports and co-authored another (George and Preston 1992). Jennifer M. Blythe visited Moose River Crossing, and Janice Graham went to Winisk, preparing capsule histories and baseline profiles of the communities (George and Preston 1992; see also Graham 1988). Blythe, Brizinski, and Sarah Preston (1985) collaborated in a TASO study on “Women and Work in Moosonee and Moose Factory” (see also Blythe and Martin McGuire 1996). Rula Logotheti conducted six life-history interviews in the same two communities for her thesis; these are particularly important for narrators’ accounts of residential school. Bryan Cummins conducted fieldwork and archival research to document continuity and change in land tenure and land use by the Attawapiskat Crees, twice publishing his 1992 dissertation (Cummins 1999, 2003; see also 1990, 1992a, 1992b). He also co-authored five TASO publications (Berkes et al. 1992, 1994, 1995; Cummins and Louttit 1994; Hughes et al. 1993) and has published several books, one of them on John J. Honigmann’s photography (Cummins 2004). Lisa Schuurman co-authored the TASO report on the New Post band, now known as Taykwa Tagamou Nation and located near Cochrane, Ontario (Schuurman and Preston 1992). Schuurman (1994) also interviewed twentyfive Moose Factory and Moosonee residents in the summer of 1993 about their memories of residential school and its effects on their lifecycle and interpersonal relationships, including parenting. It was a timely study, coming three years after Manitoba grand chief Phil Fontaine shocked Canadians by revealing his own abuse in residential school (Roberts 1990), which gave a voice to thousands of “residential school survivors” and led to Canada’s 2008 apology.

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Schuurman’s work warrants more detailed discussion, building as it does on Dick’s first findings on this topic. Seventeen of her respondents had lived in Horden Hall during the 1960s, and the remaining eight had attended its predecessor, the Bishop Horden Memorial School. She found that “some individuals felt they had positive experiences overall in Horden Hall, while others felt that their experiences were entirely negative. Regardless of the nature of their experience, all of the individuals regret the time that they lost with their families of origin as children.” It was hard to be separated from parents, as well as from siblings living in the same institution. Punishment was usually harsh by Cree standards but was considered physical abuse only when a supervisor “lost control.” The traditional lifecycle of Cree children was disrupted by residential school, and to varying degrees the schools had long-lasting effects on them, their families, and their communities, including difficulty re-establishing close relations with family members, opening up emotionally with a spouse or children, disciplining children, and showing them affection; mixed feelings about one’s identity; and profound feelings of anger, injustice, and loss (Schuurman 1994, 86, 151). George Fulford studied Cree children’s drawings in the western James Bay community of Kashechewan (“Swift Current”) (Pentland 1981, 228). He analyzed the drawings as a form of discourse and later gained some fluency in Swampy Cree. The late Cath Oberholtzer (1940–2012) examined East Cree beaded hoods (chapter 3, this volume), moccasins, leggings, and other objects that “survive” in museums throughout North America and Europe. Mary Ann Azzarello (1997) examined healthcare in Moose Factory, with a focus on elders and their isolation in long-term care – a bookend to the intergenerational gaps identified in Schuurman’s study. Three of those graduate students sent north in 1972 obtained a master’s degree in anthropology; they also developed life-long commitments to the Crees of Quebec. Deborah Hawken is a partner in the Ottawa law firm Nelligan O’Brien Payne; she practises Indigenous law exclusively, and her clients include Quebec Cree and Inuit organizations.19 Brian Craik is director of federal relations for the Grand Council of the Crees.20 Richard Cuciurean retired in 2012 after working for the Cree Trappers Association (CTA ) in Eastmain.21 Cory (Silverstein) Willmott investigated the ways that clothing reflected changing relations between Anishinaabeg and British in the Great Lakes area (chapter 5, this volume). Rick McCutcheon was the last graduate student whom Dick formally supervised. His analysis of the Iraq War, which he has called “my generation’s war,” resonates with Dick’s wartime experience as a noncombatant in Korea, as well as his current efforts as a Quaker to promote peace (chapter 10, this volume).

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Other graduate students’ work, both before and after TASO , was focused elsewhere. There is not enough space to summarize their research here, but Dick says, “It amazed me that they were so diverse from each other and from what I had to teach them” (Preston 2014).22 Crees, Scholars, and Hydro Reprised In 1991, Ontario’s New Democratic Party government dispatched David de Launay “to try to find ways to resolve … potential conflict over specific hydraulic power proposals” in the basin.23 His report highlighted the importance of addressing Aboriginal grievances over past “developments” (de Launay 1992), signalling growing recognition that a new collaborative approach to hydroelectric development was needed in Ontario. Two years later the Moose Cree First Nation and the neighbouring New Post First Nation began separate joint problem-solving exercises with Ontario Hydro. A few years later, near the end of this first failed attempt at reconciliation, each First Nation called on a newly remarried Dick Preston to evaluate Ontario Hydro’s valuation of its losses from earlier hydroelectric incursions. In both cases, Dick’s calculations were significantly higher – giving Ontario Hydro an excuse to terminate the problem-solving initiative (Preston and Long 1998). Several years later, Ontario Power Generation (OPG ) – one of five companies formed when the province split Ontario Hydro in 1999 – returned to the negotiations, and the New Post First Nation (now Taykwa Tagamou Nation) reached an agreement in 2007, followed by the Moose Cree First Nation in 2009. These agreements put closure on the massive interventions that had transpired within the Crees’ traditional territories without their consent or benefit. In 2012 the two First Nations and OPG started work on the People of the Moose River Basin project, with Dick as senior editor, to produce educational materials explaining to Cree youths what had transpired before, during, and after Ontario Hydro’s incursions – including the opportunities to be found in new partnerships (on current partnerships with OPG , see Spears 2010; and Gennings 2013). Speaking of partnerships, I asked Dick for his thoughts on marriage and family. Here is what he shared with me: Let me say, first off, that marriage teaches us that we are not just existentially isolated individuals but rather individuals in relationships, in personal history. Marriages are an intense level of these relationships, and as I found out from my second marriage, the quality and character of these shared experiences of life are truly distinctive. I find it hard to

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describe the differences between my first marriage, to Sarah, and my second, with Betty. I was married first in 1953, after a mutual “courtship” of forty-nine days. Sarah stood six feet in her socks and was a competitive swimmer. She had the nickname “Butch” and a mind of her own that some found intimidating, others admirable. We had five children. We held hands, a lot. It was our comfortable level of intimacy. Since most of our friends were anthropology students, she found the conversations with them frustrating until our youngest kids were in school and she did an honours thesis on Kierkegaard’s conceptualization of community, an MA in anthropology [see S.C. Preston 1982], and then taught some courses herself. She found something close to “home” in our Quaker Meeting, and in the friendships with Cree ladies of Waskaganish, several of whom travelled to Hamilton to say their good-byes as she lay dying of cancer, in 1991. Betty and I were married under the care of our Quaker Meeting fifteen months later. She had known us for about twenty years, though mainly through Sarah. I had always admired her, but from a discreet distance. Betty is, simply and truly, the love of my life. Our marriage was and remains the most important event of my life. As my sister Martii commented, “She has a loving heart.” She is a nurturing person, graduated as a registered nurse, class of ’67, raised her two boys, and then was a teaching assistant with special needs kids. Although it has been years, we still see some of those kids. Her nurturing temperament contributes to a very different married life. We are blessed, and grateful for being able to grow old together. (Preston 2014)

Lasting origins and impressions Some of what Dick conveyed to me and to so many others was through what he said about his methodology of “think[ing] about it a lot … to see things from the native’s point of view” (Preston 2002, xiv; see also chapter 10, this volume). On research ethics, he notes, “My inherent structure would be [learned from] other travels and friends in my earlier life” (Preston 2014). As a young boy, Dick Preston often rode the City of Denver, a diesel-powered Union Pacific streamliner, from his mother’s residence in Chicago to his father’s distant home in Fort Collins, Colorado (Preston 2011, 419).24 The train departed Chicago in the early evening, using the Chicago and North Western Railway as far as Omaha, and then switched onto the Union Pacific line. It

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arrived the next morning, about fourteen hours later, in La Salle, Colorado, 1,001 miles from the boy’s embarkation. In La Salle, he boarded a much older train for the short hop to Fort Collins. The boy’s travels began when he was six years old, in 1937, and continued until he was sixteen.25 He fondly remembers the porters’ friendliness, as well as the landscape viewed through the eyes of a young boy “looking out the night window of the train and seeing the farmhouse windows lit” as the City of Denver passed through the American Midwest (Preston 2014). He wondered “what it was like, living in those prairie farm houses” (Preston 2011, 419). Later, when “a Korean woman in serious straits” stopped to make an inquiry at the military base where Sergeant Dick Preston, now twenty, was stationed (chapter 10, this volume), that fleeting wartime encounter was “like another window, up closer, yet not understood.” While in Korea, in the headquarters tent of the 1st 90MM Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion where the marine worked as a service records clerk, he also met “a ‘houseboy’ who kept the place tidy and may have run errands. His name was Kim Sung Kuhl, and he was about fifteen years old, curious and very pleasant.” Over the course of a year, the two became as friendly as circumstances allowed, and Kim invited the marine to his home for a meal with his family. Dick initially accepted the invitation but then went only as far as a sign marking the outer limits of the base, saying “Military Prohibited.” And when Dick left at the end of his tour, sitting in the back of a truck, he recalls his friend “looking wistfully after me” (Preston 2014). The farmhouses were glimpsed from afar, and the Korean household was only imagined, but by treating people like friends, in his “commitment to community” (Blythe, Brizinski, and S.C. Preston 1985, 107–8), Dick Preston became a listener and observer par excellence in what is now referred to as Eeyou Istchee, the territory of the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec – and in life. As Stan L. Louttit (2007, 128) said, in another context, such devoted scholarship “provides a window into the past and a departure point for … building understanding.” Dick’s understanding of traditional culture – “traditional” meaning “a recognition of continuity with the past which gives people a feeling of authenticity” (R.J. Preston and S.C. Preston 1991, 136; Preston 1999b) – has allowed him to provide expert legal advice and write with authority on twentieth-century transformations in the Cree communities of northern Ontario and Quebec (and the subarctic more broadly),26 as the list of his major works shows (see “Selected Writings,” this volume). In 2006 he received the Canadian Anthropology Society’s prestigious Weaver-Tremblay Award in recognition of his lifelong commitment to applied anthropology (Preston 2008a).

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Soon after arriving at Rupert House, half a century ago, Dick became known as someone who could fix mechanical things. When he repaired a record player, a small boy watching the operation exclaimed, “Naashch e kaakaschihtaat.” Malcolm Diamond’s daughter Gerti interpreted the compliment: “He is very capable or competent” (an important Cree concept) (Preston 2008a, 198).27 With this book, Dick’s friends, family, former students, and colleagues say, using the second person, “Chikaschihtaan” (“You are good at doing it”). Thanks, Dick. You and your students, including family members, have helped us to better understand the great community of persons. And your humanism makes the world a better place. Postscript: James Bay Crees in 2014 The Crees in Quebec have the regional JBNQA and successor agreements. On the other side of James Bay, some Mushkegowuk First Nations formed their own hydro company,28 Five Nations Energy Inc. (FNEI ) in 1997, extending the OPG grid at Moosonee to serve Fort Albany, Kashechewan, and Attawapiskat (FNEI n.d. a, n.d. b). Individual Mushkegowuk First Nations have numerous one-off agreements and joint ventures with OPG , the De Beers Victor Mine, Detour Gold Corporation, and many other actual or would-be developers in a number of industries. Peter Archibald Sr of Taykwa Tagamou Nation has initiated a lawsuit challenging the authority of Canada, Ontario, and two developers, arguing that Treaty No. 9, signed in 1905, does not allow development to proceed in Mushkegowuk territory without the First Nation’s consent (Mushkegowuk Council 2014). This is not the “spirit and intent” argument that is often heard in connection with the wording of Treaty Nos 1 through 7. As noted by the late Stan J. Louttit (2014), a former Mushkegowuk grand chief, the real agreement was an oral one, guaranteeing no interference with First Nation land use (see also Long 2010). Former politician Bob Rae is now legal counsel for the Matawa First Nations, neighbours of the Mushkegowuk to the southwest, in their Ring of Fire29 negotiations. He suggests that future agreements with developers in far northern Ontario should be regional in scope and involve Ontario and Canada – a lesson learned from the Attawapiskat-DeBeers agreement (and from the JBNQA ) – so that First Nation communities have the necessary infrastructure and other capacities, including wellness, to truly benefit as partners in development (Rae 2014). Regional governments, of course, are not without internal tensions, and the Crees of Quebec are no exception (Atkinson and Mulrennan 2009).

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In northern Quebec, Eeyou Istchee30 is often glossed as “the [Cree] people’s land.” In 1995 the Eeyouch formally declared that their territory, Eeyou Istchee, “comprises the ancestral and traditional lands which have sustained us and which we have occupied since time immemorial. It extends into other waters, territories and borders” (GCC 1995a) – not least in Ontario.31 Significantly, a 2011 map of the territory shows it to be based on contiguous traditional family territories (GCC 2011, 17, 18); it is still the beykodeno (peyakutenuu, family)32 – the micro-community on the land, within the “great community of persons” (Preston 1997; chapter 9, this volume) – that forms the backbone of today’s more settled, year-round macro-communities.33 There have been significant external struggles to implement the JBNQA , and the Grand Council of the Crees maintains that the Government of Canada did not live up to its obligations for many years. The two parties reached an agreement in 2008 intended to resolve decades-old disputes and promote future implementation (GCC n.d. b), leading to a new relationship between the Eeyouch/Eenouch and Canada, on the heels of their new relationship with Quebec in 2002 (GCC n.d. c). In 2010 the Crees approved the Eeyou Marine Region Agreement (GCC 2010), providing them with control (or joint control with historic enemies,34 the Inuit of Nunavik) of islands in eastern James Bay. The Cree School Board (2013) is in the midst of a major period of review. In 2012 a new self-governed region, the Eeyou Istchee James Bay Territory (EIJBT ), was created in northern Quebec to return to the Crees more control over their traditional lands than the JBNQA provided. The EIJBT , a region encompassing almost a fifth of the province, will be jointly governed by representatives of its 16,000 Cree and 15,000 non-Cree residents (GCC 2012). Section 12 of the 1984 Cree-Naskapi Act created corporations of eight Cree bands and authorized them to be known by their English, French, and Cree names; a ninth Cree band, Oujé-Bougoumou, was added in 2009 (Canada 2014, 10, 94–9). Notwithstanding the names set out in legislation, the Commission de toponymie de Québec (which derives its authority from the Charter of the French Language) recognized the alternate spelling for Mistissini in 1992 and Whapmagoostui in 1986.35 At the websites for most of the communities, band names are preceded by “Cree Nation of ” or followed by “First Nation,” or a combination of the two is used. The number of communities is still growing. Within Eeyou Istchee, five communities are coastal: Whapmagoostui, Chisasibi (“Great River”), Wemindji (“Red Ochre Mountain”), Eastmain, and Waskaganish. And four are inland: Nemaska (“Place of Plentiful Fish” or perhaps “Underwater Point”), Waswanipi, Ouje-Bougamou (“The Place Where People Gather”), and

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Mistissini (formerly spelled Mistassini, “Big Rock”). In 2003 the Washaw Sibi (“River to the Bay”) Eeyouch were recognized as a tenth Cree community (Washaw Sibi Eeyou n.d.).

Acknowledgments Any errors are mine, but I am grateful to numerous people who helped me with this introduction. First, I must thank the anonymous reviewers, who said that my first attempt was far too brief. As I wrote this lengthy one, Brian Craik, Rick Cuciurean, Harvey A. Feit, Deborah Hawken, Toby Morantz, Marguerite MacKenzie, John Murdoch, and Jennifer Preston generously clarified facts, made corrections, and provided additional details or just encouragement. Thanks also to Logan Jeffries Sr, who took the time to read it and provided helpful comments. Ethically obliged to engage with the Eeyou community of Waskaganish, I was delighted when Chief Gordon Blackned and his council agreed to review this introduction. Jennifer S.H. Brown provided excellent editorial advice, and this is a good place to thank her for collegial support over the past thirty-plus years. Thanks to Marguerite MacKenzie and Brian Craik for linguistic advice, used in this book with permission. Over the course of three months or more in early 2014, I exchanged emails – several times a day – with Dick Preston as he patiently and generously answered questions or provided context for this chapter. (His numerous personal communications are used here with permission.) And I really enjoyed it, friend. Individual chapter authors are responsible for their ethical obligations. As an editor, I felt a personal responsibility to seek advice on the other chapters (except Stan Louttit’s) from community advisors. Donna Ashamock, Mary Chakasim, Jocelyn Cheechoo, Roger Chum, Ian Desjardins, Logan Jeffries Sr, Laurie Robinson, and Jennifer Simard (plus one person who prefers to be unnamed) kindly agreed to read a chapter and provide me with their personal reactions. Where specific suggestions were offered, these were shared with the respective authors and, at the author’s option, addressed. In some cases, the remarks were brief affirmations, a couple of times the readers found the writing a bit too academic for their liking, and in one case a reader could not connect with the chapter. Through this respectful process, more people can say that parts of this book are, or are not, theirs as well.

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NoTeS

Chief Gordon Blackned forwarded a copy of this introduction to the Council of Waskaganish First Nation and offered councillors two weeks to review it. Chief Blackned advised John S. Long by email that the council was satisfied, found it quite interesting, and looked forward to the book’s publication. 1 In the fall of 1953, on the way to his first-year biology class at the University of North Carolina, twenty-two-year-old Dick Preston noticed “a tall lanky girl”; he later learned her name, Sarah Capps. Sarah heard about Dick from his roommate and left him a note, with her phone number, at Kemp’s Record Store, where he worked part-time. They went to a Halloween party on a blind date, fell for each other, were married forty-nine days later on 20 December 1953, and the marriage lasted over thirty-seven years (Preston 2014). 2 It was a one-room house, 9 by 12 feet at most. Dick built a triple-deck bunk in one corner for the children. He and Sarah put an air mattress on the floor at night; when Billy Watt poked holes in it, they slept on the laundry (Preston 2014). 3 What Kupferer (1982, 16) called “fear of ghosts” is, or was, part of what the Prestons describe as a more general “concern for the behaviours of the departing spirit,” linking it to a broader consideration of the Cree hunter’s world (R.J. Preston and S.C. Preston 1991, 136–8, 148; see also Craik 1979). On western James Bay Crees, see John J. Honigmann (1956, 78–80). 4 His apprenticeship with John Blackned taught Dick that acquiring a mistabeo, or mistaapeu – “a potent personalized power” or “attending spirit” that can, for example, influence a hunter’s “luck” and be used in sorcery, healing, or predicting the future – required no special ceremony. As John explained, “You meet them, you see them coming, and if you want to bother with them, you meet them. If you don’t want to bother you don’t go on to meet them” (Preston 2002, 126–7). So Skinner’s (1911, 62–3) claim of successive degrees of initiation has not been confirmed for the East Crees – nor their neighbours across the bay (Cooper 1933, 110). The vision quest has been found for some western James Bay Crees (Bird 2005, 92–7; J.J. Honigmann 1956, 70). 5 The English called their first trading post Charles Fort after their royal patron, Charles II. It was seized by Pierre de Troyes in 1686 and destroyed in 1693. The “log tent” that replaced it in 1776 was named Rupert House; it became a substantial trading and inland transport operation in 1818 (Francis and Morantz 1983, 29–30, 102, 133). 6 The Church Missionary Society’s John Horden arrived in 1851, succeeding the Reverend George Barnley of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. Barnley arrived at Moose Factory in 1840, departing in 1847. 7 There were three residential school students from what is now northern Quebec attending residential school in Moose Factory in 1911 (Canada 1911). Alfred Louttit from Fort George, then age six, would drown eight years later, with six other

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8

9

10

11 12

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residential school boys, while crossing the Moose River to pick berries (Auger 2005, 130; on Malcolm Cowboy’s 1912 death, cause not stated, see 132). Nine-yearold Clara Jemmican was perhaps from a Rupert House inlander family, and Isaiah Jolly, eleven, was from a Rupert House coaster family. Isaiah died at Rupert House in 1929, and his orphaned sons, George and Thomas, were eventually sent to residential school in Moose Factory, as were many of his grandchildren (Logotheti 1991, 117–24). George Jolly’s son Allan was acting chief of Mocreebec in 2014 (see note 33), and his son Abraham was director general of the Cree School Board. On the coaster-inlander distinction, see Craik (1975), Preston (1981a, 196–7), and Morantz (1984). Dick clarifies his use of the adjective “spiritual”: “This is treacherous ground for many social scientists, and I should explain that it refers to a sense of primary loyalty – to the goal of ‘that precise and loving insight into the nooks and crannies of the real which must be forever denied us’” (Preston 1999b, 160n3, emphasis in original, quoting Sapir 1958, 581). Well known for his efforts in beaver conservation (Anderson 1961), James Watt passionately argued against HBC efforts to modernize trade relationships, fearing their impacts on the Crees (Ray 1990, 213–15). “Several weeks before Sarah died, Gerti, Annie, Josephine, and Alice Jacob came to our home in Hamilton, unexpected and unannounced, to say their goodbye. Gerti and John came to Hamilton for the Quaker memorial meeting. Gerti stood up and spoke Sarah’s name, as if calling her to listen, as she told us loudly and emotionally that Sarah had taught her to sew and to cook; she did this in the same way that I heard and saw Billy speak at Malcolm’s funeral.” Dick went north for the funerals of Malcolm, Billy, and Josephine Diamond (Preston 2014). Dick administered and scored the Rorschach tests (Preston 2014). Kupferer (1979) wrote about drinking behaviour at Rupert House. Aboriginal drinking was a scholarly preoccupation at the time, but Dick recalls that the consumption of home brew at Rupert House in the 1960s was generally “not a big deal” (Preston 2002, 15). On the role of alcohol in Moosonee, Moose Factory, and points south, see Logotheti (1991). William Charles Noble (1941–2009) was McMaster’s first archaeologist. On David Damas (1926–2010), see Szathmáry (2011); on Ruth Landes (1908–91), see Cole (2003); and on Richard Slobodin (1915–2005), see Preston (2009d). Edward S. Rogers (1923–88), curator of ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum, had a oneday-a-week arrangement to teach two graduate half-courses with McMaster each year (Preston 2014). Slobodin was blacklisted for his political views in the 1950s, during a period of intense fear of Communist influence (Preston and Feit 2009, 3–4). The James Bay Hydroelectric Project initially involved the La Grande, Eastmain, and Caniapiscau Rivers. The Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert River phase was first conceived as a 100 per cent diversion but was delayed due to high interest rates, and the scale of the project was significantly reduced (Feit 2004). Cree oppos-

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16

17

18 19

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ition to the Great Whale River (GWR ) diversion, farther north, resulted in the 2002 Agreement Respecting a New Relationship between the Cree Nation and the Government of Quebec (also known as La Paix des Braves), suspension of the GWR project, further developments on the Eastmain River, and eventually, consent for a much-reduced Rupert River diversion. Speaking of Tanner’s Bringing Home Animals (1979), Dick said, “Our two books differ quite significantly, but also complement each other, and demonstrate the consequences of differences between my phenomenological approach and his intellectualist [or structural] one” (Preston 2002, xv). In February 1979 Dick accompanied ten others on a quick visit to four student residences in Saskatchewan and wrote a brief report to the Cree School Board on their varying effectiveness (Preston 1979c). He also prepared a training guide for staff in the Fort George student residence (Preston 1979d). Allan Jolly emphasizes the importance of his Cree peer group (Logotheti 1991, 122, 125). As a result of her involvement, as a researcher, with the legal proceedings instituted by the Crees to stop the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, Deborah went on to study law and became a member of the Law Societies of Ontario, Quebec, and Nunavut. She married Walter Hughboy, who served as chief of the Cree Nation of Wemindji (CNW ) for twenty-one years; under his leadership, the CNW established the foundation for the community as it exists today. In 1984 Deborah was appointed CNW ’s secretary-treasurer, leaving that position in 1987 to serve as full-time in-house legal counsel to the Cree Regional Authority. Deborah authored the GCC (1995a) declaration, drafted at Chisasibi during a meeting led by Billy Diamond, in response to Quebec’s 1995 sovereignty referendum (for more extensive documentation of this period, see GCC 1995b, 1998). She was twice elected as a member of the CNW council, most recently in 2005 (Hawken 2014). Brian, who acquired conversational fluency in East Cree (e.g., see Craik 1982), was first hired by the Crees from 1979 to 1983 to represent Waskaganish in discussions with Hydro-Québec concerning the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert River and Great Whale River projects. Soon thereafter he accepted a position with the new JBNQA Secretariat in the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. From 1987 to 1989 Brian was employed in Ottawa by the legal firm Byers Casgrain, working on Lubicon, Conne River, and Makivik files. He began his present duties in 1989 (Craik 2014). Rick started work for the GCC as a research assistant in 1974, analyzing interviews for a harvesting and land use study of Chisasibi traplines. From 1978 to 1987 he was coordinator of projects with the Société des travaux de correction du complexe La Grande, supervising remedial projects in areas negatively impacted by the hydroelectric project and helping to set up the CTA . In 1988 Rick worked for the Cree Regional Economic Enterprises Company, conducting research to facilitate the commercialization of Cree handicrafts. He was field manager of the Whapmagoostui land use study. Rick left Eastmain in April 2012, retiring after

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twenty-five years with the CTA and capping a thirty-eight-year career in Eeyou Istchee (CHTISB 2012; Cuciurean 2014). Dick supervised twenty-one theses and dissertations during his career. The others include those by James M. Nyce, Leo G. Waisberg, W. Kenneth Little, Ann Miller, Holly Ratcliffe, David A. Meyer, Peggy Martin Brizinski, Wendy J. Renault, Karen Szala-Meneok, Adrienne Stein, Janice Stuart Millard, Joanne Nakonechny, and Theresa McCarthy. Most McMaster anthropology theses and dissertations are available at http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/anthro_thesis/index.3.html (1967–81), http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/anthro_thesis/index.2.html (1981–98), and http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/anthro_thesis (1998–2014). De Launay was then executive assistant to the minister of northern development and mines. He became the department’s deputy minister in 2015. Dick’s father, Richard Joseph Preston Jr (1905–2000), received his doctorate in botany at the University of Michigan in 1941. His dissertation was titled “The Growth and Development of the Root Systems of Juvenile Lodgepole Pine (Pinus Contorta Var. Latifolia Englem),” and he moved from Fort Collins to Raleigh, North Carolina, about 1950 to become dean of forestry at North Carolina State University (Preston 2014). Dick’s mother was Alice Elizabeth Macduff (1907–84). She met Dick’s father in high school, in the Chicago area. Dick was born in St Augustine, Florida, in 1931; his father worked for the US Forest Service at that time, “fighting fires and living in a backwoods turpentine camp” at Starke, Florida. The family moved to California when Dick was one, to St Louis, Missouri, when he was three, and back to Chicago when he was five. From the age of six, there was a two-year rotation whereby Dick was based two years with one parent and spent Christmas and summer with the other, and then the arrangement was reversed. Dick was their only child, but he later acquired three half-sisters (Preston 2014). In 2011, for example, Dick provided expert advice on behalf of Slate Falls Nation in a claim against the Office of the Attorney General of Canada and Ontario Power Generation for damages due to flooding of reserve and traditional lands, later settled out of court. He admires the ethnography of the late anthropologist Krystyna Sieciechowicz (1948–2012). Some anthropologists (e.g., Paul Driben and Alexander von Gernet) and some former McMaster students (e.g., Jean-Philippe Chartrand) lend their support to the Crown in such disputes. Thrity Umrigar (2009, 283) oversimplifies, perhaps, but her comment resonates with me: “This is simply about the powerful versus the powerless. And all of us get to choose where we throw in our lot, whose interests we want to support.” Dick learned that this was an important Cree concept; in addition to practical hunting skills, mental and social competence is important when you hunt for a living (Preston 2002, 237). “Social” includes relationships with food-animals; see his discussion of “hope,” “playing,” and “singing” (Preston 2002, 201, 203, 207; R.J. Preston and S.C. Preston 1991, 137). For many today, it includes a personal relationship with God (Allan Jolly, in Logotheti 1991, 137).

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28 The organizational chart shows that this company is owned by Attawapiskat, Kashechewan, and Fort Albany; the corporate structure indicates that Moose Crees and Taykwa Tagamou have minority representation on the board. 29 The Ring of Fire is a massive mineral deposit with “multi-generational” development potential (Ontario 2013), worth perhaps $60 billion, immediately north of Marten Falls and east of Webequie – two of the nine Matawa First Nations (MFN n.d.). 30 This term reflects a northern coastal pronunciation; in the southern coastal dialect, it would be iiyiyiw aschii (MacKenzie 2013). 31 The Ontario-Quebec boundary bisected the traditional Cree territories of Waskaganish and Moose Cree First Nation families. Several Crees with Quebec origins have lived for decades across the provincial boundary in Moosonee and Moose Factory (Anonymous 2014; MacQueen 1992; MoCreebec 2014); Sam Iserhoff ’s grandson, my former student and friend Randy Kapashesit (1961–2012), was their elected leader for twenty-five years prior to his death. 32 For a more detailed discussion of this term and other East Cree social units, see Preston (1980a, 42). Dick has emphasized the “primary interdependence and intimacy” of the commensal group, the “basic social unit” to which this term refers, wondering whether there was a locative term (42). Brian Craik (2014) notes that peyakutenuu is indeed “one + occupied place.” 33 MoCreebec (1993) is governed by representatives of “clans” based on surname. 34 On Inuit-Cree hostility, see Bishop and Lytwyn (2007). For a moving account of Inuit-Cree reconciliation, see Kunuk and Diamond (2013). 35 See http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/ct. reFereNCeS

Anderson, William Ashley. 1961. Angel of Hudson Bay: The True Story of Maud Watt. Toronto: Clarke Irwin. Annin, Peter. 2009. The Great Lakes Water Wars. Washington, DC : Island. Anonymous. 2014. “Quebec Cree Leaders Visit Moose Factory, Ont.” CBC News, 13 February. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/quebec-cree-leaders-visit-moosefactory-ont–1.2536064. Atkinson, Miriam, and Monica E. Mulrennan. 2009. “Local Protest and Resistance to the Rupert Diversion Project, Northern Quebec.” Arctic 62, no. 4: 468–80. Auger, Donald J. 2005. Indian Residential Schools in Ontario. Thunder Bay, ON : Nishnawbe Aski Nation. Azzarello, Mary Ann. 1997. “The Role of Health Care Services in the Isolation of the Elders of Moose Factory.” MA thesis, McMaster University. http://digitalcommons. mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/8515. Beaulieu, Alain. 2013. “‘An equitable right to be compensated’: The Dispossession of the Aboriginal Peoples of Quebec and the Emergence of a New Legal Rationale (1760–1860).” Canadian Historical Review 94, no. 1: 1–27.

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Berkes, Fikret, Iain Davidson-Hunt, Nathan Deutsch, Catie Burlando, Andrew Miller, Charlie Peters, Paddy Peters, Richard J. Preston, Jim Robson, Matthew Strang, Lillian Trapper, Ronald Trosper, and John Turner. 2009. “Institutions for Algonquian Land Use: Change, Continuity, and Implications for Forest Management.” In Changing the Culture of Forestry in Canada: Building Effective Institutions for Aboriginal Engagement in Sustainable Forest Management, ed. Marc G. Stevenson and David C. Natcher, 35–52. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press. Berkes, Fikret, Peter J. George, and Richard J. Preston. 1991. “Co-Management: The Evolution of the Theory and Practice of Joint Administration of Living Resources.” Alternatives 18, no. 2: 12–18. – 1992. The Cree View of Land and Resources: Indigenous Ecological Knowledge. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 8. Hamilton: McMaster University. Berkes, Fikret, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, Alun Hughes, John Turner, and Bryan D. Cummins. 1994. “Wildlife Harvesting and Sustainable Regional Native Economy in the Hudson and James Bay Lowland, Ontario.” Arctic 47, no. 4: 350–60. Berkes, Fikret, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, John Turner, Alun Hughes, Bryan D. Cummins, and Allison Haugh. 1992. Wildlife Harvests in the Mushkegowuk Region, 1990. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 6. Hamilton: McMaster University. Berkes, Fikret, Alun Hughes, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, Bryan D. Cummins, and John Turner. 1995. “The Persistence of Aboriginal Land Use: Fish and Wildlife Harvest Areas in the Hudson and James Bay Lowland, Ontario.” Arctic 48, no. 1: 81–93. Bird, Louis. 2005. Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown, Paul W. DePasquale, and Mark F. Ruml. Peterborough, ON : Broadview. Bishop, Charles A., and Victor P. Lytwyn. 2007. “‘Barbarism and Ardour of War from the Tenderest Years’: Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region.” In North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence, ed. Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza, 30–57. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Blythe, Jennifer M., Peggy M. Brizinski, and Sarah C. Preston. 1985. I Was Never Idle: Women and Work in Moosonee and Moose Factory. TASO report, 1st series, no. 21. Hamilton: McMaster University. Blythe, Jennifer M., and Peggy Martin McGuire. 1996. “The Changing Employment of Cree Women in Moosonee and Moose Factory.” In Women of the First Nations: Power, Wisdom, and Strength, ed. Christine Miller and Patricia Chuchryk, 131–50. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Brown, Jennifer S.H. 1980. Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. Vancouver: UBC Press. Burnaby, Barbara, Marguerite MacKenzie, and Luci Bobbish-Salt. 1998. “Factors in Aboriginal Mother Tongue Education: The Cree School Board Case.” In Papers of the Twenty-Ninth Algonquian Conference, ed. David H. Pentland, 62–73. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba.

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Canada. 1911. Census of Canada, District of Nipissing, Sub-district Moose Fort. – 2008. “Statement of Apology.” 11 June. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/ 1100100015644/1100100015649. – 2014. Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, S.C. 1984, c. 18. http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/ PDF/C–45.7.pdf. Chance, Norman A., ed. 1968. Conflict in Culture: Problems of Developmental Change among the Cree. Ottawa: Canadian Research Centre for Anthropology, Saint Paul University. Ciaccia, John. 1975. “Philosophy of the Agreement.” In Grand Council of the Crees, The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, xiii–xxiv. http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/ LEG000000006.pdf. Clarke, Sandra, and Marguerite MacKenzie. 1980. “Indian Teacher Training Programs: An Overview and Evaluation.” In Papers of the Eleventh Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 19–32. Ottawa: Carleton University. Cole, Sally Cooper. 2003. Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Cooper, John M. 1933. “The Northern Algonquian Supreme Being.” Primitive Man 6, nos 3–4: 41–111. Craik, Brian. 1975. “Fur Trapping and Food Sharing in Fort George Québec.” In Proceedings of the Sixth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 223–36. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. – 1979. “We Are Divided by the Light: Experience and Belief in a Cree Society.” In Papers of the Tenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 66–78. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1982. “The Animate in Cree Language and Ideology.” In Papers of the Thirteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 29–35. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 2014. Personal communication with John S. Long. Cree Hunters and Trappers Income Security Board (CHTISB ). 2012. “Tribute to Rick Cuciurean.” Cree Hunter and Trapper 12: 6–10. Cree School Board. 2013. Annual Report 2012–2013. http://www.cscree.qc.ca/ index.php/csb-annual-report. Cuciurean, Richard. 2014. Personal communication with John S. Long. Cummins, Bryan D. 1990. “Attawapiskat Cree Land Use and State Intervention.” In Papers of the Twenty-First Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 100–13. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1992a. “Attawapiskat Cree Land Tenure and Use, 1901–1989.” P hD diss., McMaster University. http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/3802. – 1992b. “Trader-Trapper: An Analysis of the Structure of Relations.” In Papers of the Twenty-Third Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 79–90. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1999. “Only God Can Own the Land”: The Attawapiskat Cree, the Land and the State in the 20th Century. Cobalt, ON : Highway Book Shop.

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– 2003. “Only God Can Own the Land”: The Attawapiskat Cree. Don Mills, ON : Pearson Education Canada. – 2004. Faces of the North: The Ethnographic Photography of John Honigmann. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History. Cummins, Bryan D., and Joe Louttit. 1994. Moose, Goose and Caribou: Mapping the 1989 Harvest in Attawapiskat, James Bay. TASO report, second series, no. 6. Hamilton: McMaster University. d’Ailly, Diederik, dir. 1974. Cree of Paint Hills. Documentary. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Darnell, Regna. 1979. Review of Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events by Richard J. Preston. American Anthropologist 81, no. 3: 728–9. de Launay, David. 1992. “Report of the Provincial Representative: Moose River Basin Consultations.” Unpublished. Diamond, Billy. N.d. “Billy Diamond – In His Own Words.” http://www.waskaganish. ca/billy-diamond. Ellis, C. Douglas. 1995. “Glossary.” In âtalôhkâna nêsta tipâcimôwina: Cree Legends and Narratives from the West Coast of James Bay, ed. C. Douglas Ellis, 435–55. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Feit, Harvey A. 2004. “Hunting and the Quest for Power: The James Bay Cree and Whiteman Development.” In Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience, ed. R. Bruce Morrison and C. Roderick Wilson, 101–28. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Five Nations Energy Inc. (FNEI ). N.d. a. “Corporate Structure.” http://www.five nations.ca/index.php/about8/corporate-structure. – N.d. b. “History of Five Nations Energy Inc.” http://www.fivenations.ca/index.php/ about8/history-of-fnei. Flannery, Regina. 1995. Ellen Smallboy: Glimpses of a Cree Woman’s Life. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Flannery, Regina, and Mary Elizabeth Chambers. 1985. “Each Man Has His Own Friends: The Role of Dream Visitors in Traditional East Cree Belief and Practice.” Arctic Anthropology 22, no. 1: 1–22. Francis, Daniel, and Toby Morantz. 1983. Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600–1870. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Gennings, Kyle. 2013. “Partners Look to Powerful Future.” Timmins Press, 6 August. http://www.timminspress.com/2013/08/06/partners-look-to-powerful-future. George, Peter J., Fikret Berkes, and Richard J. Preston. 1992. Indigenous Land Use and Harvesting among the Cree in Western James Bay. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 5. Hamilton: McMaster University. – 1995. “Aboriginal Harvesting in the Moose River Basin: a Historical and Contemporary Analysis.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 32, no. 1: 69–90. – 1996. “Envisioning Cultural, Ecological and Economic Sustainability: The Cree Communities of the Hudson and James Bay Lowland, Ontario.” Canadian Journal of Economics 29, special issue: S 356–60.

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George, Peter J. and Richard J. Preston. 1987. “‘Going in Between’: The Impact of European Technology on the Work Patterns of the West Main Cree of Northern Ontario.” Journal of Economic History 47, no. 2: 447–60. – 1992. “The TASO Research Program: Retrospect and Prospect.” Anthropologica 34, no. 1: 51–70. Graham, Janice. 1988. “Knowing the Cycle: Cognitive Control and Cree Death.” In Papers of the Nineteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 81–8. Ottawa: Carleton University. Grand Council of the Crees (GCC ). N.d. a. “About the Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee).” http://www.gcc.ca/gcc/whogcc.php. – N.d. b. “Critical Issues: Agreement Concerning a New Relationship.” http://www.gcc.ca/issues/newrelationship.php. – N.d. c. “Critical Issues: Paix des Braves.” http://www.gcc.ca/issues/ paixdesbraves.php. – 1975. The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/ LEG000000006.pdf. – 1995a. “Eeyou Estchee Declaration of Principles.” http://www.gcc.ca/gcc/other.php. – 1995b. “Sovereign Injustice: Forcible Inclusion of the James Bay Crees and Cree Territories into a Sovereign Quebec.” Nemaska, QC : Grand Council of the Crees. – 1998. Never without Consent: James Bay Crees’ Stand against Forcible Inclusion into an Independent Quebec. Toronto: ECW Press. – 2010. Agreement between the Crees of Eeyou Istchee and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada Concerning the Eeyou Marine Region. http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/ LEG000000023.pdf. – 2011. Cree Vision of Plan Nord. http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/Cree-Vision-of-PlanNord.pdf. – 2012. Agreement on Governance in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay Territory between the Crees of Eeyou Istchee and the Gouvernement du Québec. http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/ LEG000000024.pdf. Gulick, John, June Helm, James L. Peacock, and Richard H. Robbins. 1978. “John Joseph Honigmann, 1914–1977.” American Anthropologist 80, no. 3: 630–9. Hallowell, A. Irving. 1942. The Role of Conjuring in Saulteaux Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. – 1992. The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. – 2010. Contributions to Anthropology: Essays, 1934–1972. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Susan Elaine Gray. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hawken, Deborah. 2014. Personal communication with John S. Long. Honigmann, Irma Grabel. 1982. “John Joseph Honigmann.” Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 7, nos 2–3: 10–13. Honigmann, John J. 1956. “The Attawapiskat Swampy Cree: An Ethnographic Reconstruction.” Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska 5, no. 1: 23–82.

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Honigmann, John J., and Richard J. Preston. 1964. “Recent Developments in Culture and Personality.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 354, no. 1: 153–62. Hughes, Alun, Fikret Berkes, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, John Turner, J. Chernishenko, and Bryan D. Cummins. 1993. Wildlife Harvest Areas in the Mushkegowuk Region, 1990. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 10. Hamilton: McMaster University. Kerr, A.J. 1950. Subsistence and Social Organization in a Fur Trade Community: Anthropological Report on the Rupert House Indians. Ottawa: National Committee for Community Health Studies. Knight, Rolf. 2013. Voyage through the Past Century. Vancouver: New Star Books. Kunuk, Zacharias, and Neil Diamond, dirs. 2013. Inuit Cree Reconciliation. Documentary. IsumaTV . https://www.isuma.tv/fr/InuitCreeReconciliation. Kupferer, Harriet. 1966. “Impotency and Power: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Effect of Alien Rule.” In Political Anthropology, ed. Marc J. Swartz, Victor Witter Turner, and Arthur Tuden, 61–71. Chicago: Aldine. – 1979. “A Case of Sanctioned Drinking: The Rupert’s House Cree.” Anthropological Quarterly 52, no. 4: 198–203. – 1982. “An Argument for the Antiquity of Northern Forest Indian Atomism.” Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly 7, nos 2–3: 14–16. Logotheti, A. Rula. 1991. “Six Moose Factory Cree Life Histories: The Negotiation of Self and the Maintenance of Culture.” MA thesis, McMaster University. http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/6930. Long, John S. 2010. Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Long, John S., Richard J. Preston, and Cath Oberholtzer. 2006. “Manitou Concepts of the Eastern James Bay Cree.” In Papers of the Thirty-Seventh Algonquian Conference, ed. H.C. Wolfart, 451–92. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. Louttit, Stan J. 2014. “The Real Agreement as Orally Agreed To.” http://www.mushke gowuk.com/documents/jamesbaytreaty9_realoralagreement.pdf. Louttit, Stan L. 2007. “Afterword.” In Lynn Whidden, Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music, 127–8. Waterloo, ON : Wilfrid Laurier University Press. MacDonald, L. Ian. 2002. From Bourassa to Bourassa: Wilderness to Restoration. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. MacGregor, Roy. 1989. Chief: The Fearless Vision of Billy Diamond. Toronto: Penguin Books Canada. MacKenzie, Marguerite. 2013. Personal communication with John S. Long. MacQueen, Alexandra C. 1992. “‘We Have Always Been Here’: Negotiating an Aboriginal Community Identity at Moose Factory, Ontario.” MA thesis, Queen’s University. Matawa First Nations (MFN ). N.d. “About Us.” http://www.matawa.on.ca/article/ about-us–3.asp. Milko, Robert. 1986. “Potential Ecological Effects of the Proposed GRAND Canal Diversion Project on Hudson and James Bays.” Arctic 39, no. 4: 316–26.

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MoCreebec. 1993. “MoCreebec Constitutional Framework.” http://www.mocreebec. com/constitution.html. – 2014. “Grand Council of the Crees Grand Chief to Visit MoCreebec to Address ‘Long-Standing’ Issues.” Press release, 11 February. http://www.mocreebec.com. Morantz, Toby. 1984. “Economic and Social Accommodations of the James Bay Cree Inlanders.” In The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations, ed. Shepard Krech, 55–79. Vancouver: UBC Press. – 2002. The White Man’s Gonna Getcha: The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Murdoch, John S. 2014. Personal communication with John S. Long. Mushkegowuk Council. 2014. “Treaty 9 Diaries.” http://www.treaty9diaries.ca. Ontario, Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. 2013. “Ring of Fire Secretariat.” http://www.mndm.gov.on.ca/en/ring-fire-secretariat. Pentland, David H. 1981. “Synonymy [West Main Cree].” In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6, Subarctic, ed. June Helm, 227–30. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution. Preston, Richard J. 1992. “Review of The Ojibwa of Berens River, by A. Irving Hallowell, ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown.” Native Studies Review 8, no. 2: 141–2. – 2014. Email communications with John S. Long. – All other citations in the introduction authored or edited by Preston, as well as co-authored and co-edited items on which he is the lead, are listed in “Selected Writings,” this volume. Preston, Sarah C. 1980. “Why Did Alice Go Fishing: Narrative from the Life of a Cree Woman.” In Papers of the Eleventh Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 71–8. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1982. “Competent Social Behaviour within the Context of Childbirth: A Cree Example.” In Papers of the Thirteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 211–17. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1986. “The Old Man’s Stories: Lies or Truths?” In Papers of the Seventeenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 253–61. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1987. “Is Your Cree Uniform the Same as Mine? Cultural and Ethnographic Variations on a Theme.” In Papers of the Eighteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 287–96. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1988a. Let the Past Go: A Life History Narrated by Alice Jacob. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization. – 1988b. “Variation in James Bay Cree Narrative Themes.” In Papers of the Nineteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 157–64. Ottawa: Carleton University. Rae, Robert (Bob) Keith. 2014. Oral presentation at Nipissing University, 9 January. Ray, Arthur J. 1990. The Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Richardson, Boyce. 2008. Strangers Devour the Land. White River Junction, VT : Chelsea Green.

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Roberts, David. 1990. “Was Abused by Priest, Native Leader Alleges.” Globe and Mail, 31 October. Salisbury, Richard. 1986. A Homeland for the Cree: Regional Development in James Bay, 1971–1981. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Sapir, Edward. 1924. “Culture, Genuine and Spurious.” American Journal of Sociology 29, no. 4: 401–29. – 1958. “Psychiatric and Cultural Pitfalls in the Business of Getting a Living.” In Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality, ed. David Mandelbaum, 578–89. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schuurman, Lisa F. 1994. “‘Fenced In’: Horden Hall Residential School at Moose Factory.” MA thesis, McMaster University. http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ opendissertations/6403. Schuurman, Lisa F., and Richard J. Preston. 1992. Culture-Historical Reconstruction of New Post. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 7. Hamilton: McMaster University. Skinner, Alanson B. 1911. “Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 9, no. 1: 1–179. Spears, John. 2010. “OPG and Moose Cree Start New Hydro Development.” Toronto Star, 9 June. http://www.thestar.com/business/2010/06/09/opg_and_moose_cree_ start_new_hydro_development.html. Szathmáry, Emöke J.E. 2011. “David Damas (1926–2010).” Arctic 64, no. 1: 125–6. Tanner, Adrian. 1979. Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters. St John’s, NL : Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University. Umrigar, Thrity. 2009. The Weight of Heaven: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins. Usher, Peter J. 2010. “Arnold James (Moose) Kerr (1921–2008).” Arctic 63, no. 1: 121–3. Visser, John, and Frédéric Fovet. 2014. “Reflections on School Engagement: An Ecosystemic Review of the Cree School Board’s Experience.” in education 19, no. 3: 17– 46. http://ineducation.ca/ineducation/article/view/151. Washaw Sibi Eeyou. N.d. “Home.” http://www.washawsibi.ca.

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Part one Making a Living, Changing Community

1 Creating Jobs and an Eenou Social Economy hArvey A. FeiT

taking inspiration from Richard Preston’s Applied Ethnography One of Richard (“Dick”) Preston’s earliest applied studies has helped and inspired me to return to how James Bay Eenouch (James Bay Crees) took up wage labour as extended families who were seeking to continue a hunting way of life in the midst of change. His report “Going South to Get a Living” (1967) is also an early example of the repeatedly inspiring applied ethnographic research that Dick has continued to do over nearly half a century. Much of his later work is more widely known. It is useful to recall some highlights of these applied ethnographies in order to see how similar themes have continued to motivate Dick and to help and enlighten others. Examples are: • Dick’s and five of his students’ response to an urgent invitation from Chief Billy Diamond in 1972 to undertake research in order to help the first Eeyou1 court challenges to hydroelectric development in Quebec, which resulted in four of the students developing life-long careers in applied work, three with Eeyou entities2 • Dick’s pioneering contributions, working with Eeyou colleagues, in the development and control of bicultural education (including the Cree Way Project) starting in 1973, which shaped the approach of the Eeyouch to their regional school board after the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA ) in 1975

• his exemplary contributions to village-planning processes, community renewal, and conflict resolution initiatives at Nemiscau in 1977 and also in other communities, most recently reported on in 2005 • his development and leadership from 1982 to 1996 of a unique interdisciplinary research team for a project on Technology Assessment in Subarctic Ontario (TASO ) that helped northern Ontario communities to prepare for responding to large-scale natural resource developments, as well as to plan for locally based economic development, before outside resource developments expanded, unlike what had happened in Quebec • his work in the last decade to synthesize long-term patterns of change so as to aid community and regional responses to conditions brought by globalization I was drawn back to and inspired by Dick’s early piece as I sought to understand the time just before the James Bay Hydroelectric Project began in northern Quebec in 1971. I wanted to explore the experiences, ideas, and resources that the Eeyouch developed at that time in order to understand how they responded to the development project and the supposed remedies offered to them by governments and developers. These experiences, ideas, and practices by which Eeyouch came to respond to the development were founded in unique Eeyou visions and practices of relationships with developers. “Going South to Get a Living” is a short 1967 report that Dick Preston wrote for the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. It described the experience of a number of Waskaganish (then Rupert House) Eeyou families who participated in a program to hunt southwest of James Bay near Gogama, Ontario, for several trapping seasons in the mid-1960s. They trapped beaver that were considered to have overpopulated the region and become nuisances. Dick’s fine ethnographic assessment of their experiences complicated the developmental assumptions that lay behind this project and the government initiatives of the period, without fully rejecting them. Dick reported what had happened and what it meant to the Eeyou participants. He also indicated how their responses required revisions of, but still were linked to, government policy initiatives. Dick’s report was not about employment as such but about relocation toward urban areas and an intensification of trapping, which at the time was seen as a way to enter full-time commercial trapping, a “modern” occupation. This report had an impact on me because it contrasted with much of the other research on economic and employment changes in northern First Nations communities at that time, as it does with some research published since

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then. Much of this research was framed from the perspective of government and academic questions about how best to assist First Nations people who were becoming more settled, receiving more formal schooling, and being impacted by non-Indigenous settlements and resource developments on their lands. The governments’ and academics’ questions commonly asked how First Nations peoples would be affected by regional development and modernization, and what could be done for them to ease their way into employment and modern, sedentarized ways of life. It was usually assumed that they would eventually adopt the ways of southern Canadians and that many would move south. There were good ethnographies and analyses in this research, but the basic questions did not come from the First Nations. So not much was said about what First Nations wanted, what they were doing themselves, and what problems they faced from their point of view. Preston’s report was particularly important because it contrasted with other studies by focusing on what the participants who were involved in the southern trapping program had told him and on how they fitted the program into their lives. Preston found that the Waskaganish Eeyouch were trying to change their ways of getting a living. They told him that fur-bearer numbers had declined near Waskaganish and that trapping incomes had therefore declined. They indicated, and he commented, that there was a growing Eeyou population, that they were getting more education and learning about life in southern Canada, and that there were growing desires for goods from southern Canada. They indicated that none of the possibilities available to them – limited jobs in Waskaganish, increased reliance on social transfer payments, with the perceived risks of dependency, and what he called the total integration of “northern Indians into the southern culture” – were going to work or be acceptable to them (Preston 1967, 1–3). But he also noted that the Waskaganish people he spoke to said they appreciated that, since government assistance was available to them, no one starved when game could not be found. They were in a relationship they needed and valued. An Applied Ethnography of Going South to work – in a Cree way In this context, Preston reported on the program to bring Waskaganish Eeyouch into parts of Ontario to trap overabundant game. This was seen by governments as a relatively direct means of leading Eeyouch to relocate to more southerly parts of Canada near towns and transportation links, as well as to abandon the more isolated north and their ways of life. Preston (1967, 3) forthrightly reported that the very competent trappers who participated in

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the program did not envisage moving south, explaining that “they go south because they can better maintain a northern life” by doing so. And he noted that the program goal of “drawing Indians out of the uneconomical northern area, seems to be poorly served” (3–4). He explained that for many Eeyouch the risks of going south were large in comparison to life at Waskaganish. There the trappers knew their neighbours, they knew how to react to people who were strangers on their lands, and they knew what to expect from the environment. He also observed that the competent hunters who did go south for trapping on the program were good at what they did, that their competence was a result of life-long learning, and that they had no plans to give up their way of living. Preston thus indicated how the program was being used by the participants in their own way to support Eeyou ways of life in the north. Nevertheless, he also saw the program as potentially having other longer-term consequences, given the context at Waskaganish. He said that the program had a “demonstration effect” for other Waskaganish people, “changing attitudes of Indians towards making a living and their residence in the south” (Preston 1967, 4–5).3 Those who go south successfully and repeatedly “set an example of economic independence for the ever-increasing proportion of people who no longer make an independent living” in Waskaganish (4). He therefore noted the possibility of relocations in the future, given that Eeyouch recognized the problems of there not being enough resources – both on the land and in jobs – for everyone in the community to make independent livings. His was practical advice, rooted in ethnography, and it had broad implications. It might have been poorly received by government agencies. But Dick recalls receiving a comment from an Ontario government administrator that it was a rare example of useful advice from a consultant (Preston 2011). Over the years, long-term relocation of Eeyouch to the south has been much more limited than governments envisioned in the 1960s. But Preston’s report highlighted how creating rewarding and independent lives for a growing population would be, and has been, an enduring concern for Eeyouch, to which they have been responding for a long time. In this way, too, his report is important because it makes clear that the need for sufficient employment as well as land-based activities was being responded to by Eeyouch half a century ago and that they have been responding to this challenge in their own ways. By revisiting these issues in this chapter, I seek to open the possibility that knowing more about these earlier initiatives of the Eeyouch might shed a useful light on their current efforts and on other possible ways to create means of making an independent living for all Eeyouch in the James Bay region.

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When I first did research at the end of the 1960s at the neighbouring community of Waswanipi, I had found Eenou initiatives that were as distinctly Eeyou as those Preston described at Waskaganish. So my recent re-encounter with Preston’s 1967 report provoked me to develop my as yet fragmentary analysis of the 1960s involvements of Waswanipi Eenouch in employment. In developing the Waswanipi story in this chapter, I also draw on Preston’s longterm work on socio-economic change in the James Bay region, which extends from the mid-1960s to the present (e.g., see Berkes et al. 1994; George and Preston 1987; and Preston 1971, 1983, 2003). taking Jobs “in a Cree way” in the waswanipi Region – overview The story and analyses developed here have been shaped by reading the work of Philip Awashish and Samuel C. Gull, and by discussions with both, over many years. We have been engaged, along with Jasmin Habib, in joint research projects in recent years that have given us the opportunity to meet and talk regularly about our work and to share understandings of Eeyou history, governance, agency, and authorship. These dialogues have been extraordinarily valuable for me and have informed the structure of this chapter. This is clear in the quotations I cite from Philip Awashish and Sam C. Gull in key areas of the text, but their knowledge and wisdom are found throughout. I also draw on the rich commentaries and insights shared by Waswanipi people in 2006 as part of a project on the Waswanipi relocation from the “Old Post.”4 In addition, I draw heavily on the publications and reports of researchers with the McGill-Cree Project who worked from 1965 to about 1969 at Waswanipi, Mistissini, and Nemiscau, now relocated to Nemaska. Especially important is the work of Ignatius La Rusic, Adrian Tanner, and Marcel Samson, who each focused on how the Eenou were entering the wage labor market at that time. When job opportunities expanded rapidly in the southern James Bay region of Quebec in the 1960s and early 1970s, many Waswanipi Eenouch wanted income from employment, and many entered into wage work. But they did not just take the jobs that were available. Many of them, men and women, chose or modified jobs and employment so that it would be possible to continue to meet their family and community engagements and social responsibilities and to live a hunting way of life. Sometimes they changed the working conditions at their jobs to make them more like the organization of work in hunting camp and in village life. Many created ways of working that

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were compatible with continuing to hunt, and they changed hunting patterns to make them more compatible with working.5 They also wanted to use their lands to create Eenou enterprises so that there would be more jobs that fitted with the ways they wanted to live. Their efforts to create an Eenou way of working and an Eenou economy that was part of Eenou ways of life are remembered today by those active during that period, but they are not widely known by others. The ways that Waswanipi Eenouch entered wage work, changed the conditions of their work, and ran enterprises when they could were guided by Eeyou pimaat-seewun, or iiyiyuu pimaatisiiwin. Eenou elder Philip Awashish (2006, 19) has written that Eeyouch “describe Eeyou culture as ‘Eeyou pimaat-seewun’ (Eynou way of life). For the Eeyouch, culture is determined by Eeyou Eedou-win [or iiyiyu iihtuwin] – the Eeyou way of doing things” (emphasis in original). Waswanipi Eenouch entered employment in ways that were guided by Eenou ways of life and Eenou ways of doing things. Thus they were not just finding ways of increasing incomes, although this was very important to them. They were also creating Eenou ways to take jobs and to work; they were both living and modifying Eenou ways of life. Just as ever-changing Eenou ways of life guided how people hunted, and how they governed themselves, Eenou ways of life guided how people chose, created, and organized their employment. Eenou pimaat-seewun applied to employment and enterprises just as it applied to life on the land and to governing communities (Awashish 2005, 2006; Feit 2010). The application of Eeyou ways of living to wage work and businesses is what I call the creation of a distinct Eeyou social economy of employment and enterprises. Like the social economy of hunting families, calling this a social economy stresses that people sought to create jobs and enterprises that were not copies of those in Canadian society but distinctly Eeyou. For people and politicians, “social economy” can refer variously to socialism, to many nonprofit enterprises or cooperatives that are neither businesses nor governments, or to creating business or para-governmental enterprises that pursue a social or community purpose as well as seeking profitability. Setting up daycare centres that serve community or traditional values would be an example of the latter. Eenouch who took work in the 1960s did not have an economic plan, but they used practices and values from their social lives to change their work in ways that created elements of a social economy. This is yet another sense of “social economy.” They did things to adapt any enterprise they worked in to Eenou ways. They sought to socially change the organization of their work, their relations with bosses, and administrative procedures

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that affected them so that the business operations would better fit Eenou communities’ ways of living and Eenou values. As Eenouch, they wanted to be able to work in businesses modified or structured by Eenou social practices and values – an Eenou social economy. In this chapter, I show that during the 1960s up to roughly the completion of the JBNQA in 1975, some Waswanipi, Mistissini, and Oujé-bougoumou Eenouch chose to change the conditions of their work in ways that created a distinctively Eenou employment and that shaped the enterprises in which they worked to adapt them to Eenou ways. All were part of a distinctive Eenou social economy if they used Eenou traditional values and ways of doing things on the job or in business. I also look at how the development of this Eenou social economy was brought largely to a stop in the period just before the JBNQA . After the JBNQA, Eeyou ways of being working hunters and workers who hunted became more diverse with the expansion of resource industries in the region. Eeyouch also set up many organizations, and they created new kinds of enterprises and jobs for both men and women. Some of those entities were First Nations governments and service organizations. Others were enterprises engaged in construction, forestry, transportation, mining, tourism, distribution, and other businesses. Some of the new jobs were created very much like those in non-Indigenous enterprises and governments. Some of these jobs and enterprises were developed in distinctly Eeyou ways that had been explored before the JBNQA . Some of these jobs were created in new ways that were also distinctly Eeyou. These processes continue today, and many Eeyouch are still seeking to create ways of working and of running enterprises guided by Eeyou pimaat-seewun. But there have been no extended studies of the social economy that has been created in this period, and there is no overview available (an important exception is Salisbury 1986). Thus retelling the story of the 1960s and early 1970s may be relevant for imagining new social economies and projects that could be created today. Anticipating a Period of Change When mining and forestry exploitation was expanding in the Waswanipi region and new towns were opening in the 1950s and 1960s, many Waswanipi people could foresee some of the changes to which they would have to respond, and they had been thinking about them a long time. Many Waswanipi people had seen what happened in the region 160 kilometres to the south of them when the railways came through Senneterre and Amos after 1914. For more than twenty years, while working seasonally for the

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Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC ), they travelled to these new towns in summers in canoe brigades to get supplies for Waswanipi Post from the railway depots. And they continued to make trips over the decades after the brigades were replaced by mechanized transportation. The Reverend Harry Cartlidge, an Anglican missionary who was at Waswanipi Post from 1914 to 1927, first seasonally and then in annual residence, sometimes travelled with the Waswanipi canoe brigades and saw the process too. In a 1976 interview, he recalled his reactions, and those of the Waswanipi people, to the informal summer schooling he offered the Waswanipi children in basic reading and arithmetic: [T]he attitude of the people towards school, they were very keen to have their children taught. They seemed to realize that it was going to be needful. And I used to tell the men, especially the men, the reason I wanted their children to come to school, was I didn’t want to make Whitemen6 of them, but the time was coming when they would be surrounded by White people who’d come in and settle the country, and I said you’ll have to live with them, your children will have to live with them. And I said one of the ways that’s going to help them is to have a bit of an education. I said I don’t want your children to be in the same plight as a lot of Indians that I’ve seen on the reservations that were not prepared to live with White people. I said, and I don’t want you to think I’m making White people of them, I want you to be Indians and to demonstrate that the Indian is the equal of the Whiteman anywhere in any situation. I don’t want you to fall into the habit of getting in touch with the poorest type of White people. I said the ordinary White people like me, like the Hudson’s Bay people you know, rather good, you can stand up as our equal and still be an Indian. And I think that was the thing that had the people stand behind me and go to school. (Cartlidge 1976; see also Cartlidge, in Scanlon 1975, 48) Cartlidge’s account focuses on his active role, but it also makes clear that the Waswanipi people he spoke with wanted to prepare for responding to an increasing non-Indigenous presence and wanted to do so on their own terms. Some of the youth who had attended his classes were elders in the 1960s. Thus an awareness of the potential changes they would face when railways, highways, and towns came to the region, and the desire for an active response by Waswanipi people, preceded by decades the creation of non-Indigenous settlements in their region.

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When roads and towns came in the 1950s and 1960s, the Waswanipi people were not given much information about what was happening or what was planned, so it was always a challenge for them to respond effectively to the expanding intrusions by non-Indigenous people. My focus here is on the challenges they dealt with in the organization of employment and the reorganization of hunting life. taking Jobs in order to Hunt In a series of commentaries in 2006 about what happened when they relocated their summer residences after the 1965 closing of the Hudson’s Bay Company post on Waswanipi Lake, people told how they reorganized their hearths and hunting and took up more employment in the 1960s. Elder Lily Blacksmith, who was a middle-aged woman with a family to raise and support in the 1960s, explained how providing food for their families was critical to women and men (Blacksmith 2006). She also commented that people depended on hunting and on some purchased foods, to the extent that the latter could be afforded. To get more food with their limited funds, families started to buy supplies in the towns, where food was cheaper. Samuel C. Gull (2006), a youth at the time of relocation, indicated that the usual combination of locally harvested bush foods and limited purchases of staple foods from the HBC was no longer sufficient mainly because “the size of families grew.” Another problem was the limited cash available, given the increasing amount of food, clothing, and modest domestic goods needed, in addition to goods for hunting. In an interview, elder Helen Gull (2006) commented on how people reacted during this period:

HG: They didn’t really have too much money to buy groceries, but they

were still active in their hunting and fishing and that is how they got their food … HF: Did the sport hunters and the game wardens and all the White people who were here make it harder to live here or was it okay? HG: They weren’t able to hunt, like during certain seasons, but still they got by. They weren’t – there were other things they could hunt for like fish, but not fur-bearing animals. HF: From a woman’s point of view did that make it harder to share foods with other families? HG: We had to watch how much food we used. We had to be very careful so that they don’t go hungry on some days.

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HF: They had enough to feed the children? HG: They just had to be careful not to waste it. As a child I remember

when we used to be told bannock was only supposed to go to my father because he was the person who did more work outside. [Ella Neeposh, who was translating, said]: I remember having to work for my bannock too. (See also Blacksmith 2006)7 Ella Neeposh (2006) was a young adult at the time who had work, but she said, The main purpose of me leaving Waswanipi was employment. I had a job, but it wasn’t enough to support my family. All these places like Desmaraisville and Miquelon had grocery stores, it was easier to buy there … Also it was easier when children were sick to take them to Chapais than to have them sent from the Old Post to Amos. It was a big change for everybody, the way they lived, the kind of food they ate. (See also A. Saganash 2006) Waswanipi people had been involved in seasonal wage labour on a regular basis from the mid-1950s, while they were still almost all full-time hunters. Several had also gone in groups to work at logging camps farther south in the Abitibi region during that decade (see La Rusic 1970; and Preston 1967). In the 1960s most families sought to use this pattern of seasonal wage labour and fall-winter-spring hunting and trapping to make their living. The continuing importance both of hunting, as people took more jobs, and of continuing to live in extended family groups was indicated in how the moves away from the HBC post were made. Ella Neeposh (2006) noted, “When they moved, they stayed together as a family [referring to extended multifamily kin groups] … I guess because their traplines were there, and they were able to continue hunting and trapping.” Samuel C. Gull (2006) commented, “With development in the area many people were interested in employment – many seasonal – and some got permanent work in towns. So overall, along with other developments, it made more sense to be closer to where traplines are” (see also Cooper 2006; J. Neeposh 2006; Ottereyes 2006; A. Saganash 2006; A. Saganash and C. Saganash 2006; W. Saganash 2006; W. Saganash and E. Saganash 2006; Trapper 2006; and Wapachee 2006). Philip Awashish (1972, 5), from the neighbouring Eenou community of Mistissini, who travelled to Waswanipi and Mistissini as a communications

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fig. 1.1

waswanipi region, 1968

worker in 1972, summarized the views that were expressed by people he talked with at the time of the initial reaction to the plans for the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, reporting their desire to continue Cree ways of life as new development projects intruded: “the general attitude of most of the native people of the area [was] … contentment in the traditional way of life – a contentment shared by many others.” Government Responses to Eenouch taking Jobs and Continuing to Hunt Agents of the federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs did not understand the way that the majority of Waswanipi were involving themselves in employment and hunting. In the 1960s Indian Affairs had officially adopted a policy of promoting the transition of northern Indigenous peoples from land-based ways of life and economies to market-employment-based lives. This was not unlike government policies of today, which promote economic development on the terms created by resource companies and markets. What has also not changed is governments’ very limited willingness to acknowledge control of lands and resources by Indigenous peoples. The unwillingness of governments to treat lands as Indigenous lands, not public lands open for non-Indigenous development, makes it more difficult for Indigenous peoples to have employment and enterprises that are under their own control and that can be used in ways that are different from those of the mainstream market economy – because most resource developments are at the initiative of non-Indigenous entities. This makes it more difficult for Indigenous peoples to shape their economic activities according to their distinctive ways of life. The denial of Indigenous control of lands and resources is part of denying them the means to a strong and distinctive economy. In the context of the relocation of the Waswanipi people, Indian Affairs increased efforts to pressure them to take the employment that was available, to give up their hunting and trapping – their way of life – and to leave the land (Feit 1978, 52–3). People interviewed in 2006 noted that welfare payments were an important source of cash, albeit insufficient in themselves. Indian Affairs understood this, and after the HBC closed, it limited welfare payments to those staying near towns or roads, and thus near jobs, which made it harder to hunt and forced people into more employment to meet needs (see Blacksmith 2006). The pressures that were put on Eenouch were often deeply personal, and Indian Affairs assumed and promoted gendered views of Eenou families and

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employment. Allan Saganash Jr (2006) recalled the experience of his father and family: “I still have that letter from 1966. A letter [from Indian Affairs to my father] said it is up to you as head of family to decide, but if your child does not have education he won’t ever have a job with responsibilities. Now look how much responsibility I have!”8 what waswanipi Eenouch were Doing and what they were Creating What Waswanipi Eenouch were actually doing was very different from what government agents understood was happening. They were combining jobs and hunting, and they were changing hunting and seeking to enter employment in their own ways. This was not a collective plan but an exploration by diverse people with common histories and ways of life who shared their emerging experiences of combining work, hunting, and family and collective life. Both particular innovations and widely shared common practices emerged that enabled people to enter jobs in ways that were consistent with family and community responsibilities, to organize the wage work of both men and women in ways familiar to families working on the land together, and to sustain the Cree way of life as families moved into more intensive employment. Features of Hunting as Work and Social Economy

Hunting as work and a family way of life often involved living in Cree multifamily, co-residential groups, whether in camps or small villages; living and working predominantly in the Cree language; a high degree of self-organization and self-sufficiency by families and groups in terms of subsistence, cash, and equipment; work in collaboration with close family members, extended kin, friends, and neighbours; emphases on personal skill and knowledge, as well as on the capacity of elders to offer guidance; widespread sharing, especially of foods and labour but also of equipment and knowledge; work patterns of variable intensity and duration that are responsive to changes in the activities of animals, weather conditions, and economic and collective needs; considerable endurance and fortitude when needed; extensive responsibility for the well-being, health, and survival of one’s family and others; an unusually extensive exercise of and respect for personal and social autonomy of both women and men; and an ideal of resoluteness, wilful calm, and practicality when faced with challenges (on hunting as a way of life, see George and Preston 1987; and Preston 1971).

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Changing Hunting to Sustain an Eenou Social Economy

Louis Ottereyes (2006) said that when he took a summer job at a small logging camp, “they were able to hunt in the winter.” Anthropologist Marcel Samson (1966, 4) described the different patterns he saw of working and hunting: “shortening of the trapping periods, part-time salaried work combined with trapping, part-time or full-time wage labour on an annual basis … [T]he most prevalent pattern … consists of a combination of wage labour during the summer months with traditional fishing, hunting and trapping activities distributed over the remaining seasons” (see also Chance 1968, 38; and La Rusic 1970, B 9–B 13). The number of Waswanipi men and families who were able to engage in full-time winter hunting and trapping dropped dramatically in 1965–66 and 1966–67 when the HBC cut advances and then closed its post and when Indian Affairs stopped giving social assistance payments to cover seasonal hunting periods that were several months long (Feit 1978). Waswanipi Eenou families responded to the dramatic cash shortages by expanding seasonal jobs in summer and also in fall. Many men and some women started to take jobs for part of the fall-winter hunting season to make it possible to earn enough to outfit themselves for hunting during the rest of the hunting season. Some young women and men took jobs as waitresses and sales assistants to help their families. Families reduced their costs by reducing the use of distant traplines (see A. Saganash 2006; Tanner 1968, 101; and Williamson [1964], 30). The need to generate sufficient income to hunt and trap also led to efforts to increase incomes by trapping more furs. This required men and women hunters to intensify their trapping efforts, and because they were using less land, it would have been more labour-intensive per catch. The success of their efforts to reorganize hunting, and to increase incomes while reducing costs, is reflected in the increasing number of Waswanipi men and families who were able to return to hunting a few years after the HBC post closed (Feit 1978, 61, table 2-11; Samson 1966, table 2, pages 3 and 16).9 As a result, there were many changes in individuals’ working and hunting commitments over the years and not a single direction of change from hunting toward more employment (see Feit 1978, 424–33, table 7-1). Involvements in jobs and hunting were ever-changing because of Eenou decisions and shifting government policies and because small sawmills, logging operations, mines, exploration booms, and fisheries came and disappeared at a rapid pace. Waswanipi people made remarkable changes to hunting and hunting life so that the majority could take employment and also return to intensive hunting.

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But jobs remained important, and they were being changed too. Most people were not only hunters or only workers; both men and women were workerhunters and hunter-workers in ever-changing arrangements. Choosing Jobs to Create an Eenou Social Economy

Many Waswanipi people made careful choices about how, when, and with whom to enter employment. In the 1960s specific kinds of employment came to be preferred. Line cutting, or marking the boundaries of mining and other claims, was considered by many to be the best work. Guiding was well liked, as was small-scale commercial fishing. And wood cutting (logging) for sawmills or contractors to industrial pulp mills was highly sought after too (see La Rusic 1968, 20, 24–5; I have adapted his analysis of preferred employment types here). These were not the highest-paying jobs, nor were they the steadiest types of employment (29). All the preferred employment types involved living in or near the bush, as well as working in a style similar to family hunting. People could often work together with their partners, children, and kin, and extended families often resided together at or near the worksite. People could therefore also work in their own language much of the time.10 The preferred jobs typically had flexible working schedules and flexible divisions of labour among genders and age groups. Women’s hunting camp responsibilities for firewood cutting and local subsistence hunting and fishing, shared with men, often continued at worksites, and they often worked in logging too. These types of work also often afforded opportunities to take time off for a community or social event, weddings, ceremonies, or a break, as well as when hunting was particularly productive or valued, such as during the moose rut, geese migrations, and sturgeon spawning. Work was typically combined with local subsistence hunting in evenings and during some days, as well as with preparations for winter hunting. Periods of absence from work were sometimes pursued over weeks, with work being sought again when wanted. The preferred jobs often required self-organization and considerable autonomy. In many of the preferred types of employment, Eenouch could be in charge of their own work rather than operating in a close supervisory hierarchy. They could help each other and share their equipment, knowledge, and incomes as they wanted. Extended families and friendships were used regularly in work organization and camp arrangements. Allan Saganash Jr (2006) described how he first started as an underage worker in the 1960s:

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When I came back from school, I stayed in Miquelon – they had a logging camp where my [hunting] camp is now. I worked for them. They helped us. I moved logs, and I used a heavy chainsaw – and my father made a strap [so I could hold it]. I was in shape from hockey … At fourteen you were a man. But we did well, put food on table. Everybody pitched in – my mother would peel logs. Each year I would have summer jobs. My father was paid because I was too young. Jobs and work were related in diverse ways for Eenouch. In conversations in villages, I sometimes heard statements like “he was not an experienced hunter so he took jobs.” But I also often heard statements like “he is a good worker and he is a good hunter.” Hunting and work required many similar skills (see also George and Preston 1987). Modifying Jobs to Fit an Eenou Social Economy

In addition to choosing the types of work that were preferred, and how they did them, some Eenouch were changing the organization and style of work in the jobs that they took (Tanner 1968). At Dore Lake, for example, Adrian Tanner found that industrial work in mines was sometimes done in distinctly Eenou ways by Waswanipi, Oujé-bougoumou (formerly Chibougamau), and Mistissini Eenouch. He noted the attempts which are being made by Indians to alter the conditions of industrial work in the direction of ‘traditional’ practices, values, and life style. Thus at Dore Lake men attempt to treat mining like a casual job, by quitting to do bush or casual work, or to take a holiday, every few months. At the same time they try to form generalized friendship relations with their White bosses in the hope that they will be rehired whenever they want the job again. They also attempt to get advances on wages and take personal loans from the bosses, or the intermediaries who get them jobs. Judging from work histories, particularly of the several unmarried men at Dore Lake, this attempt at integration of mining with bush and casual work … has met with some success. (Tanner 1968, 62–3) Tanner also showed that where industrial-style employment was taken on for a longer term, the organization of work might be changed in other ways. Four Eenouch who did surface work for about two years at a mine that was close to where they lived at Dore Lake “[a]pparently … introduced certain

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innovative patterns drawn from the organization of work in hunting and exploration” (Tanner 1968, 63). They worked as a team, related by kinship and friendship, and collectively were responsible for the job assigned to them. Thus different members of the group might show up on different days to do the work. One, who spoke English, acted as an intermediary and interpreted for the others in interactions with the mine bosses (63; see also La Rusic 1968, 1970). In mining, Tanner found that in general Eenouch at that time preferred surface jobs and were worried about the dangers of working underground. But some of those who did work in mines said that they were protected by the strong spiritual powers of their fathers. One young man indicated that his father’s power kept him from walking under rocks that were about to fall (Tanner 1968, 64). Thus the spiritual world of Eenouch could be active in employment settings. Modifying Enterprises to Fit an Eenou Social Economy

The commercial fishery at Matagami, initiated by Indian Affairs, was supposedly run as a co-op rather than on a strict industrial basis, although it remained under the paternalistic control of government officials, who were often absent (Tanner 1968, 65–6). When they were not present, the plant maintenance and supply operations, involving mostly men but some women, were run consensually on a day-to-day basis by respected community members, consistent with Eenou ways of doing things. Out at the fish camps on the lakes that supplied the plant, fishermen worked with their families and lived in multifamily camps that resembled both summer subsistence fishing camps and winter hunting camps. Work organization was structured so that nets were checked regularly enough to avoid fish losses, as in summer subsistence fishing. But with larger equipment, and seaplane pickups of catches to be shipped to markets, there was more scheduled work and handling to do by families. Women, men, and youth handled and prepared fish. In the fish plant in Matagami, where fish preparation, boxing, and shipping were done, a highly intermittent pattern of intensive work and periods without employment was followed, with women being the main processors. Hiring was generally based on kinship and friendship connections and on the taking of authority by people who were respected locally. Kin and friends who were available were hired when there was work to do. The fishery lacked the formal structures of a co-op, including formal leadership or voting decisions and formal processes of hiring. Some appearances of formal features

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were imposed by Indian Affairs agents, who tried to keep authority to themselves, but some informalities were Eenou choices that fostered other forms of nonauthoritative action. Work got done effectively, and most decision making was accepted by participants. There were surprisingly few complaints about the way the fisheries worked internally; most were about interference by Indian Affairs employees and about the very low incomes. The commercial fishery was an example of how some Waswanipi people used the Eenou organization of hunting life to structure an enterprise, to the extent that they had the opportunity. In most organizational settings, there were more restrictions than at the fishery. The limited flexibility of industrialstyle jobs meant that a majority of Eenou workers felt “quite powerless to effect an adequate redefinition of the industrial work situation in terms which are meaningful enough to make them feel ‘at home,’” and this helps to explain why few took industrial employment at that time (Tanner 1968, 65). But the Eenou vision that another way of working could be organized in enterprises was clear in the fisheries operations, as was the possibility of joint ventures where Eenou might set many of their own conditions of work. Personalizing Employment as Part of an Eenou Social Economy

In the 1960s La Rusic (1968, 1970) noted that many Eenouch were entering into wage work through personal relationships with specific employers, much the way they had developed personalized relationships with fur traders, who had to know trappers well enough to decide how much credit to give them. Eenouch sought out employers who provided a range of services other than just jobs and incomes – including credit, access to needed equipment, arrangements for buying food and goods, transportation to towns and hospitals, and general help dealing with government interactions, programs, and forms. These services were used by employers to try to tie the Eenou workers to them, even though these employers often did not provide the best conditions for work or the highest remuneration. But Eenouch also could often choose the employers they worked for, and the relationships and the services employers provided were important considerations in their choices. These personal relationships were a source of both influence and control by employers over Eenouch and their conditions of employment, as well as a means of influence and control by Eenouch over some aspects of how employers arranged their operations. Employers who offered services to Eenouch generally tried to hire Eenou workers because they were not as costly to employ as non-Indigenous workers. Eenouch also did not head south when construction work picked up in Montreal or elsewhere (see Feit 1978; and La Rusic 1968, 1970). Eenou fam62 H ARv Ey A . fE i t

ilies often provided their own accommodations (tents and cabins) and did their own hunting for subsistence food, with support work done by unpaid family members. And Eenouch would sometimes not demand higher wages or better working conditions. What the employers were doing was partly clear to Eenouch and partly hidden from them successfully. Researchers analyzed these employer-Eenouch interactions as patron-client relationships (La Rusic 1968). Eenouch complained of being given lower wages, of being charged more for equipment and supplies compared to non-Indigenous workers, of being given the hardest work or worksites, such as boggy land to log, which reduced their earnings, of being the first to be laid off or to get reduced work assignments, and of not being able to count on the employment boss to meet his obligations and expectations. They often pointed to such instances of exploitation. Nevertheless, Eenou employees sought out relations with employers that were personal, and they often cultivated “friendships” that would lead to the accommodation of employment to the social conditions of family and community life and hunting. They often valued employers who permitted periods of “breaks,” flexible hours and variable output, and reduced need to interact with impersonal authorities; who did not apply the letter of the law or keep family members, children, or underage kin off the worksites; and who accommodated the Eenou practices of hunting and engaging in wage work in other ways. The influence of Eenouch on employers was limited, but it could be effective, as was the case when a logging operation in which many Waswanipi people were employed ceased to offer diverse services in the summer of 1966. The majority of Eenou workers left in the fall and relocated to another logging operator, one of the six pulp logging operations in the region. The boss of that operation provided a range of services like those described above (La Rusic 1968, 53). One can infer not only that this employer wanted and did hire Waswanipi employees but also that he had to adapt his operations to meet the expectations of Waswanipi loggers in order to employ them. But none of the other half-dozen operators in the region offered similar services (53). The redefinition of the conditions of employment by Eenouch was enhanced by the fact that they were mobile employees who frequently left jobs and did not engage in more employment than they needed. They often entered the labour market not as individuals but as groups of relatives and friends (La Rusic 1970), and as groups, too, they could move or stay. In these ways, Waswanipi employees actively created an Eenou social economy of employment – a set of ways of working together, of relating to employers, and of organizing employment when they could – that was distinct from an industrial economy of jobs. It was a social economy of employment C R E At i nG J o BS A n D An EEn oU So CiA L ECo n oMy

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that was related to the Eenou social economy of hunting and community life. Many Eenou workers wanted jobs that were even more in an Eenou style than they were able to create at that time. But what they did create expressed, I think, how they thought jobs and an Eenou economy should be part of an Eenou way of life. Philip Awashish (1972, 8) summarized what was happening and expressed the Eenouch’s awareness that they were re-creating a “way of life”: “The Cree people have expressed a desire to continue to live off hunting and fishing. Those people who do not live by subsistence hunting have adopted new skills but have found employment by the applicability of traditional skills (guiding, mineral exploration, etc.). ‘A new way of life’ can be achieved without the disbandment of the Cree people. A new way of life does not necessarily have to follow the pattern of Montreal or any other southern community.” How the Development of an Eenou Social Economy was Limited As industries became more established in the region, and Eenouch were excluded from creating their own enterprises, the opportunities for these kinds of modifications to jobs and enterprises were reduced, although never eliminated. For example, as Domtar’s pulp mill at Lac Quevillon, like some sawmills, shifted its logging operations from small-scale contractors, who could hire workers to cut logs with chainsaws, to a number of industrial-style mechanized logging operations, opportunities to modify work conditions became more restricted. The new operations used motorized and expensive logging machinery, which was said to require fixed schedules of operation to minimize the costs of production. When I asked a forestry manager for Domtar in 1970 about logging with chainsaws, I was told that chainsaw cutting was equally cost effective when compared with cutting by heavy machinery. But, he said, the shift to logging machinery was a matter of having a steady supply of nonIndigenous labour and therefore a steady supply of wood for the mill. Machine operators cut more and were paid more, so they were less likely than nonIndigenous chainsaw loggers to leave their jobs in search of higher-paying construction or other work down south. Thus the change in cutting methods was mostly an issue of controlling labour, not the production costs of cut wood.11 These shifts in types and organization of employment reduced the opportunities for Eenouch to create employment that fitted with their distinctive social economy of jobs and way of life. Over time, Waswanipi people of necessity took an increased number of less flexible market, or southern-style, jobs.

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To develop employment consistent with their ways of life, Eenouch would have had to develop their own enterprises or joint ventures in which they had some control of the organization of work. They might then have used their enterprises to continue organizing jobs in Eenou ways and to continue developing a distinct social economy. But the opportunities they had to create their own enterprises, joint ventures, and employment were limited by their lack of control of land, natural resources, and investment funds, as well as by their limited experience. And without control of natural resources, the others could not be sought effectively. The forests, minerals, energy resources, and outfitting opportunities were rapidly allocated to non-Indigenous enterprises, whereas Eenouch were almost totally excluded from resource-development allocations. Governments failed to promote or support Waswanipi Eenouch’s access to the natural resources of the region, and both Waswanipi people and other observers noted the failures. Ronnie Otter (2006), a young man at the time of the relocation, commented on the things that should have been done: “[The way] I see it, in 1963, the government should have realized people are moving out, promised us housing, school, and maybe employment. Because at that time, 1963, there was a lot of tourism, mining, lumber, we could have made our own sawmill around there” (for similar views, see Salisbury et al. 1972). Waswanipi Eenouch wanted not just jobs but also control over natural resources. At a meeting in Miquelon on 13 July 1965, a few months after the HBC post closed, Waswanipi speakers were concerned by the loss of control of the resources and economic opportunities in the region. A government official reported that they were concerned about “the invasion by White people of their territory, which they have considered until now a source of work and security,” and they recognized the value that their hunting territories had acquired as a result of forestry and mining exploitation (Blouin 1965, 8–9). They told government officials they wanted a reserve comprising 13,000 square kilometres of forested lands, including minerals, which they could develop to their own benefit (4).12 Nine years later Waswanipi people were still seeking appropriate resources and economic opportunities that they could control and were expressing their frustration at being excluded. Their experiences and concerns were voiced at a meeting of the Waswanipi people in Matagami on 9 and 10 March 1974: They complained about the past experiences in regards to the development of natural resources of the area … developments such as mining and forestry operations have occurred in a manner unacceptable to

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the Indian people of Waswanipi. There are two main concerns on this matter: a) The people who wish to pursue their present way of life have been affected by the development of the area … b) There has been little or no serious involvement or participation of the Waswanipi people in the development of the area. Interest was expressed in the possible participation of some of the Waswanipi people in the development of the area, e.g. tourism, benefits from mining, forestry operations. (Awashish 1974, 2–3) The failures of governments to support control of land and natural resources by Eenouch, or to make possible the formation of Eenou enterprises that would be organized in an Eenou way, severely limited Eenouch’s initiatives to create a distinctive social economy of employment for worker-hunters and to sustain the way of life they then envisioned. Conclusion Despite many challenges and changes since that time, these Eenou social economy practices and ideas have not disappeared. They continue today in important ways. But they appear more fragmented, and their development remains incomplete, as does the Eenouch’s control of their lands. The social economy created by Eenouch in the 1960s linked land, hunting, employment, and enterprises together in Eenou ways. The elements of Eenou social economy were not based solely on the working conditions, ways of running enterprises, or exploitation of how non-Indigenous businesses and markets organized land, nor did they aim solely to maximize incomes or profits. Families worked for lower incomes and ran enterprises without maximizing profits so that they could foster the survival of their ways of living. They applied Eenou pimaat-seewun to employment and enterprises and created elements of an Eenou social economy based on the fundamental importance of relationships to kin, friends, community, land, and also businesses. These Eenou ways of living are still prominent in family and community life at Waswanipi today and in contemporary hunting. Since 1975 the number of new Eeyou entities in business, government, and social services has dramatically increased, but the forms of work that they offer have not been widely examined or systematically planned to date. There are numerous Eeyou businesses and entities today oriented to community needs. However, elements of a more general Eeyou social economy, in the sense of applying Eenou pimaat-seewun to employment and enterprises, are

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present in Eeyou entities and employment today. Examples are the spring and fall hunting breaks as well as the holidays at the time of annual summer gatherings, when many Eeyou enterprises virtually shut down. But it is not clear how prevalent a general Eeyou social economy, or Eenou pimaat-seewun, is today in Eeyou enterprises and governments. The pre-JBNQA history described above is remembered by some but is not widely known, and its ideas may not be as widely shared today as they were then. But Eeyou ways of life, working conditions, businesses, and economy are still strongly shaped by family, community, land-oriented relationships, and Eeyou traditions.

Acknowledgments This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, a contract from the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi, and the McMaster University Arts Research Board. I am solely responsible for the statements made in this chapter.

NoTeS

1 “Eenou” and “Eenouch” (pl.) are used as terms for Waswanipi and other people of inland communities and nearby towns. “Eeyou” and “Eeyouch” are used for people of coastal communities. When all are referred to, “Eeyou” and “Eeyouch” are used as the more inclusive terms. Where sources are cited that use other conventions, their uses are retained. 2 The three are Brian Craik, Deborah Hawken, and Rick Cuciurean. 3 The term “Indian,” rather than “Indigenous,” “Aboriginal,” or “First Nation,” was much more common at that time than now. 4 My research started in 1968 and continued intermittently, including new interviews and archival research in 2006. The latter research, on effects of the relocation of the Waswanipi people, was done for the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi (CFNW ). Those who generously shared their knowledge included the late Allan Saganash Sr and Christine Saganash, Ella Neeposh (who in 2006 also interpreted), Helen Gull, Lily Blacksmith, Joseph Neeposh, Willie and Daisy Wapachee, Margaret Cooper, Johnny Trapper, Allan Saganash Jr, Samuel C. Gull, the late Wally Saganash and Emma Saganash, Winnie Saganash, Louis Ottereyes, Ronnie Otter, and in informal discussion, Edith Gull. At Waswanipi the work was facilitated and made possible with the advice and support of Samuel C. Gull, who also made available earlier archival documentation collected by himself and the CFNW . In addition, Abel Kitchen, Irene Otter, Ernest Saganash, the Waswanipi First Nation office, and the Waswanipi Youth Center staff provided support. I also drew on the

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5

6 7

8 9

10 11

12

work of Tara Goetze, who co-authored the report for the CFNW , and on the work K. Jack Conley, who was a research assistant at McMaster University. When I speak of hunters and hunting, I include both men and women who lived in families where hunting was a productive and domestic social economy and where members of diverse genders could and often did participate in activities that were associated primarily with other genders. Cartlidge uses the English term “Whitemen,” also commonly used by Eeyouch to this day, to refer to non-Indigenous people. The quotations from 2006 discussions are drawn either from transcripts or from my handwritten notes made during our discussions. The notes were sometimes abbreviated or paraphrased to speed up the writing. They are therefore mostly, but not entirely, verbatim. Upon rereading my notes, I reinserted words that I typically skip when writing quickly. I have also added text in square brackets where speakers omitted mutually understood information or where background information is useful to readers. Allan Saganash Jr is currently the director of the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi Forest Authority, working closely with hunters, elders, and forestry companies. Information on women’s activities from this period is more limited than for men. Tabulated data from the period refer either to men or to job types but not specifically to women’s employment. Ethnographic reports and notes, including some studies of Eeyou women, do include observations and discussions of women’s employment, as well as the specific kinds of exploitation they experienced. Two of the 2006 male interviewees mentioned the violence directed at Waswanipi women in towns at the time of relocation. Guiding required intensive interaction with non-Indigenous people, but guides sometimes sought and created personal relations with clients. Very few Waswanipi Eenouch initially took these new kinds of work, although since then the number of Waswanipi logging machine operators and owneremployers has increased. More recently, Waswanipi First Nation has operated its own sawmill and logging operations, but I do not have information on work arrangements at these enterprises. This was about one-third of the area covered by Waswanipi traplines.

reFereNCeS

Awashish, Philip. 1972. “Report of Philip Awashish, Communications Worker, James Bay Development Project, Huron Village, June 23, 1972.” Unpublished. – 1974. “General Meeting of the Waswanipi Band Held in Matagami, March 9 & 10, 1974.” Unpublished. – 2005. “From Board to Nation Governance.” In Reconfiguring Aboriginal-State Relations, ed. Michael Murphy, 165–83. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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– 2006. “Eeyou Law and Eeyou Governance.” In Cree-Naskapi Commission, 2006 Report of the Cree-Naskapi Commission, 14–21. Ottawa: Cree-Naskapi Commission. Berkes, Fikret, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, Alun Hughes, John Turner, and Bryan D. Cummins. 1994. “Wildlife Harvesting and Sustainable Regional Native Economy in the Hudson and James Bay Lowland, Ontario.” Arctic 47, no. 4: 350–60. Blacksmith, Lily. 2006. Discussion transcript, 18 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Blouin, Claude T. 1965. “Sous-comité d’étude – relocation des Indiens de Waswanipi, Rapport préliminaire.” 9 August. In DIAND , Main Records Office, vol. 1, file 371/ 30–11–0. Cartlidge, Harry. 1976. Discussion transcript, 20 February. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Chance, Norman. 1968. “Implications of Environmental Stress for Strategies of Developmental Change among the Cree.” In Conflict in Culture: Problems of Developmental Change among the Cree, ed. Norman A. Chance, 18–61. Ottawa: Canadian Research Centre for Anthropology, Saint Paul University. Cooper, Margaret. 2006. Discussion transcript, 19 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Feit, Harvey A. 1978. “Waswanipi Realities and Adaptations: Resource Management and Cognitive Structure.” P hD diss., McGill University. – 2010. “Neo-liberal Governance and James Bay Cree Governance: Negotiated Agreements, Oppositional Struggles, and Co-Governance.” In Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy, ed. Mario Blaser, Ravi de Costa, Deborah McGregor, and William D. Colemen, 49–79. Vancouver: UBC Press. George, Peter J., and Richard J. Preston. 1987. “‘Going in Between’: The Impact of European Technology on the Work Patterns of the West Main Cree of Northern Ontario.” Journal of Economic History 47, no. 2: 447–60. Gull, Helen. 2006. Discussion transcript, 18 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Gull, Samuel C. 2006. Discussion transcript, 20 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. La Rusic, Ignatius. 1968. “The New Auchimau: A Study of Patron-Client Relations among Waswanipi Cree.” MA thesis, McGill University. – 1970. “From Hunter to Proletariat.” In Developmental Change among the Cree Indians of Quebec (Summary Report), ed. Norman Chance, B 1–B 59. Reprint, Ottawa: Department of Regional Economic Expansion, Government of Canada. Neeposh, Ella. 2006. Discussion notes, 18 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Neeposh, Joseph. 2006. Discussion transcript, 19 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Otter, Ronnie. 2006. Discussion transcript, 19 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Ottereyes, Louis. 2006. Discussion transcript, 18 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Preston, Richard J. 1967. “Going South to Get a Living.” Research report to Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. – 1971. “Problèmes humains reliés au développement de la Baie James.” Recherches amérindiennes au Québec 1, nos 4–5: 58–68. – 1983. “Algonquian People and Energy Development in the Subarctic.” In Papers of the Fourteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 169–79. Ottawa: Carleton University.

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– 2003. “Cumulative Cultural Change in the Moose and Rupert River Basins: Local Cultural Sites Affected by Global Influences.” In Globalization and Community: Canadian Perspectives, ed. Jean-Luc Chodkiewicz and Raymond Weist, 87–98. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. – 2011. Personal communication with Harvey A. Feit. Saganash, Allan, Jr. 2006. Discussion notes, 20 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Saganash, Allan, Sr, and Christine Saganash. 2006. Discussion transcript, 18 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Saganash, Wally, and Emma Saganash. 2006. Discussion transcript, 19 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Saganash, Winnie. 2006. Discussion transcript, 19 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Salisbury, Richard F. 1986. A Homeland for the Cree: Regional Development in James Bay, 1971–1981. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Salisbury, Richard F., F. Filion, F. Rawji, and Donald A. Stewart. 1972. Development and James Bay. Monograph no. 4, Programme in the Anthropology of Development (PAD ). Montreal: McGill University. Samson, Marcel. 1966. Economic Change among the Cree Indians of Waswanipi. Research report no. 2, McGill-Cree Project. Montreal: McGill University. Scanlon, James. 1975. The Inlanders: Some Anglicans and Indians in Nouveau-Quebec. Cobalt, ON : Highway Book Shop. Tanner, Adrian. 1968. “Occupation and Life Style in Two Minority Communities.” In Conflict in Culture: Problems of Developmental Change among the Cree, ed. N. Chance, 47–67. Ottawa: Canadian Research Centre for Anthropology, Saint-Paul University. Trapper, Johnny. 2006. Discussion transcript, 19 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Wapachee, Willie. 2006. Discussion transcript, 19 May. In fieldnotes of Harvey A. Feit. Williamson, H.A. [1964]. “A Preliminary Study of the Mistassini and Waswanipi Indian Bands in Northern Quebec.” Typescript. Anthropology Department, McGill University.

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2 Architecture without Rooms: Cree Dwellings and Social order ADriAN TANNer

introduction In 1977 I spent the summer with a salvage archaeology team in an area about to be flooded by the James Bay Hydroelectric Project. As the ethnographer on the project, I lived in a large communal conical tent, known as a miichwaapt (figure 2.1), with the Iinuu/Iiyuu (also known as East Cree and sometimes spelled “Eeyou/Eenou”)1 consultants and their families who were assisting the archaeologists. The archaeologists lived in a typical walled prospector’s tent, large enough that people could walk around inside and have furniture, including beds and a table. However, when visiting our dwelling, the archaeologists soon noted that we were much more comfortable, even though we had no furniture. We each sat, ate, and slept in our own personal space, on a floor carpeted with balsam boughs, such that when inside the miichwaapt we seldom needed to move around. The mosquitoes that annoyed the archaeologists did not bother us. In the miichwaapt the insects were kept away from people by the pall of smoke from the open fire, leaving us unaffected as we sat or lay beneath. The archaeologists soon requested a miichwaapt of their own; one was quickly erected for them, and they lived comfortably in it for the rest of the summer. In this chapter my objective is to discuss some of the culturally valued implications in the late 1960s of the kinds of dwellings found in Iinuu hunting camps, as well as some of the unintended consequences of the subsequent transition from camps to permanent villages, from tents to houses. One of the major benefits for the Iinuu of camp life is the emotional satisfaction associated with living in the well-adapted dwellings. When first entering an Iinuu

fig. 2.1

Archaeologists’ miichwaapt under construction

hunting camp dwelling, with its soft perfumed flooring of boughs, almost all people, both Iinuu and non-Iinuu alike, express pleasure. For an Iinuu hunter, in particular, the daily experience of returning, hungry and exhausted, from the day’s activities to the camp dwelling with its central stove or open fire is very rewarding. The entire domestic scene, uninterrupted by walls or furniture, immediately greets and overwhelms the newcomer with the welcome sights, sounds, and smells of comfort and conviviality. This is the case whether it be a small tent used for a single night or a multifamily communal lodge that is occupied for several months. Furthermore, some of their construction features illustrate very well the ingenuity and practicality characteristic of much of Iinuu material culture. For the Iinuu, these camp dwellings epitomize something of the satisfaction that the hunting way of life offers. Although in this chapter I often refer specifically to camp dwellings as I experienced them in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a lot of this vernacular architectural heritage was still to be found in some of the Iinuu bush camps I visited recently. I now turn to an incident in 1997 in a now-sizable Iinuu village, which has the designation of an official Indian reserve and is composed mainly of government-built houses. On the main street, I encountered marchers, mainly women, holding signs demonstrating against sexual abuse by certain

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male community members. Their message was not just that this abuse should stop but also that the secrecy protecting the perpetrators had to stop, since it was mainly adults abusing family members. The march had some success; within weeks a public forum was held on this topic, at which some of the perpetrators stood up and acknowledged their misdeeds. No doubt many complex factors around the legacy of colonialism had contributed to each case, with one of the more common initiating conditions possibly being alcohol intoxication. However, this kind of abuse would have been very rare in hunting camps since it required the secrecy afforded by the new houses with bedrooms in the village. Such secrecy is absent in the camps. More generally, the closed nature of urban society in the villages contrasts with the open and public way of life found in the hunting camps. The unfamiliar kinds of privacy afforded by the new housing architecture and the less public aspect of urban space mean that families are often effectively isolated from each other inside their houses. One particularly important feature of these camp dwellings is the organization of the interior social space. In the late 1960s and early 1970s I lived in the bush at various times in a variety of camp dwellings with a number of Iinuu families, yet all these habitations exhibited a fairly standardized internal spacial arrangement. Whether in a single-family tent or a multifamily lodge, the use of space reflected the social organization of the Iinuu family it housed. It was my observation that the standardized way that domestic space was laid out not only reflected the social organization of the family and the hunting group but also functioned to maintain and support that social order. For example, the organization of space emphasized social structural arrangements, such as the solidarity of same-sex siblings. The use of space also marked, and to some degree emphasized, the hierarchy among siblings on the basis of age. Just as in the division of labour among Iinuu in their work as hunters, there is a significant, although not absolute, separation between male and female task groups, so inside the dwelling there is a major but not absolute separation of the family’s living space between the male and the female. It is also important for Iinuu hunters that no personal hostilities be allowed to disrupt the hunting group over the winter season. I have argued that the organization of social space within the camp helps to maintain this harmony (Tanner 2014, chapter 4). the origins of the Settlement Process Before the 1950s and 1960s, when the government began providing the Iinuu with Euro-Canadian-style houses, some Iinuu built permanent structures at the trading posts that they occupied during their visits – either their own

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single-room log cabins (mihtukaan) or tents with interior wood frames (maahkiiaaskunikan), referred to in English as “tent frames.” Hallowell describes how an Anishinaabe community in northern Ontario underwent the transition to occupant-built dwellings in the settlement, a move that apparently occurred as early as the 1930s. He notes that log cabins were their most common form of village dwelling, while at the same time people occasionally continued to use many of their more traditional forms of housing (Hallowell 1992, 100). Although some of the early owner-built dwellings at the Mistissini settlement had a few basic items of furniture, space was organized internally somewhat like a hunting camp dwelling. Government-built houses, however, used more conventional Euro-Canadian architectural forms, with separate kitchens and bedrooms, and eventually indoor bathrooms, which made them unsuited to the more traditional organization of space. I have heard talk of plans to develop distinctive architectural forms especially suited to the realities of northern Indigenous peoples’ lives; but in reality, virtually all government houses in the Iinuu communities of Quebec follow the same kinds of conventional Euro-Canadian designs and suburban layouts as are found in the south. The settlement of Aboriginal nomadic hunters came late to the Canadian north, compared with the different pattern that occurred in southern and western Canada. By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the westward expansion of immigrants had severely reduced the numbers of Indigenous inhabitants in south-central Canada and on the Prairies. Overwhelmed by disease and dispossession, and unable to sustain themselves by hunting, the survivors were confined to reserves. Over time, housing was slowly provided, and the population gradually increased, starting in the early twentieth century. However, in the north it was much later when most people moved permanently into the settlements. The region was generally considered unsuitable for agriculture and thus did not become overwhelmed by immigrant settlement. Starting in the 1950s, and continuing for several decades, the state undertook a major social engineering project: the urbanization of the remaining active and self-sustaining northern Aboriginal seminomadic hunters who were at the time occupying large areas of the north, in the Yukon, Northwest Territories (including what is now Nunavut), and the northern parts of all the provinces except those in the Maritimes. At the time, treaties did not cover large parts of these areas of the north, and many northern settlements became officially designated as Indian reserves only in the 1950s, partly so that inhabitants could be provided with government-built houses.2 Before this intervention, northern Indians and Inuit had been largely left to themselves in their own dwellings. They continued a many-centuries-old

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economy of harvesting animals and vegetation for food and materials; their ancient economy was supplemented by some imported tools and food obtained at the start of the season from traders like the Hudson’s Bay Company in exchange for the later return of animal skins. Government presence was minimal at this time, with traders and missionaries occasionally acting on behalf of the state. In 1953 Canada’s prime minister, Louis St Laurent, publicly admitted, “Apparently we have administered the vast territories of the north in an almost continuing absence of mind” (in Parker 1996, 32). A new policy of economic and social development of the north was initiated soon afterward, explicitly to access the region’s resources but probably also to strengthen Canadian sovereignty claims over the vast region. One unquestioned assumption underlying this policy was that, in an advanced country such as Canada, the Indigenous peoples of the region should no longer follow nomadic or transhumant ways of life but should be settled in permanent villages, with their children required to have formal schooling, in most places by means of residential schools. The policy of settlement – that is, of establishing permanent communities at centres where the new occupants had previously gathered periodically, such as at fur trade posts – is to be distinguished from relocations, where people were moved, often forcibly, to entirely new locations, usually with serious negative social impacts, which are the subject of an important study by Waldram (1987). Although the settlement policy can be seen as a continuation of the existing continent-wide pattern of colonial dispossession of Indigenous peoples, by the 1950s it acquired a social welfare rationale. Settlement was presented as necessary for providing Indigenous peoples with access to health facilities and other government programs, some of which had only relatively recently been acquired by other Canadians. The settlement policy proceeded despite the fact that there were few job prospects in these new permanent locations, and most attempts to move people to where there were jobs had failed (Lloyd 1974). This being the case, it can be said that the urbanization of hunters was undertaken to a large extent for administrative convenience, facilitating the servicing of a now-sedentary population. The housing policy also echoed the widespread belief held by many EuroCanadians at the time that hunting and trapping were parts of an archaic economy and a doomed way of life. A negative assessment of hunting is also implicit in the apparent lack of consideration given to delivering health services and education directly to the remote hunting camps, as was being done for other remote groups, such as in Siberia and the Australian Outback (Woldendorp 1994). Remote delivery of these services would have been feasible in northern Canada since, by the 1950s and continuing to the 1970s, Indigenous

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hunters were using aircraft to access their camps, and traders were employing the same method to visit winter camps, bringing supplies and collecting furs. As for my own experience in northern Quebec among the Mistissini Iinuuch, by the 1960s many young people were finishing school without the skills needed to go hunting but also with little or no access to paid employment. Some went on to acquire hunting skills by joining a family hunting group; an increasing number, however, stayed in the new villages full-time, many living a marginal existence on social assistance and other transfer payments while waiting for paid work to appear. These new village-dwellers faced numerous difficulties. They were ill-prepared for the practicalities of living in and maintaining the government-built houses provided for them. Moreover, urbanization involved a reduced access to the most important Iinuu cultural values associated with the hunting way of life. Residential schooling created further serious social discontinuities between parents and children (Sindell 1968), even after graduation. During the fur trade era, in the brief summer period when hunters had visited the trading post, some had engaged in short bouts of binge drinking, with occasional fights and some sexual escapades. However, with the switch to full-time urban life, these kinds of social conditions became, for some, a year-round, and potentially self-destructive, lifestyle. Others either gave up alcohol altogether or adopted social drinking. But the unfamiliar concentrations of large numbers of distantly or unrelated people in the village, together with the relative anonymity of village life, led to new problems of social control, both within families and at the community level. Eventually, epidemics of new and unfamiliar physical and mental conditions emerged, a syndrome I have referred to as “social suffering” (Tanner 2008), with youth suicide being one particularly tragic outcome. Camp Architecture The importance for the Iinuu of hunting camp dwellings is well demonstrated in a book on the subject by Iiyuu author Fred Georgekish (1996) and, as noted above, is also documented for the Berens River Ojibwa by Hallowell (1992) based on his observations in the 1930s. To give some idea of the range and variety of Iinuu hunting camp dwellings, the following section documents the types of these dwellings in which I stayed over one hunting season. During the winter of 1969–70, I accompanied a hunting group in the northern part of Mistissini territory, in the general vicinity of Lake Nichicun. In late August we travelled by aircraft to Nichicun Post, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s abandoned fur trade post at this lake, which at the time was also the location of a

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fig. 2.2 the maahkii

weather station. The local group of twenty-five Iinuu adults and their children stayed at Nichicun Post for about a month before breaking up into five hunting groups, each of which dispersed to its own hunting territory. During that month, each of the families lived in its own semipermanent maahkiiaaskunikan (tent frame) at Nichicun Post, with a stove and beds; some had wooden floors made of plywood obtained from the weather station dump. Leaving the post for the territory of the hunting group with whom I passed the winter, we travelled for several days by canoe to the place where we would spend the early part of that season. Each night during this journey, we set up a maahkii (figure 2.2), an oblong ridge tent sewn by the women from canvas and supported by a ridgepole lashed between two posts or standing trees. As was the case with all the dwellings we used that winter, tin stoves provided ample heat. These stoves were not kept going all night, so the inside temperature soon became the same as outside, and the occupants slept under a

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substantial covering of heavy sleeping bags and thick blankets. During the day, by contrast, the stoves provided more than enough heat, so on calm days the dwelling doors were often left open. At all of our camps, we always maintained a large surplus of firewood. Like the conical miichwaapt referred to earlier, the maahkii is frequently used before freeze-up, particularly because many of the other types of Iinuu nomadic dwellings are unsuitable at that time since they require a thick bed of snow into which uprights must be planted for support. The miichwaapt is based on a four-pole pyramid structure (which contrasts with the basic tripod structure of the better-known western tipi). To these four uprights are lashed four horizontal poles about halfway up, forming a square that gives the structure additional rigidity. Onto this square frame, other horizontal poles are rested to form a drying rack for moccasins and clothes. From these poles, the meat of whole beavers or geese can also be suspended, by a string, for rotisserie-like cooking over the tin stove or open fire. An open fire is sometimes preferred to a tin stove; it is especially appreciated by the Iinuu for certain kinds of cooking. For this reason, these conical structures are often found alongside government houses in the settlement, to be used for the kinds of cooking that are not possible inside the government-built houses with modern cooking stoves; they are used as well, in some cases, to provide summer sleeping accommodation. Modern variants of the design, made of plywood or other imported materials, are used for smoking fish or geese in some modern Iinuu villages. The miichwaapt is more commonly seen at hunting camps toward the James Bay coast than it is farther inland because of the need for many long straight poles of Jack pine, which is more abundant closer to the coast. However, the interior Iinuu use the same basic structure as the miichwaapt frame for several other structures, including drying racks for moose meat or fish and windbreaks for outdoor cooking fires. Once our group arrived at the chosen early-winter location, each family lived for some weeks in its own maahkii. By November there was plenty of snow on the ground, and the whole group worked together to construct a winter lodge (takwaachistaaukamikw), which we occupied from December to February (figures 2.3 and 2.4). This communal dwelling had a roof frame made of small straight trees and had vertical wood walls made of larger trees split by hand into boards, the whole covered by canvas. Large quantities of moss were used to chink the walls and, like all hunting camp dwellings, the floor was covered in balsam or spruce boughs that were replaced every few days. The construction of a similar winter lodge is illustrated in the documentary Cree Hunters of Mistassini (Richardson and Ianzelo 1974), although in that case the roof was constructed of logs chinked with moss.

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fig. 2.3 interior of the communal lodge

fig. 2.4

Part of the hunting group outside the communal lodge

fig. 2.5 Abandoned communal lodge

The remains of an older camp that the same group had occupied about ten years previously were located about 10 kilometres away, along the shore of the lake from our early winter camp. That communal lodge had been occupied by a group similar in size to the one I accompanied, but it was a lot smaller than the one we lived in, the frame for the canvas covering was made of saplings bent together to form an elongated dome, and it had low walls of boards made of split tree trunks (figure 2.5). The difference between the older and newer winter lodge may indicate the increased use in more recent times of imported items like nails and imported tools like a bow saw. During that winter, I visited two other hunting groups in the Nichicun area. One of them had a communal dwelling occupied by two families, consisting of two elongated curved frames made of saplings and covered with canvas. The two were joined end to end, with the common door located at the place where the two came together. In March the main group I lived with began a three-month period when the camp was moved at least every few weeks, and during these times each family lived in its own dwelling. A common form of dwelling used during this period was the matutisaanikamikw, a dome-shaped tent; the frame is made of a circle of saplings driven into the ground, each of which is then bent over and lashed to the sapling on the opposite side of the circle (figure 2.6). The Iinuu

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fig. 2.6 the matutisaanikamikw

name of this dwelling is derived from matutisaan-, the term for the sweat lodge, which uses a similar basic structure. In a few cases during this period, we occupied a camp only for few days before moving on, and in such cases we sometimes used one of the simplest types of Iinuu camp dwellings, known as the wiishkichaanichiwaahp. This form, used only in winter, can be very quickly constructed. It is composed of an oval perimeter of sticks driven into the snow but not meeting overhead, over which a canvas covering is placed. The roof of this kind of tent is more or less flat and supported only by the walls. Its disadvantage is that the roof could cave in overnight in the event of a very heavy snowfall, or it could leak if the weather turned especially mild. One of the more iconic types of Iinuu dwelling is the shaapuhtuwaan, although I did not live in one during that winter. Today this structure is sometimes erected for special cultural events in the settlement. It was used in the

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past as a communal dwelling for several families, as well as for a feast tent. It is a long structure with a door at each of its rounded ends, which are both constructed like half a miichwaapt, the two connected by a ridgepole against which sloping poles are placed along either side, the modern versions being covered with canvas. In the 1930s Hallowell (1992, 105) recorded a similar kind of dwelling, in that case covered with birch bark, in use among the Berens River Ojibwa. This structure was the inspiration for Douglas Cardinal’s design for the Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute, a museum, library, and research facility opened in 2011 at the Iinuu village of Oujé-Bougoumou, south of Mistissini. Cardinal has also designed various other buildings for First Nation clients based on traditional Indigenous models. Domestic Space and Social order The Iinuu sometimes say that no matter how much they move, a hunter’s dwelling is always in the same place (Tanner 2014, 137), a point of view shared by other nomadic peoples (Grøn 1989). Among the Iinuu, the idea is emphasized by its standardized orientation. The normative rule is for the doorway to overlook a body of water and to face the rising sun, which in mid-winter may be more south than east. In such a location the dwelling is protected by trees on the north and west. In all camp dwellings there is a central hearth, with the personal living spaces of the occupants toward the rear around the perimeter. This arrangement also marks the distinction between the space around the fireplace and the doorway, which is shared, and the space of individuals located toward the side and rear walls, which is more personal and private. Each family’s space is divided between male and female halves, with the married pair’s places on the dividing line. Children are arranged beside the same-sex parent in increasing order of age. Any other single individuals who happen to be living in the dwelling are located where they would be if they were the children of the married couple, also according to their relative age. Space is also gendered in terms of the location of stored items on either side of the doorway, with men’s tools and supplies on the male side and women’s on the female side. The above organization of domestic space may temporarily change to allow for special uses of the dwelling. There are occasions during winter when tasks such as sled making, smoking a moose hide, or displaying the results of a successful hunt must take place inside. Holding a communal feast for the group necessitates a complete reorganization of the dwelling space. However, cleaning up after such events simply involves renewing the carpet of boughs and returning things to their previous spatial arrangement.

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Camp architecture not only helped to structure and maintain group social relations but also emphasized many cosmic and culturally important symbolic aspects that, I have argued elsewhere, added significance, value, and meaning to the hunting way of life (Tanner 2014). Settlement and Social Suffering During the time when northern Indigenous peoples were living full-time in hunting camps, we have no evidence of the symptoms of the social suffering that later emerged. One objective measure of the emergence of social suffering across the north can be seen in the rate of suicides. As Abele and colleagues (2009, 569–70) note, “high suicide rates are a manifestation of a number of interrelated social problems. Among these, rates of alcohol and drug abuse and associated violent crime are already high in some places and growing in others.” Hicks (2007) examined three Inuit jurisdictions where the suicide rate rose dramatically at slightly different times, in each case associated with a loss of local autonomy due to government interventions. I believe this conclusion is equally relevant for the Algonquians and Athapaskans across subarctic Canada. The crisis of youth suicide, taken here as one measurable symptom of social suffering, was not the result of European contact since it only appeared much later – up to 300 years later for groups like the Iinuu. Hicks calls the initial phase, before the emergence of social suffering, “‘passive’ colonialism”; during this time the social organization of Aboriginal society was maintained because it was needed for the continued production of furs. He calls the period that followed government intervention “active colonialism at the community level” (31–2); it is during this stage that loss of autonomy set in. Hicks shows that the rise in Inuit youth suicide occurred at slightly different times and to different degrees in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. But in each case the rise in suicides occurred about a generation after policies were initiated by the colonial state to “substantially reorganize” the Aboriginal society. For the Quebec Iinuu, this radical reorganization of society coincided with the shift from camps to villages, from tents to houses. This move did not directly cause social suffering, but the way the housing policy was implemented proved to be the “starting mechanism,” or the “gateway,” for the complex syndrome of related symptoms of social suffering. As Hicks (2007, 31–2) notes, the increase in the state’s dominance over Aboriginal society was not entirely negative; even though new diseases were introduced, other health conditions received more effective treatment, and overall life expectancy increased. This outcome, in turn, led to a sharp demographic increase. In the case of hunting

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peoples like the Quebec Iinuu, such a dramatic population increase meant there would eventually have been insufficient land to support everyone by hunting alone (Salisbury 1986). Thus the shift to settlements and the cash economy became, for the majority of Iinuu, inevitable. Whereas some communities have now made the transition more or less successfully, for others the social suffering continues. Within the Canadian north as a whole, there were variations both in the conditions under which settlement occurred and in the severity of the subsequent social problems. More than twenty years ago, York described some, but by no means all, of the worst cases of social suffering, particularly in the north, most following a group’s very rapid sendentarization or relocation. He also noted, “There is little systematic evidence to prove that the level of alcohol consumption is much greater among Indians than among whites in similar circumstances” (York 1992, 191, emphasis added). Northern Quebec is a region where the policy of sedentarization took hold more slowly than elsewhere in the north. As late as the early 1970s, most adult Iinuu still sustained themselves by hunting. From September to the following June, they lived with their families in camps in recognized family-owned hunting territories scattered across their traditional territory; each summer they gathered to trade at one of several trading posts in the region. The Quebec Iinuu were not as badly affected by the move to settlements as were some others, mainly because until 1970 most of the region had remained relatively isolated. By the time this area was “opened up” for development, particularly with the initial James Bay Hydroelectric Project, and the sedentarization process took hold, the Iinuu had managed to acquire some degree of political self-determination. This was accomplished through the first modern Canadian Aboriginal treaty, the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, which provided the Iinuu with some tools to confront the problem of social suffering. For instance, in negotiating the agreement, the Iinuu insisted that their hunting territory system be recognized and protected; the agreement included provisions to subsidize the hunting way of life for those who chose to continue with this option, thus effectively slowing down the urbanization process. The Iinuu also gained control over their schools, allowing for such modifications as a spring “goose break” when young people can join their parents in bush camps. As Richard Preston (1982) has documented, the establishment of a new village of Nemaska after the agreement had been concluded benefited from the newly gained ability of the Iinuuch to be involved in the planning of the village, in contrast to how Iinuu settlements had been planned previously.

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In addition, Iinuu hunters’ continued use and occupancy of their territory under the agreement have since had an additional benefit: the Quebec Iinuu have been able to negotiate for compensation for the more recent additional hydroelectric, mining, and forestry projects that have occurred in the territory. Moreover, on their own initiative, the communities have confronted the symptoms of social suffering with what I have called a “healing movement,” aimed at enhancing community cultural resilience (Tanner 2008). The movement organizes various community events, like traditional gatherings, snowshoe journeys, and canoe expeditions. One measure of their relatively successful adaptation to urbanization is that the Quebec Iinuu’s suicide rate is similar to that of the overall provincial population (Kirmayer et al. 2000; Tanner 2008). Privacy and Secrecy In a comparative study of the social organization of space in dwellings of a number of circumpolar hunters or herders, both ethnographic and prehistoric, Grøn has concluded that space is arranged in multifamily dwellings so as to minimize conflict. He also notes that privacy is achieved in such societies with what he calls “the invisible-screen effect” (Grøn 1989, 102–3). For much of the winter, when the Iinuu hunting group was not occupying the mid-winter multifamily communal lodge, each family had its own dwelling; there was thus some family privacy, due to the dwelling walls, even though conversations may sometimes have been audible between dwellings. One of the social norms related to camp dwellings is that individuals should not live alone. When I first erected my tent at Nichicun Post, the Iinuu thought it strange that I might live alone, so the first night a young man was sent to stay with me; soon thereafter I was asked to move in with and effectively become a member of the group leader’s family. Inside a camp dwelling each person had his or her own personal space. Here privacy was respected not by means of physical barriers but due to unwritten rules for how individuals, and the two gender groups, respected the spheres of the personal or group space of others. In most dwellings, whether single-family or communal, whether circular or oblong in plan, individuals were arranged around the central fireplace. With this more or less circular arrangement of people, occasional eye contact and the ability to observe others were facilitated. The arrangement implied a degree of social equality among the occupants. Privacy was effectively mapped onto the dwelling space, in the sense that everyone, except young children, was expected to respect others’ privacy,

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and everyone else could observe whether anyone violated this rule. I observed one occasion when an unmarried man, while joking with his sisters, moved into their space and simply stood there. The action by itself so unnerved the sisters that normality was restored only when he moved back to his own space in the dwelling. I have heard of instances where a curtain was erected to give a family limited physical privacy, and another case where the members of one socially distant family that was sharing a communal lodge turned their backs to the rest of the group, but these cases are atypical. Individuals in hunting camps possessed limited personal property, and there were only a few truly private personal places where others should not intrude. Both sexes observed limits on the permissible degree of nakedness. For instance, even when only other men were present, a man usually changed his clothes under a blanket to keep his body fully covered during the whole process. On the other hand, Iinuu men also observed fewer restrictions on same-sex physical proximity than do men in Western heterosexual society, so in close quarters physical touching between men was not uncommon. Except when one family was hosting a feast for the whole camp, the dwelling’s domestic space was so fully organized and occupied that there was little space left for guests. Visitors respected the privacy of each individual’s personal space, so when visiting they would generally confine themselves to staying at or just inside the dwelling doorway. Among Iinuu hunters, living in a form of society in which very little of a person’s actions or property is held entirely secret, sex is one area where secrecy is the norm. Newly married couples lived in their own tent for at least part of the winter, and young couples would sometimes go off hunting on their own. In mid-winter, when the whole camp lived in a communal lodge, sexual intercourse took place quietly and only after the couple believed others were asleep. By contrast, in the village, privacy is easily available; houses do not just allow members of each domestic unit to be out of sight and hearing of others but also often impose isolation, wanted or not, and introduce new possibilities for secrecy. Initially, the new government houses often had to accommodate several families, each occupying one of the bedrooms; in time, however, individual families had whole houses to themselves, and bedrooms became private spaces. Moreover, given the size of houses and their interruptions of sightlines within the village space, parents or relatives could not always keep children in view, and they were consequently much more difficult to supervise. Formal arrangements for daycare or babysitting services were not needed in camps, and this new need became another challenge of life in the villages. Both the individual houses and their arrangement in villages were

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“off the shelf ” designs of the dominant society, unsuited to existing Aboriginal social and cultural patterns (Savard 1975). It has been noted that in many village settlements where local people are in control of space, physical distance between dwellings is an indication of the social distance between dwelling occupants (Grøn 1991, 106). For example, prior to the provision of government-built houses, the Iinuu who visited Mistissini in summer to trade would pitch their tents in proximity to their relatives and, more generally, would cluster with those from the same regional subgroup. Waldram documents a similar phenomenon in some of the relocated communities that he studied. He concludes that “It is apparent that the urban-inspired settlement pattern that has been utilized in the relocation and consolidation of subarctic native communities is potentially maladaptive for these people” (Waldram 1987, 129–30). At Mistissini, with the growth of government housing, the clustering of houses occupied by related families was only partially maintained, as only a few houses were built each year, and these were given out according to need, with little consideration for related families to live in the same part of the village. The emerging pattern today is for income to become a stronger influence over the part of the village where a family lives, given the newly established ability of some to own their own houses, thus replicating another feature of southern communities. Conclusions: Unintended Consequences of the Move to Houses in villages In hunting camps the Iinuu could practise their general ethic of noninterference with another person’s autonomy. This extended to relations between parents and children, meaning that physical punishment was generally avoided in favour of local communal watchfulness – which protected young children from self-harm, such as touching a stove (toddlers were tied at the waist with a string to prevent this) or being dressed inadequately when going outside in winter. These childrearing practices came in conflict with conditions in the new settlements, imposed both by the architecture and suburban-type layout of the government-built houses and by the general phenomenon of large groups living together in groupings unsuited to traditional Iinuu forms of social organization and social order. This in turn created difficulties in effective social control, both within the family and within the community; most Iinuu communities, however, have over time managed to address these challenges. Despite, or sometimes because of, the physical demands entailed, the hunting way of life afforded highly valued rewards for individuals and families;

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these rewards have been lost to permanent welfare recipients who today find themselves unable to raise the capital needed to go hunting. I believe that urbanization, in the way the policy was implemented, acted as a “starting mechanism” that contributed to a reduction in economic autonomy, as well as in regular interaction with animals and nature, in healthy physical activity, in the quality of food, and in spiritual meaning. New forms of physical sickness, like diabetes, and new kinds of mental disorders, like stress and depression, have all contributed, in the worst cases, to self-perpetuating patterns of alcohol abuse, family violence, child neglect, solvent abuse, and youth suicide. In some northern communities, these have become endemic; in others, like those of the Quebec Iinuu, the impacts and challenges of urban life are being successfully addressed. Given the reality of the end of the isolation of northern regions, which in most areas started in the 1950s and resulted in both a decline of the hunting and trapping economy and rising expectations for improved standards of living, it is difficult to see any real practical alternative to the policy of housing northern Indigenous peoples in urban settlements. However, the Quebec Iinuu case shows that slowing down the process and giving local groups more control over it had the effect of reducing its harmful effects. I have drawn attention to how architectural colonization contributed to a decline in sociability by undermining the existing social order. I have also speculated that an additional factor in the social suffering that arose following settlement was the availability of previously unfamiliar forms of privacy and anonymity, which had potentially negative effects for family and community social control.

Acknowledgments This chapter draws on forty years of work with the Quebec Iinuu, as well as on the knowledge and assistance of far too many Iinuu individuals to properly thank. I draw in particular on three research projects: my 1969–72 doctoral study of the Mistissini Iinuu hunting way of life, supported by the Canada Council and the University of Toronto Committee for Arctic and Subarctic Research; the 1977 and 1978 ethnoarchaeology project in the area then about to be flooded by the LG 2 hydroelectric reservoir, under the direction of James Chism, David Denton, and Charles Martijn, funded by the Sérvice d’Archaeologie et d’Ethnologie, Ministère des Affaires Culturelles, Government of Quebec; and my 1996 study of the healing movement at Mistissini, with the support of the Native Mental Health Group, directed by Dr Laurence Kirmayer, with funds from the Conseil québécois de la recherche sociale,

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Government of Quebec. I gratefully acknowledge these sources of funding. Among the innumerable Iinuu individuals who contributed in diverse ways to this work, I am particularly indebted to the Jimiken, Rabbitskin, and Coon Come families of Mistissini, in whose hunting camps I was a guest. I am also especially indebted to the late Fred Georgekish of Wemindji, notably for his book on traditional dwelling types (Georgekish 1996), and to Kevin Brousseau, Cree language coordinator, Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee), for advice on terms for Iinuu dwellings. Thanks as well to an anonymous Cree reader. Finally, my thanks to John S. Long and Jennifer S.H. Brown for their always helpful editorial comments. I am responsible for all errors and other shortcomings.

NoTeS

1 Notes The two forms “Iiyuu” and “Iinuu” take account of the slightly different pronunciation between the northern East Cree dialect (Iiyou) and the southern one (Iinuu). Mistissini is in the latter dialect area, so I use that form in most of this chapter. The plural form is “Iinuuch.” 2 Morantz (2002, 178) notes that Mistissini was one of only three Iiyuu/Iinuu communities to have reserve status prior to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement; five others were “settlements,” or “parcels of land … having no official status.”

reFereNCeS

Abele, Frances, Thomas J. Courchene, F. Leslie Seidle, and France St-Hilaire. 2009. “The New Northern Policy Universe.” In Northern Exposure: Peoples, Powers and Prospects in Canada’s North, ed. Frances Abele, Thomas J. Courchene, F. Leslie Seidle, and France St-Hilaire, 561–90. Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy. http://archive.irpp.org/books/archive/AOTS4/conclusion.pdf. Georgekish, Fred. 1996. Iiyiyuu Miichiwaahph: Traditional Architecture of the Wemindji Cree. Wemindji, QC : Cree Nation of Wemindji. Grøn, Ole. 1989. “General Spatial Behaviour in Small Dwellings: A Preliminary Study in Ethnoarchaeology and Social Psychology.” In The Mesolithic in Europe, ed. Clive Bonsall, 99–105. Edinburgh: John Donald. https://www.academia.edu/5674953/ General_Spatial_Behaviour_in_Small_Dwellings_a_Preliminary_Study_in_ Ethnoarchaeology_and_Social_Psychology. – 1991. “A Method for Reconstruction of Social Structure in Prehistoric Societies and Examples of Practical Application.” In Social Space: Human Spatial Behaviour in Dwellings and Settlements, ed. Ole Grøn, Ericka Engelstad, and Inge Lindblom, 100–17. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press. https://www.academia.

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edu/5674829/A_method_for_reconstruction_of_social_structure_in_prehistoric_ societies_and_examples_of_practical_application. Hallowell, A.I. 1992. The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Hicks, Jack. 2007. “The Social Determinants of Elevated Rates of Suicide among Inuit Youth.” Indigenous Affairs 4: 30–7. Kirmayer, Laurence, Lucy Boothroyd, Naomi Adelson, Adrian Tanner, and Elizabeth Robinson. 2000. “Psychological Distress among the Cree of James Bay.” Transcultural Psychiatry 37, no. 2: 35–56. Lloyd, Hugh G. 1974. Review of Northern Native Relocation Programs. Ottawa: Task Force on Northern Oil Development. Morantz, Toby. 2002. The White Man’s Gonna Getcha: The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Parker, John. 1996.  Arctic Power: The Path to Responsible Government in Canada’s North. Peterborough, ON : Cider.  Preston, Richard J. 1982. “The Politics of Community Relocation: An Eastern Cree Example.” Culture 11, no. 3: 37–49. Richardson, Boyce, and Tony Ianzelo, dirs. 1974. Cree Hunters of Mistassini. Documentary. National Film Board of Canada. Salisbury, Richard F. 1986. A Homeland for the Cree: Regional Development in James Bay, 1971–1981. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Savard, R. 1975. “Des tentes aux maisons à St-Augustin.” Recherches Amérindienne au Québec 5, no. 2: 53–62. Sindell, Peter. 1968. “Some Discontinuities in the Enculturation of Mistassini Cree Children.” In Culture in Conflict: Problems in Developmental Change among the Cree, ed. Norman A. Chance, 83–92. Ottawa: Canadian Research Centre for Anthropology, Saint Paul University. Tanner, Adrian. 2008. “The Origins of Northern Aboriginal Social Pathologies and the Quebec Cree Healing Movement.” In Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, ed. Laurence J. Kirmayer and Gail Guthrie Valaskakis, 249–71. Vancouver: UBC Press. – 2014. Bringing Home Animals: Mistassini Hunters of Northern Quebec. 2nd ed. St John’s, NL : ISER Books. Waldram, James B. 1987. “Relocation, Consolidation and Settlement Pattern in the Canadian Subarctic.” Human Ecology 52, no. 2: 117–31. Woldendorp, Richard. 1994. Australia’s Flying Doctors: The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. Sydney: Pan MacMillan. York, Geoffrey. 1992. The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada. Toronto: Little Brown.

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Part Two images, Textures, Dreams, and identity

fig. 3.1

James Bay Cree beaded hood

3 Beaded Hoods of the James Bay Cree: origins and Developments CATh oBerhoLTzer

“My dream is a mingling of past, present, future.” Extracted from Ralph T. Coe’s (1986, 39) presentation of native views on tradition, this dream of Onondaga elder Adelphena Logan expresses the handing down of the past to future generations as an inherent feeling of timeless unity. Although there is an implicit emphasis on “keeping up the old ways,” including a persistence of certain cultural elements, this is tempered by an awareness that change is both innate and inevitable. Hence, by considering tradition as it may be manifested in material culture, this sense of timeless unity allows us to identify particular elements that have undergone change and, equally important, those elements which remain unchanged through time (see King 1986). It follows that those elements deemed most important by a specific culture should theoretically be those that are retained despite internal developments and external influences. Therefore, by tracing the origins and developments of particular ethnographic objects, those elements which play key roles in the process of continuity and change should be revealed. Such an undertaking, however, also reveals the complexity and limitations of both the data and the process. To demonstrate this, the ornately beaded hoods made by the James Bay Cree of the Canadian eastern Subarctic region will be examined (figure 3.1). Recent research has established that close to thirty of these beaded caps, miksa studen (Ellen Smallboy, Moose Factory) or e mitsuits utstuden (e miichishuwich utishtuin) (Harriet Matthews, Fort George),1 dating tentatively from the mid-1800s, are present in a number of museums and private collections in North America and Europe. Although the sparse accompanying

documentation places these hoods in the James Bay area from Fort Albany on the west to Fort George (now Chisasibi) on the east during this time period, stronger supporting evidence must be distilled from archival photographs, period paintings, and ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources as well as from iconographical analysis of the hoods. Pinpointing the origins of these hoods, tracing their development, and recognizing sources of influence are both problematic and complex, evoking more questions than answers. Nevertheless, sufficient clues can be extracted from the visual and written records to meet this challenge and to present some tentative answers. the Material Evidence Descriptions of the extant beaded cloth hoods require adjectives of a superlative nature and even these cannot do justice to the actual hoods. Both aesthetically pleasing and technically superb, these exquisite floral masterpieces produced during the early to mid-1800s exemplify a meticulous and assured craftsmanship that suggests a longstanding artistic tradition. These hoods share certain commonalities in such basic characteristics as form and iconography. All are rectangular in shape with only negligible variations in the length of 50 to 54 centimetres (excluding fringe) and a finished width of approximately 25 centimetres. They are most often made of wool broadcloth although stroud, and more rarely, velvet fabric were also used. The lining was silk or cotton in a number of colours and patterns. Colour choice was predominately black or navy blue, and occasionally red or olive grey. A square or, less often, a long rectangular strip of fabric is folded and stitched along the top and/or back with the resulting seam covered by braid or ribbon and invariably outlined with beads. The point thus formed is surmounted by a tassel of either stroud fabric cut into strips or silk cord. Along the bottom edge hangs a fringe of slightly larger beads strung on very fine strips of caribou hide with the colours arranged to create horizontal stripes. The ends of the fringe are finished with either wool tassels, or more commonly, beaded loops. Most, if not all, of the decorative beadwork is done in what has become accepted as the traditional native manner with the tiny seed beads strung on sinew and spot stitched with either sinew or commercial thread. The majority of the hoods are resplendent with intricately executed floral motifs, while a few feature geometric motifs in a combination of wool braid and beadwork, and another few suggest an intermediate position with geometrical motifs that are more fluid in nature. A singular example, held in the Museum of Mankind (London, England), has geometric figures executed in silk ribbonwork. The patterns of all types are confined within a triptych

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of three panels with the central panel being wider than the other two. Significantly, all three types display strikingly similar expressions of serpentine and/or zigzag lines within these panels. In most examples an emphasis is also placed on the corner configuration of the patterns. Without exception, every example is noteworthy for the technical expertise and artistic value with which it was made and decorated. And, although each hood conforms to these common formal qualities, there appear to be no two identical examples. The high numbers of stylistic conventions used to represent flowers reflect individual skills and aesthetics. A noted tendency towards clusterings of particular motifs present on a number of examples suggests, however, that there may have been some localized group preferences. Those hoods resplendent with beaded floral patterns have flowers that cascade from a central motif at the top of the head down either side of the face and flow bisymmetrically across the back towards another motif centred there. Eye-catching are the undulating lines that dominate the composition of the patterns. Tiny distinctive leaves opposed along these lines serve to create a delicate foliage. The colours selected are dominated by pinks, pale blues, green, crystal and white, while stronger reds and golds are used occasionally as accents but appear most often as elements in the fringe. Many of the flowers, particularly in the central panel, are outlined with white. The red, navy, and yellow silk used to create the geometric pattern of the ribbonwork hood is outlined with white thread in a finely-wrought chainstitch. In similar manner, the decorative features of the braidwork ones are outlined with white beads. An additional source of material evidence is to be found in a select number of dolls and miniature hoods. The examples discussed here are particularly appropriate in their careful replication of Cree apparel, whether made to depict how things were done in the past or simply to capture the present. In particular are two superb dolls from the Horniman Museum in London, England (catalogued as Horniman 1976.459 and 1976.460). This pair were recently on loan for a Subarctic exhibit at the Museum of Mankind in London and have been illustrated in the publication accompanying the Spirit Sings exhibition (Glenbow-Alberta Institute 1987, 77). Although the dolls themselves are of English origin and have been dated to the period 1770–90, each of the pair demonstrates a different but presumably traditional ensemble of East Cree women, possibly from that time period. Of particular importance is the hood worn by one doll (Horniman 1976.460). Made of woolen fabric, and the geometrical patterns outlined with beads, this tiny rectangular example with its tasseled peak is very similar to the full-sized ones described in the early accounts of Hudson’s Bay Company officers. A very similar doll, sold recently

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at an auction, wears a slightly more elaborately decorated hood. In a recent publication, the painted illustration of a Cree woman depicts the clothing of the Horniman doll with the hood replaced by that of the auction doll (Johnson 1990, plate D ). Another pair of dolls, of Eastern Cree heritage and presently residing in the Museum of Mankind (1923.6.194c and d) in London, is dated to about 1880. While their clothing documents certain changes that occurred during the intervening century, it is of interest to note that the female doll (Museum of Mankind 1923.6.194d) wears a traditional rectangular wool cloth hood trimmed with braid and embroidered with silk floss. The peak is surmounted with the familiar tassel. The only beadwork is the monochromatic fringe with its typical looped finish. Her male companion wears a round pillbox hat beneath the pointed hood of his capote.2 Similarly, the female doll (D .C .90,36) of the pair of Nenenot (Naskapi) dolls collected by Lucien Turner in 1884, and now housed in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution (D .C .90,035 and D .C .90,36), also wears the familiar rectangular cloth hood. Despite the general acceptance of Turner’s (1889–90) tribal designation for these dolls according to his 1894 ethnology of the Ungava District (Quebec-Labrador Peninsula), I suspect that a closer examination of his records may reveal that the dolls actually originated closer to James Bay or Hudson Bay. A small hood (c. 10 cm long and 5 cm wide) held by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa (CMC -III -D -573) was probably collected by Hudson’s Bay Company factor Charles Stuart sometime between 1840–65 in the Moose Factory–Timiskaming area. Its importance rests in its naturalistic floral representation of rose buds in association with the tiny leaves and thorns of the plant. These three elements occur repeatedly, sometimes singly, often together, on a number of full-sized hoods including the abstract one from Berlin. I have speculated elsewhere that the predominance of roses, although present in the biota of the James Bay lowlands, implies rather an icon of the English rose and with it the ideals of British womanhood and signification of love, and as a symbol of Christianity with reference to Christ (Oberholtzer 1991b; see also 1991a). Thus, by adapting the rose, and indeed, other floral images, a traditional form was able to continue masked as it were with acceptable European iconography. It is evident from these descriptions that the materials utilized – other than the sinew and caribou strips for stringing the beads – are of European origin. This evidence in turn evokes a number of questions regarding other aspects of these hoods. Are the form and motifs also of European origin? If not, how can we establish and document those features that may be indigenous and trad-

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itional? Can we also isolate particular elements and influences that may have been introduced? Importantly, can we trace the development of the hoods from an earlier style to those collected during the mid-19th century? In an effort to do so we must look at other sources. Historical Evidence The earliest known recorded mention of hoods in the James Bay region is the notation made by the Englishman Thomas Gorst in the journal he kept during the voyage to the New World on the Rupert. Having arrived at Rupert River in the southeast corner of James Bay on the 29th of September 1670, Gorst (1670) observed that “The women differ not from them [the men] in habit, only that the caps of their coats hang down behind somewhat like a Monkshood whereas the men wear theirs close to their necks.” By inferring that the monk’s hood that Gorst referred to was that worn by members of monastic orders in England at that time, the form would have resembled a peaked hood very similar to those still being made in the James Bay area some two centuries later (see, for example, Milliken 1967, 13, 64; Nigg 1959, 139). Further written descriptions of such hoods do not appear until nearly a century later when in 1743 Hudson’s Bay Company officer James Isham3 described the cap worn by a Cree woman as a “peice of Cloth which they sew behind and Reaches over their Shoulder’s, all these garments are worked full of Beads, porqu’pine Quil’s, and other ornaments” (in Rich 1949, 110). Later, Isham’s successor, Andrew Graham, elaborated further in his description of the men’s hoods: “If you take a pillowcase or bag with one end and side open, and place a tassel in the closed angle, you will have an exact representation of the cap. It is usually made of cloth ornamented with beads, in the shape of deer, birds, straight and curved lines, etc.” He added that the woman’s cap was the same, “only more ornamented” (in Williams 1969, 145, 149). Continued usage of these beaded hoods was observed by several other European authors associated with the early economic and religious concerns of the area. For instance, in his journal entry for 19 August 1852, the Rev. E.A. Watkins (1852; see also Long 1985) noted that for the church service at Moose Factory, “The men were clothed in much the same way as the poorer classes in England, except that their coats were provided with hoods for use in winter. The women were dressed partly in English style, but many of them had a blanket which they threw over their heads, but others wore the peculiar head-dress of the country ornamented with a propition [profusion?] of beads.” That same year, Anglican Bishop David Anderson (1853, 123) also noted that the women

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at Moose Factory “invariably wear the long cap or hood, falling over their shoulders, and richly ornamented with beads, while the men have, generally, a good capote and embroidered leggings.” During this time period, this “peculiar head-dress of the country” was still being worn by both sexes of the Indians living in the interior (Inlanders). While visiting at Rupert House in the course of his periodic religious rounds, the Rev. John Horden (1853) recorded the arrival of three Indian families. He described the men (two of whom were conjurers) as “being in full dress”: “On their heads were blue cloth caps, somewhat similar to those worn by the women, but with three or four large white feathers on the top, and the sides worked with beads in the form of a deer, this cap always being worn while deer hunting.” Further evidence for the wearing of pointed hoods can be gleaned from artistic depictions rendered in the early years of the 19th century. For example, watercolour drawings by native artist William Richards and Swiss-born Peter Rindisbacher provide several appropriate illustrations. In Richards’s pre–1811 winter scene somewhere in the vicinity of Moose Factory, a married woman is shown with a fairly elaborate version of a beaded hood (see Williams 1983, 69). On the western side of James Bay, Rindisbacher portrayed a number of men and children (both Cree and Saulteaux) wearing variations of these peaked caps, often surmounted with feathers rather than tassels (for an illustration of Rindisbacher’s work, see ibid., 33). Four decades later, in 1852, the English missionary John Horden sketched a Moose Factory woman wearing a floral beaded hood. Archival photographs of Cree women wearing hoods in the Fort Albany area in the 1860s appear to be the last contextual evidence for the James Bay area (see Hail and Duncan 1989, 181, 182). Parenthetically, the circa 1860 engraving by Emile Petitot (1887, 374–5) of a Slave woman wearing a rectangular hood decorated simply with three strips of fabric or braid may – and I emphasize may – indicate Cree influence in this direction. Ethnographic Evidence Through the generosity of Dr Regina Flannery, pertinent portions of her fieldnotes recorded during 1933–38 provide vital ethnographic information about these beaded hoods on the east coast of James Bay. The following details were provided by five of Dr Flannery’s informants. I have taken the liberty to repeat this information nearly verbatim with the addition of approximate dates and comments incorporated from a later letter from Dr Flannery. According to Ellen Smallboy, who was born at Lake Kesagami circa 1853 and who later lived in Moose Factory, the woman’s beaded cap was “made

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from a single strip of cloth folded so that the fold would be at the crown of the head, then stitched up the back. The cap had beadwork all around the edge and a fringe of beads, liwehutcigan (iyiwepichikin), hanging from the bottom.” Apparently, Mrs Smallboy had not witnessed caps being worn at feasts and did not mention whether or not she had ever had one herself. Her sister-inlaw, Christiana, made a paper model of a cap. A collaborator at Rupert House, Edward Namagoose, was born there circa 1867. As his mother died when he was quite young, he was raised by his grandfather. He remembered “his grandmother wearing her cap when watching beaver nets and at feasts, when his grandfather sang and drummed.” Furthermore, “only married women could wear beaded caps.” Alice Erless, who was born circa 1875 and raised just south of Fort George, said that after one of the men had located tracks of the caribou and returned to camp to tell about it, that night the old man would sing and drum. The women would wear their beaded caps and dance up and down holding onto a tent pole, and, as she remarked, “Everyone was happy.” If the caribou were located in an area where others were needed to drive them to the hunters, all would be dressed in their cleanest and finest clothing, and a woman who had a beaded cap would wear it. At the feast following a successful hunt, the women, with their beaded caps, danced in place holding onto the tent pole, their backs to the fire in the middle of the wigwam. Mrs Stevens, Margaret Blackned’s sister’s daughter, who was born and raised inland from Eastmain, noted, “Sometimes [as many as] three women dance, and they laugh at the old man and he sings more.” Margaret Blackned, born near Fort George circa 1875, and living at Rupert House at the time of the interview, when speaking of women’s beaded caps, mentioned that, “The ones who have them are the ones who are better off. All the women who could bead would make one if possible.” It is probable that Margaret Blackned very likely had one herself. Ethnographic material from other sources alludes to an ancient practice of hunting disguises whereby the skin of an animal, including the head – with the ears still attached – was pulled over the hunter’s head and shoulders. Documented evidence for this practice in the eastern Subarctic rests on Regina Flannery’s (n.d.) findings that the Attawapiskat Cree of Cape Henrietta Barrens did indeed utilize this method (personal communication). Alanson Skinner (1911, 15–17) described the hooded coats of tanned caribou skin with the hair left on worn by East Cree boys and men as being “symbolically painted inside by outlining on the skin, the eyes and mouth of the animal, signifying that the garment possessed the powers of speed, endurance, or cunning of the living animal, and was able to convey them to the wearer.” In

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Skinner’s accompanying line drawing, the animal’s ears have been supplanted with tassels. He further noted, “this symbolism is confined to the garments of men, and the designs occur on the hood or head coverings only.” There is some dispute as to the veracity of Skinner’s concept that the powers of the animal contained within the skin would be transferred to the wearer. However, Adrian Tanner (1979, 141) has recorded that among the Mistassini Cree special hooded coats or parkas made of the head skin of caribou or young moose were once worn to give the wearer the animal’s power. Although these parkas are no longer used for hunting but are made only for children now, it is accepted that the wearing of one will increase the child’s later hunting ability. Further afield, Frank Speck (1940, 46) described the Penobscot hunting costume as including a hood that served as some sort of disguise as it is “squared across the top with two ear-like flaps, and comes down narrowly along the sides of the face and hangs well over the neck and shoulders.” While this second set of data does establish an extended use of hoods, these particular hoods demonstrate a divergent rounded and/or eared form used specifically in hunting, which requires another line of investigation at some future time. However, a rather cursory comparison of the two sets of data suggests a differential use between men and women, but with a somewhat similar function of propitiating the spirit of the caribou (and beaver) for hunting success. Antecedents, Analogues, and Speculations The widespread distribution, extended use, and retention of the rectangular form despite the introduction of “foreign” materials and changing lifestyles attests to an indigenous form. Nevertheless, in an attempt to determine possible aboriginal antecedents for these hoods, we must extrapolate from other sources beginning with the prehistoric visual recordings of Algonquian speakers to the south. The pictographic records of Painted Rock Island in the Lake of the Woods district include a depiction of a figure wearing a pointed hood (Dewdney and Kidd 1962, 46). To the southeast, the Peterborough Petroglyphs reveal shaman figures wearing pointed hats, one attached and one separate (Vastokas and Vastokas 1973, 66, 136). As well, innumerable birch bark scrolls have figures with pointed heads that may be, in fact, pointed hoods. Another possible candidate as antecedent (or possible analogue) is the ceremonial hide or robe, such as the one attributed to Eastern James Bay and held in the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC -III -B -588; dated circa 1740). A number of analogous characteristics and symbolism suggest that this

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may be a possible antecedent to the peaked hood. Foremost is the robe’s function as a covering for the head, albeit under specific circumstances. Analogies also include the square shape, which replicates the hood before sewing, the painted decoration that is divided visually into three panels, defined borders, fringes along the edges and the corner tassels. Brasser’s (1974, 96) suggestion that “the cross-design was painted (in the centre of the robe) in honor of both one’s own soul-spirit and those of the animals” when compared with the Cree use of the tassel centred on a hat to represent the spirit or soul (Flannery n.d.) identifies a further correlation. Ethnographic information collected by both Adrian Tanner (1984) for the East Cree and Alika Webber (1983) for the Naskapi corroborates Brasser’s conclusions. Based on the evidence garnered from his informants, Tanner has noted regional variations in decorative techniques and composition. Whereas East Cree in the Fort George (now Chisasibi) area most often referred to a painted style of decoration with fringes cut into the edges of the hide, the more southerly Mistassini East Cree tended to use a beaded and ribbon style similar to Montagnais techniques. Further differences can be noted between the Naskapi and East Cree in that the Naskapi shamans wear the caribou hides with the decorated side facing inward and the animal fur facing out (Tanner 1984, 101). In contrast, the hides of the James Bay area have all the hair removed and the decorated side is always displayed outward. According to Webber’s (1983, 64) conclusions, the wide distribution of these robes in the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula as well as the continued – and secretive – use attests to the intrinsic importance of the robes. Whether or not these painted robes are indeed antecedents to the hoods or merely part of the same iconological tradition is difficult to assess with our limited information at this point. However, it is interesting to note that a number of painted hide coats from this region possess an attached collar (often fringed) that appears to be a vestigial form of a hood. One such coat (Smithsonian Institution, Department of Anthropology 90241) has a collar which served as a hood and “allowed the shaman to envelope his face in darkness, a state in which he would sit for hours waiting for a vision, helping him guide his people to caribou” (Armitage 1991, 61). Visually striking is the triangular-shaped porcupine quillwork attached at the neck on the upper back of a Central Cree painted coat from the early 19th century in the National Museum of lreland (see Glenbow-Alberta Institute 1987, 76, figure 66, for illustration). No discussion or search for origins, analogues and avenues of influence can disregard the peaked, or conical, cloth caps worn at one time by members

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of the Algonquian Wabenaki cluster, which includes the Micmac, Malecite, Abenaki, and Penobscot. Overtly different in form from the hoods of James Bay, these conical caps are, however, decorated with similar techniques of beadwork and ribbonwork. A number of further distinctions can be discerned in the formal qualities of the two hood types. As noted above, the James Bay Cree type is recognized by its rectangular form made from a single strip or square of cloth, tasselled peak, beaded fringe along the bottom edge, a three-panelled (triptych) composition and predominately floral motifs. By way of contrast, the maritime type are conical in form made from two pieces of cloth, are occasionally shaped to reveal the face, seldom have tassels, lack a beaded fringe, and the decorative patterns – rather than contained within a triptych composition – feature a broader border next to the face and a narrower band at centre back. The beaded hoods of this type indicate a preference for the use of double curve motifs. Origins and development of these peaked caps have also been difficult to determine despite the number of researchers (most notably Gaby Pelletier 1977 and Ruth Holmes Whitehead 1980) who have focused on this aspect. Much of their work has taken into account the relations of the Jesuits who were of the opinion that prior to the adoption of European hats and caps, these natives had gone bareheaded. Other researchers have accepted Father Paul Le Jeune’s conclusions regarding Montagnais clothing to be indicative of European origins for caps in general. In his relation of 1634, Le Jeune (1634, 11) noted that these people went bareheaded, “which makes me think that very few of them used hats before their intercourse with our Europeans; nor do they know how to make them, buying them already made, or at least cut, from our French people.” However, he also said, “Give them a hood, and a man will wear it as well as a woman” (9); and, “One has a red hood, another a green one, and another a gray, – all made, not in the fashion of the Court, but in the way best suited to their convenience” (11). Rather than being contradictory, I wonder if Le Jeune was not actually indicating two different forms of headgear. If this is so, it allows for European styles to be adopted in one quarter and traditional forms to be retained in another. A number of very early references (1609 and 1611) attest to the existence of “lace-like patterns,” and women “improving cloth with trim.” However, as the earliest descriptive reference to Micmac women wearing these peaked caps dates to 1791, we have no way of knowing when this form was actually adopted. While ribbonwork hoods appear fairly early chronologically, the development of beaded hoods was concurrent with or slightly later than those of the James Bay region. In fact, the presence of floral patterns rather than the double curve motif did not

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occur until late in the 19th century, long after their florescence on the James Bay hoods. This development in the east coast area does not preclude the possibility that European influence, particularly that of the French traders and missionaries, moved north and west along the early trade routes to James Bay. Rather, it merely diminishes the likelihood of direct influence and suggests that the rectangular hood form may have arisen from indigenous antecedents. Summary and Discussion In summation, the wearing of hoods by both men and women was recorded as early as 1670 in the James Bay area. Although the actual material, shape and ornamentation are unknown, some assumptions can be made. It can, for instance, be assumed with some assurance that hide was the material likely used. Similarly, the widespread distribution of pointed hoods throughout the subarctic and the northeast suggests that this was a universally accepted shape probably in use at the time of European contact. Decoration, if present, would have been a continuance of the painted hide and porcupine quillwork traditions that were the pre-contact methods of ornamentation. By the early 1700s, rectangular hoods for both sexes were made of European trade cloth and decorated with porcupine quills and European beads. This suggests that an existing traditional form became reiterated with the introduction and adaptation of new materials. As the technical advantages and potential for creative expression became apparent, the desirability of these trade goods increased rapidly with a concomitant burgeoning creativity recorded in a concrete manner on the hoods. However, it would appear that the introduction of European materials did not disrupt or replace the use and function of the hoods within the Cree culture. Based upon the historic evidence alone it would appear that the wearers of the beaded hoods were married women associated with the posts either as the wives of Home Guard Indians or European traders. However, the ethnographic material broadens this continued wearing of hoods to include both men and women of the interior groups. The ethnographic data also establishes the functional importance of the hoods in hunting success. Although catalogue documentation for the floral-patterned hoods held in the Canadian Museum of Civilization describes them as men’s hoods, I would speculate that the floral motifs were more likely represented on the women’s hoods while the men’s were decorated with geometrical and faunal motifs. As always, more evidence is needed to draw conclusive statements: a more exact chronology

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derived from a number of sources, including the introduction and incorporation of specific trade items in particular areas, would add greatly to a discussion of the origins and developments of the hoods. Certainly an in-depth iconological analysis would provide essential primary information. It has been thought that as the proselytizing Anglican missionaries increased their efforts to discourage any traditional native expression, particularly on the west coast, the hoods seem to have rapidly disappeared. This seems rather simplistic in consideration of the complex nature of social and material systems. But, for whatever reason(s), contextual use of the beaded hoods has been discontinued and only the pointed form has been retained in contemporary parkas. Fortunately, these last remaining few exquisite examples have been preserved by being “institutionalized.”

Acknowledgments Research funding was provided by the Department of Graduate Studies and the President’s Committee on Northern Studies, both at McMaster University, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr Regina Flannery for generously sharing her fieldnotes and expertise. My thanks are extended also to John S. Long for providing ethnohistoric references. Research was facilitated by museum curators and keepers in England, Europe, and North America, as well as by generous Crees in the communities of Kashechewan, Fort Albany, Moosonee, Moose Factory, Waskaganish, and Eastmain, whose names are listed in Oberholtzer (1994, iv–v). Last but not least, I wish to express my love and appreciation to my husband, Ron Oberholtzer, travel companion, photographer, and best friend. NoTeS

1 Sources vary in describing these head coverings as hoods or caps. I am grateful to Regina Flannery for providing the Cree terms, which she glosses as “beaded cap.” Marguerite MacKenzie (2015) advises that the first term is simply the Cree word for “bead” beside the word for “hat,” whereas the second is a possessed form, “his/ her hat” + “to be beaded.” 2 A capote is a semi-structured blanket cloth coat with attached pointed hood and fastened about the waist with a sash. 3 It should be noted that although Isham was situated at York Factory, his notes on the Cree were comprehensive.

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reFereNCeS

Anderson, David. 1853. The Net in the Bay, or The Journal of a Visit to Moose and Albany. London: Hatchards, Piccadilly. Armitage, Peter. 1991. The Innu. New York: Chelsea House. Brasser, Ted. 1974. “Good Luck in Hunting: James Bay Indian Art.” Vie des arts 19, no. 75: 96–7. Coe, Ralph T. 1986. Lost and Found Traditions: Native American Art, 1965–1985. New York: American Federation of Arts. Dewdney, Selwyn, and Kenneth E. Kidd. 1962. Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Flannery, Regina. N.d. Personal communication with Cath Oberholtzer. Glenbow-Alberta Institute. 1987. The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First People. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Gorst, Thomas. 1670. “Extract of Mr. Thomas Gorst’s Journall in the Voyage to Hudson’s Bay Begun the 31 day of May 1670.” Ms. no. 1757, Guildhall Library, London. Hail, Barbara A., and Kate C. Duncan. 1989. Out of the North: The Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Bristol, RI : Brown University. Horden, John. 1853. Journal, 21 April. Church Missionary Society Records, reel A -88. Johnson, Michael G. 1990. American Woodland Indians. London: Osprey. King, Jonathan H.C. 1986. “Tradition in Native American Art.” In The Arts of the North American Indian: Native Traditions in Evolution, ed. Edwin L. Wade, 65–92. New York: Hudson Hills. Le Jeune, Paul. 1634. Jesuit Relations. Vol. 7. Ed. Reuben G. Thwaites. Reprint, New York: Pageant, 1959. Long, John S. 1985. “Rev. Edwin Watkins: Missionary to the Cree, 1852–1857.” In Papers of the Sixteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 91–117. Ottawa: Carleton University. MacKenzie, Marguerite. 2015. Personal communication with John S. Long. Milliken, E.K. 1967. English Monasticism Yesterday and Today. London: George G. Harrap. Nigg, Walter. 1959. Warriors of God: The Great Religious Orders and Their Founders. Edited and translated from the German by Mary Ilford. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Oberholtzer, Cath. 1991a. “Embedded Symbolism: The James Bay Cree Beaded Hoods.” Northeast Indian Quarterly 8, no. 2: 18–27. – 1991b. “James Bay Cree Hoods: Innovation and Tradition.” Unpublished manuscript. – 1994. “Together We Survive: East Cree Material Culture.” P hD diss., McMaster University. http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/2572. Pelletier, Gaby. 1977. Micmac and Maliseet Decorative Traditions. Saint John, NB : New Brunswick Museum. Petitot, Émile Fortuné Stanislas Joseph. 1887. En route pour la mer Glaciale. Paris: Letouzey et Ané. http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/bibliography/1091/378.html.

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Rich, E.E., ed. 1949. Isham’s Observations and Notes, 1743–1749. Reprint, Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1968. Skinner, Alanson. 1911. “Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 9, no. 1: 1–179. Speck, Frank G. 1940. Penobscot Man. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Tanner, Adrian. 1979. Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters. St John’s, NL : Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University. – 1984. “Notes on the Ceremonial Hide.” In Papers of the Fifteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 91–105. Ottawa: Carleton University. Turner, Lucien M. 1889–90. Indians and Eskimos in the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula: Ethnology of the Ungava District. Reprint, Quebec: Press Comeditex, 1979. Vastokas, Joan M., and Romas Vastokas. 1973. Sacred Art of the Algonkians. Peterborough, ON : Mansard. Watkins, Edwin Arthur. 1852. Journal, 19 August. Church Missionary Society Records, reel A -97. Webber, Alika. 1983. “Ceremonial Robes of the Montagnais-Naskapi.” American Indian Art Magazine 9, no. 1: 60–77. Whitehead, Ruth Holmes. 1980. Elitekey: Micmac Material Culture from 1600 AD to the Present. Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum. Williams, Glyndwr, ed. 1969. Andrew Graham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay, 1769– 1791. London: Hudson’s Bay Record Society. – 1983. “The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Fur Trade: 1670–1870.” The Beaver, outfit 314, no. 2: 4–86.

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4 A token of Remembrance: the Gift of a Cree Hood, Red River Settlement, 1844 LAurA PeerS

In 1844 George Jehosephat Mountain, the Anglican bishop of Montreal, travelled by canoe across the Great Lakes to Red River, the first Anglican bishop to visit the settlement. As the result of this visit, the Diocese of Rupert’s Land was created in 1849 (Marston 1976, 579). During his stay in Red River, the bishop was given a number of presents, “consisting of specimens of Indian workmanship.” Mountain’s collection was later displayed at a Missionary and Colonial Exhibition in England and was passed down in his family. The collection was auctioned at Phillips in 1996 and is now cared for by a private collector. One of the items in the collection is a northern Cree woman’s hood (figure 4.1). Made of red wool cloth with a navy wool lining and ornamented with glass trade beads, its tag from the Missionary and Colonial Exhibition reads, “Headdress worn by squaws – made by Red River Indians – and given by them to Bishop Mountain when he visited them in 1841 [sic]. Lent by Miss Mountain.”1 Despite the incorrect date of Mountain’s visit on this tag, and the fact that such hoods were not actually worn in Red River, there is strong evidence that the hood was acquired in Red River: the tag (and therefore someone’s memory) states this, the style and decoration of the hood are typically James Bay Cree, and there were northern Cree people in Red River. In 1846 Mountain published a volume of poems based on his western trip, which included an engraving of a woman wearing a hood and carrying a cradleboard, which Mountain said he acquired as a gift in Red River; the hood is very similar to this one (Mountain 1846). The hood is an intriguing piece. In the context both of Red River and of Cree cultural history, the hood suggests some

fig. 4.1

northern Cree woman’s hood

of the complexities of change and continuity woven simultaneously into the processes of colonialism and identity formation. It says much about the meeting of tribal peoples with the global forces of trade and colonization, about the standard colonial narratives used to describe such encounters, and about the maintenance of identities and cultural boundaries in the face of pressures to acculturate. It also suggests how wide the gulf of misunderstanding could be across cultures: this hood meant very different things to its maker and to its collector. Culturally and socially, the Red River Settlement was an extremely complex place. Some campsites along the river have been used for thousands of years by Aboriginal people, and an Ojibwa band that migrated from what is now Minnesota had taken up residence there by 1790. The forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers became a crossroads for the western fur trade, and Thomas Douglas, the Earl of Selkirk and a major shareholder in the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC ), granted land there first to displaced Scottish crofters who arrived in several waves beginning in 1812 and later to a group of Swiss settlers who joined them in 1821. Retired fur traders – Orcadians, Scots, and English – also settled there with their Aboriginal and Metis wives and mixedblood children. Another group of Aboriginal people, Muscaigo (“Swampy”) Crees from communities around the northern end of the Manitoba Lakes (and originally from Hudson and James Bays), migrated to Red River in the 1820s and 1830s. By the time of Bishop Mountain’s journey from Montreal in 1844 (figure 4.2), Red River was a largely Metis community, with a strong Aboriginal presence and a much smaller, quite diverse, European one. Some 460 settled, Christian Crees lived mostly in St Peter’s, some 10 kilometres north of the HBC supply post Lower Fort Garry, at the north end of the settlement. Several dozen other Cree families and individuals lived scattered across Red River as wives, servants, and settlers.2 There were also several hundred traditionally oriented Ojibwa who spent most of their time just outside the northern and western boundaries of the settlement.3 The Red River Settlement was thus a densely multicultural place, one that fits within Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the “contact zone,” which she defines as a “space of colonial encounters, [a] space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict” (in Clifford 1997, 192). At Red River, class was as important a factor as culture and “race,” but relations between peoples also involved trade, intermarriage, kinship, co-residency, economic interdependence, friendship, and missionization. Material culture played a key role in mediating between peoples and thus in constructing and maintaining

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fig. 4.2

Montreal–James Bay–Red River connections

social and political relationships: it was formally given in diplomacy, traded in homes and at the posts, worn as a display of community affiliation and kinship, and presented to travelling dignitaries. The hood given to Bishop Mountain is typical of those used by coastal Cree women. Cath Oberholtzer, a specialist on Cree hoods (chapter 3, this volume), felt that this hood was made by a woman who had grown up in the eastern James Bay region.4 There were dozens of these women in Red River, as evidenced by censuses and church records.5 She might have been the mother or an older wife of one of the Cree settlers at Red River who had come from the Norway House area; she might also have been one of the Cree wives of retired fur traders who had moved to the colony from bayside posts. Northern Cree people traditionally lived along and just inland from the coasts of Hudson and James Bays. Subarctic hunters and gatherers, they lived in small kin-

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based groups and moved across the land to harvest caribou, geese, fish, and other resources. After the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670, the Crees began trapping for furs, hunted to feed traders, and supplied snowshoes, moccasins, fish, geese, and survival skills to the newcomers. They also formed social ties with company men through Cree women, who became the wives of Europeans at the trading posts. In response to the depletion of game around trading posts and transportation corridors, some Crees began moving inland in the 1780s.6 Families from the York Factory area – many of whom were “Home Guard” Cree-Metis – migrated to the northern end of Lakes Winnipeg and Winnipegosis but found hunting still poor. Seeking an easier life, approximately fifty Cree families moved to the Red River Settlement in the 1820s and 1830s (Lytwyn 2002, 254n119), where they accepted the Anglican missionaries’ offer of agricultural equipment and instruction in both farming and Christianity. It is important to bear in mind that while they were thought of as “Cree” or “Swampy” by missionaries and settlers in Red River, many of these people were of mixed descent, had grown up in part around and in the bayside posts, had varying and complex relationships with their European fathers and grandfathers, and were exposed to a wide variety of both European and Cree cultural influences. Like the rest of the settlement’s population, they hunted and fished to supplement uncertain crops, developed their small farms as best they could, attended church and Sunday school, and – on the face of it – gave up their traditional beliefs. At the mission school, their children learned English and studied the catechism, with the girls taught to sew, knit, and be – in the Reverend William Cockran’s (1833) term – “good housewives,” whereas the boys were taught husbandry and carpentry, the intention being that they should both become self-sufficient (i.e., acculturated Christian agrarian smallholders) and act as servants to European settlers.7 The Reverend John Smithurst (1844) stated that the families in the St Peter’s Indian Settlement lived in neat cottages, some of them white washed … Several barns have been erected and the farms are now fenced in with substantial fences. The crops all look well and the Indians have now each a good stock of oxen, cows, and Pigs, many of them have also sheep and horses. Several of the Indian women spin wool and a good deal of home made cloth has this year been manufactured … [A]lmost all the Christian Indians now wear either European clothing or such is made from home spun cloth, so that there is little perceptible difference in appearance at Church between the Indians and the other settlers.

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Smithurst also noted that they had kitchen gardens with peas, beans, turnips, carrots, and lettuce. In evocative reports, he described teaching them complex harmonies so that they could form a church choir. As Isobel Finlayson (1840, 32), the English wife of a senior trader, was paddled down Lake Winnipeg by Swampy Cree boatmen, she noted that the steersman kept time by chanting the hundredth Psalm. This, of course, is what the bishop of Montreal came to Red River to hear, and to see, in 1844 – rewarding proof of the efficacy of the church’s work: After travelling for upward of a month through an inhospitable wilderness, and casually encountering … specimens of the Heathen savage …, we came at once, and without any intermediate gradation in the aspect of things, upon the Establishment formed … for the same race of people in their Christian state; and there, on the morning of the Lord’s own blessed day, we saw them gathering already around their pastor … with their books in their hands, all decently clothed from head to foot … Around were their humble dwellings, with the commencement of farms, and cattle grazing in the meadow. (Mountain 1849, 43–4) Mountain contrasted the state of the Crees with that of the traditionally oriented Ojibwa whom he encountered on his journey to Red River, who still held traditional ceremonies and kept a more seasonally oriented resourceharvesting lifestyle. The bishop described these people as “poor, dirty, and degraded Heathens” (50) and “fine animals” (36, emphasis in original). Bishop Mountain had a wonderful time at Red River. He preached in all three Anglican churches, confirmed hundreds of people, and spoke to converted medicine men. And the people of Red River enjoyed his visit, expressing in several public addresses their gratitude for the honour of his presence. As he was leaving, they conveyed their respect for him in another way: by giving him gifts. The bishop wrote that an entire morning on the day of his departure “was occupied in packing up the presents with which we had been loaded by our different friends … Several Indian women were busy up to the last moment in finishing some trifling token of remembrance which they were anxious to put into our hands” (Mountain 1849, 102; see also Mountain 1844b). One of these “trifling tokens” was the woman’s hood. In the context of the overtly Anglicized and acculturated lives of Cree people in Red River, what did it mean for a Cree woman to give a beaded hood to the bishop of Montreal? What did such a hood mean within Cree culture, and what was intended by the gift of the hood? Mountain, of course, saw the hood and his other presents as “tokens of remembrance,” souvenirs, as did so many Europeans

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who passed through North America and collected Native-made artifacts. He saw these pieces as exotic curios of Indianness, things to add to his cabinet of curiosities.8 Ruth Phillips (1995, 111) has written of such items that they were “displayed as trophies of imperial possession in the gentleman’s den and as signs of a sentimental brush with an exotic and noble past in … a lady’s parlor … Viewed within the domestic spaces of the home, these trophies represented, in microcosm, the … drama of the displacement of the primitive by the modern.” For the bishop of Montreal, such objects had another, particular set of uses and meanings: as signs of savagery and the need for continued work and funding for Indian missions and missionaries. This set of meanings lies behind the display of the hood, as the tag notes, at the Missionary and Colonial Exhibition in England. Such exhibitions displayed objects from pre-Christian, non-Christian, and newly converted peoples around the world, acting as popular entertainments as well as quite comprehensive and educational museum-style displays. Their purpose was to raise funds for the missionary societies. An exhibition in Manchester in 1869, which included a birch bark container from Red River and Bishop Mountain’s portrait along with those of other evangelizing bishops, contained 4,000 “ethnographic” objects from all over the world (Manchester Missionary Exhibition Executive Committee 1869). Helping us to understand the complex meanings with which Bishop Mountain imbued his gifts at Red River is the fact that he saw them as “objets sauvages,” simultaneously symbols of both the pagan way of life that had been overcome and the sweetness of the victory of having civilized one group of Native people. As he said of the Indian Settlement generally, it was “a testimony to the humanizing influences of the Christian religion” (Mountain 1849, 127). Missionary writings, however, are among the most wishful of colonial texts. It is too simple to look at their descriptions of Cree life in Red River and see only acculturation, like the whitewash on their cabins. Under that whitewash, as it were, the Crees in both the Indian Settlement and the homes of retired fur traders retained significant elements of Cree culture and maintained Cree identities. In this contact zone, clothing was an important indicator of identity and ethnic affiliation. Christian Crees wore European-style clothing, but it was embellished with beaded and embroidered accessories that proclaimed their pride in their heritage: women wore beaded leggings under their European-style cloth gowns, and at least one missionary complained that his Cree students came to Sunday school only to “make a display of a new gown, new coat, new cap, quill worked shoes, or some such finery” (Cockran 1831–32). Even the bishop of Montreal was astute enough to note

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the retention of Aboriginal elements of dress in the congregation at the Indian Settlement church: “Their costume has a hybrid kind of character partly European and partly Indian, the former predominating among the men, the women for the most part still wear the blanket or else a piece of dark cloth thrown over the head, with the hair parted smoothly in front, and leggings from the knee downward. They all wear maucasins, which indeed are worn by the missionaries and almost all the European population of the Colony” (Mountain 1844a). Clothing in this context signalled a layered identity rather than the erasure of an earlier Cree worldview. A woman’s hood, in such an environment, could mean quite a lot. Intriguingly, hoods were not worn in Red River; the blanket, the shawl, or the “piece of dark cloth thrown over the head” served as a memory of hoods, including their histories and meanings. Hoods such as the one given to Bishop Mountain were adaptations of precontact head coverings made of hide and fur, adaptive clothing for a climate in which cold and insect bites are serious issues. A double row of beads across a cranium and extending down to the elbow of a burial in a grave dated to circa 3400 BP at Port au Choix, Newfoundland, has been interpreted as a hood (Oberholtzer 1994, 124–5, citing Tuck 1976, plate 1, 193).9 Some 1,641 pin cherry beads around the cranium of a woman in a burial in northern Manitoba dated to circa AD 1665 are probably the outline of another beaded hood (Brownlee and Syms 1999). Thomas Gorst, on a voyage to James Bay in 1670, gave the first historic reference to women wearing hoods there (in Oberholtzer 1991b, 18).10 Although they clearly have ancient and functional roots, the hoods metamorphosed into a very special and meaningful form during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Shortly after contact with Europeans, Cree women began to make hoods of woolen cloth decorated with imported glass beads sewn using both sinew and commercial thread. James Isham in 1743 and Andrew Graham in 1791 both described women wearing hoods that reached “over their Shoulder’s … worked full of Beads, porqu’pine Quil’s, and other Ornaments” (in Oberholtzer 1991a, 269; and chapter 3, this volume). A pair of wonderful late-eighteenth-century dolls, dressed with meticulous detail and now at the Cuming Museum in London, also show a woman wearing a hood. In their full glory, hoods were lavishly decorated with appliquéd seed beads in three panels of sinuous vines, leaves, and flowers, the lower edge being adorned with beaded fringe in bands of colour. They were of a standard size, made of a strip of cloth with the two ends brought together and sewn along one of the long sides. The back of the head was decorated with a short tassel. The beading on the hoods, as Oberholtzer (chapter 3, this volume) notes, shows exceptional “technical expertise” and “artistic value.” That they were

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made almost entirely of imported materials does not diminish the fact that these were deeply meaningful and distinctively Cree objects. They are referred to in Cree as mik(i)s astutin (“beaded hat”), and the tassel on the back represented the spirit or soul (Oberholtzer 1991a, 273; 1991b, 26n9).11 Both their extraordinary beadwork and their weight indicate that these hoods were to be worn only for very special occasions. Their special nature is also revealed in the structure of their beaded (and sometimes embroidered) designs. Oberholtzer (1991b) observes that on several hoods with simpler, more abstract designs (of which the Mountain hood is one), we can see the basic elements of the three-panel design and the undulating, sometimes zigzag line, which anchors the floral motifs within each panel. In Algonquianspeaking societies, such wavy lines seem to represent the division between the cosmic zones and powers of the sky and the underworld; the lines “are often found … on an object made of material from the ‘earth’ zone … With the transition from the traditional ‘earth’ material of animal hide to that of trade cloth, the flowers” came to represent the “mediating earth zone.” This fits with the beliefs of northern Cree people, who divided their world into earth, water, and sky areas, each of which was distinguished by the beings inhabiting it (Oberholtzer 1991b, 25, citing Flannery and Chambers 1985, 3). The three-panel format on the hoods, then, “refers obliquely” to these three zones of subarctic cosmology – something that emerged out of an enduring Cree worldview that determined the “proper” organization of a hood’s design (25). Although made mostly from trade materials, the hoods epitomize aspects of Cree culture. Hildi Henrickson’s (1996, 1) work on clothing discusses the “performative processes critical to the creation of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ through which national and international identities are negotiated.” Gorgeously visual and tactile, physically and visually weighty, and covering the sides and back of the head to well below the shoulders, these flamboyant garments were exceptionally performative: banners of identity. This analysis reinforces Adrian Tanner’s (1979, 93) observation that “the decoration of objects among the Cree always indicates that they have a sacred significance.” Like painted hides and coats (Burnham 1992), a tradition strongly developed among the Innu but whose ideas are also found among northern Crees, such clothing was worn to honour animal spirits during the hunt. Women as well as men wore such clothing: men wore decorated coats, whereas women wore hoods.12 In the late twentieth century, elders remembered that only mature, married, “well-off ” women wore hoods (Oberholtzer 1994, 123–4). In subarctic belief, well-being is directly tied to gifts and assistance received from spirit-beings. The hoods, like all decorated clothing in Cree culture, acknowledged these gifts and honoured the givers. Thus it

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makes sense that the elders also remembered women wearing hoods when watching beaver nets (to honour the beavers’ gift of themselves), at feasts before and after caribou hunts, and when assigned to help drive the caribou herd toward the hunters (again, to show respect for the caribou-beings who gave themselves to humans) (Oberholtzer 1991a, 271; 1994, 123).13 Well-being and respect for spirits were easily transferred by Cree women to Christianity and missionization: they wore their hoods to church and did so consistently.14 Thus these later hoods may also have reflected the floral imagery and metaphors used in the Bible, to which Cree women were exposed by European missionaries, fathers, and husbands – but they were essentially extensions, or translations, of earlier Cree beliefs about honouring animal spirits and were worn to honour God as well as the spirits (Oberholtzer 1991b, 24). Hoods were gradually replaced across the latter half of the nineteenth century by imported shawls, often with floral patterns, and more recently by vibrantly floral-patterned headscarves, which are worn by women elders. Oberholtzer has linked this transition to missionary efforts on James Bay to end what Regina Flannery called “overt traditional usages such as singing, drumming and seeking personal spirit-helpers,” although Flannery, an earlytwentieth-century ethnographer, felt that Cree belief systems had become “syncretic” rather than exclusively Christian (Oberholtzer 1994, 148–9, citing Flannery 1990, 24).15 As these developments were occurring, Cree families were moving inland from the coast, and some arrived at Red River in the early 1830s. In the extensive archival documents of both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Church Missionary Society, there is no mention of Cree women wearing hoods at Red River even during this early period, when hoods were still being worn on James Bay. Such spectacular garments were remarked upon consistently on the coast and would surely have been noted inland. Certainly, none of the northern Cree women who settled in Red River with their families was described as wearing a beaded hood; nor is there any description of hoods associated with any of the coastal Cree wives of fur trade officers who moved with their retired husbands to the settlement. No other hoods from Red River exist. The only hints that hoods were present at Red River come from the one given to Bishop Mountain and from his remark that Cree women wore “pieces of dark cloth” on their heads, which could be a memory of hoods.16 These head coverings, although very different from hoods, may have blended Anglican insistence on women’s humility and virtue with older connotations of respect for spirits and of women’s roles and identity in ensuring proper, respectable social relations between humans and other-than-human beings.

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Hoods were thus an item of material culture that was used to negotiate colonial change. In their materials, in their meanings, and in their use at Christian missions, hoods “retained culturally significant features while concomitantly demonstrating an outward acceptance of non-native materials, symbolic referents, values and expectations” (Oberholtzer 1994, 110). They were uniquely objects of both Cree history and colonial history. The one discussed here is a historical object in several other ways. The hood given to Bishop Mountain appears never to have been worn; its lining is unstained. Its beadwork is also much less complex and elaborate than that of many of the hoods associated with James Bay. It was probably made expressly, and in haste, to be given to the bishop during the short time of his visit to the settlement; he was there for just seventeen days. Since hoods were not worn in Red River, it must have been designed by an older woman who had grown up on the coast and remembered the hoods worn by matrons in her birth community, perhaps either the wife of a retired fur trader or the mother of one of the Christian Cree settlers. For such women, the hood would also have been a “token of remembrance,” recalling the world of their childhoods, the meanings of the hoods, and the occasions of their wearing. The hood retains the three-panel format, which was standard for the decoration of hoods, although its beadwork is much simplified compared to some of the James Bay hoods produced around the 1840s. It is quite useful for historians of colonial situations such as Red River’s to bear in mind that although older styles of garments like hoods were not being worn, they were still part of the mental culture of many people. Adaptation, assimilation, resistance, and syncretism are not processes that happen at a particular moment, nor is there a point in time when these processes are complete: these are historical processes across the lives and memories of individuals. The production of items such as the hood was also an exercise in history and memory; this is an object of history in yet another way. The slightly awkward technique shown in some of the beadwork on this hood (but not all of it) suggests that it was made by two women (figure 4.3), a common occurrence when a busy household took on extra craft production. Moccasins, for example, were and are often made by a family team of women, with one drawing patterns on vamps, others doing the beadwork, and still others cutting out leather and sewing (Hail 1989, 103–5). Very often, this would be a cross-generational process, with older women teaching younger women and girls techniques and patterns. Women remember learning at the side of an aunt, a mother, or a grandmother and recall the older woman’s patience or impatience; having to take out stitches and redo work until it was perfect is a common memory. As

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fig. 4.3

Detail, northern Cree woman’s hood

they worked on the hood in 1844, memories and meanings would have been shared and stories told about a grandmother’s childhood and her elders’ lives at James Bay. History, in Aboriginal cultures, is often mediated through biography, with the grand pictures of colonial pressures and resistance to change being understood through the lens of individual lives. Making this hood was itself a process of telling history within an Aboriginal context. We might speculate here about some of the possible makers of the hood, to ground this discussion in real lives. Bishop Mountain (1849, 45) mentioned “half breed” Joseph Cook, a teacher, interpreter, and catechist at the Indian Settlement during his visit, and gave Cook’s death notice for the Church Missionary Society. Joseph, the Cree-Metis son of William Hemmings Cook and a Cree woman at York Factory, had lived in England, presumably for education, from 1806 to 1808. He was married to Catherine, daughter of senior trader William Sinclair and Nahoway (Nahovway in some records), or Margaret, a Cree-Metis woman from the Prince of Wales Fort area on Hudson Bay. In 1844 Joseph and Catherine were in their late forties, and Nahoway, then elderly, was living near or with them in the Indian Settlement. Nahoway and Catherine had some access to Bishop Mountain during his stay in the Indian Settlement through Joseph Cook’s work, and given their Cree heritage, they might have made the hood. Nahoway would have been thought of as Cree by many in the settlement, but many of her twelve children were incredibly cosmopolitan: four married British men, one lived with HBC governor George Simpson and bore him a child, one retired to Canada West with her husband, and one accompanied her husband in retirement to Orkney.17 However Cree Nahoway’s identity was, or indeed Catherine’s, such women were not simply “Indian” or “Cree” or “Cree-Metis” or “half breed” in any simple opposition to “British.” They lived in a complex, multicultural milieu where identity was to some extent situational and always kinship-based, with kinship transcending what we now think of (and what Bishop Mountain thought of) as the divide between “British” and “Indian.” The hood tells us that the bishop’s assumptions about Cree assimilation were superficial, in several ways. Working on the hood in 1844, the makers would certainly have spoken to each other in Cree, an intimate language of the home in Red River and the lingua franca of the settlement, rather than English, as the Anglican missionaries might have preferred. The uncertainty of the stems, that the flowers are not too carefully filled, and the simplicity of the overall design do not simply indicate acculturation or the degeneration and abandonment of a “traditional” part of Cree culture; rather, that this hood was made at all and that it retains essential aesthetics and meanings also suggest the maintenance of older forms within a living tradition of beadwork,

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aesthetics, cultural knowledge, kinship relations, language, and Cree identity, even in those whitewashed cabins in the Indian Settlement or the homes of retired fur traders. Frank Ettawageshik (1994, 7) of the Little Traverse Bay band of Odawa in Michigan, whose family has been in the business of selling art for tourists since the time this hood was collected, has commented that such work “is a reflection of cultural continuation and adaptation in the face of enormous pressures to relocate, assimilate, or otherwise fade away.” The complex realities of Nahoway’s life, and the lives of her daughters, also tell us that the idea of “Cree” identity opposed to a “British” one is far too simple. The bishop’s categorization of the makers of his gifts as “Indian women” and the hood’s cultural origins in Cree culture may obscure some of the more complex realities of identity involved in the Indian Settlement and in the cultural background of the hood’s makers. Perhaps, however, we should not think of this solely as a “Cree” hood but also as something arising from very complex patterns of lives and heritage. Bishop Mountain was an early collector of Native-made objects, part of the class of colonial officials who placed those “enormous pressures to … assimilate” on Aboriginal people, who helped to establish the increasingly unequal relations of power between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the contact zone that was Red River. The gift of the hood to Bishop Mountain was more than just a meeting across cultural boundaries (Phillips 1995, 99); it was also a colonial encounter with its own dynamics. The production of the hood articulates the complexity of those dynamics. In describing the items given to him, the bishop praised what he called “the beauty, nicety and correctness” of the “fancy work executed by the women,” thus relegating it to the category of ornamental arts practised by Victorian ladies. But to its makers, the hood could well have been not just a “curio” but also a distinct symbol of respectability, one that operated within a continuing Cree tradition of sex roles, notions of proper women’s behaviour, and Cree identity. It might be useful to place the production of the hood within a wider context, which would include the production of what the bishop saw as the more European elements of the “hybrid” dress of Cree settlers: only a few years after Mountain’s visit, the Reverend Smithurst (1846) noted in his description of the Indian Settlement at Red River that Mrs Cook – Catherine Sinclair Cook, wife of Joseph Cook – was responsible for cutting pupils’ clothes from the mission’s cloth, “no other person at the Indian Settlement being capable of doing it.” It seems odd that in the Indian Settlement, where every woman produced clothing for her family, only one was capable of cutting and sewing European patterns for trousers, shirts, waistcoats, dresses, and coats. Perhaps either Catherine or her mother, Nahoway, had worked with one of the tailors at the bayside posts. That other

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women could not, or would not, cut and sew simply tailored European-style garments may also be evidence of continuing Muscaigo Cree patterns of thought as well as clothing in the Indian Settlement. Women’s identities in this place spanned styles of clothing and of decoration that were as diverse as their kinship. Just as Mountain, secure within his own cultural perspectives, was unaware of the Cree significance of the hood, he also missed the Aboriginal meanings embedded in the act of the gift itself. That the bishop could write of “trifling token(s) of remembrance” indicates that he did not fully grasp what was happening. Perhaps, in his view, a bishop was entitled to gifts as a form of respect. Gift giving in Aboriginal societies is quite deliberate and performs specific functions. Gifts and tokens of respect are given within a context of reciprocity, in full expectation that they will be returned in some form. Bruce White (1987, 230) has written about such gift giving as “expressions of self-interested investment in future well-being.”18 One gives gifts, for instance, when establishing a relationship, whether personal (as in adoption) or more political, between an Indigenous group and Europeans. Chief Peguis of Red River sent pipes to “the Great Father,” King George, to appeal to the king to “be charitable” to his people (Fidler 1815). Peguis gave other pipes to missionaries as part of the maintenance of his ongoing alliance with European powers in the settlement. He also expected gifts to acknowledge and maintain his status as colony chief. In addition to the annual Selkirk Treaty gifts given to him and other regional leaders, Peguis was frequently given goodwill gifts of tobacco and other items to honour his status in the settlement. As Colonel John Crofton (1847) wrote to his wife, “I never saw a man better know his place than Pequis. He quite understood all that was interpreted to him, and that I made him a present, ‘because I was the first Chief that had come here’” (emphasis in original). Such gift giving was, as Bruce White (1987, 230) has written, an “investment in long-term goodwill,” something that becomes especially important in colonial contexts of “differential relations of power” among the parties involved in such transactions (Clifford 1997, 194). It was men who usually made such political gifts, although they often gave items made by their wives and other women relatives. We will never know exactly what these women intended by this gift that they were so “anxious,” as the bishop said, “to put into our hands.” We must also consider that this was a gift of a woman’s hood: it was probably intended as a gift not for the bishop himself but for his wife. Mary Hume Thomson Mountain (1789–1861) was the daughter of Commissary General William Thomson of Quebec (Marston 1976) and grew up in a milieu where Aboriginal artifacts were used, commissioned on a routine basis for the military (e.g., snowshoes and

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moccasins), and displayed on the walls of studies and parlour mantelpieces. Familiar as she was with “Indian curios,” the bishop’s wife might not have understood (or appreciated) the meanings intended by the Cree women who made the hood, including its status as a complex woman’s object that senior Cree women remembered wearing, which was perhaps given to honour Mrs Mountain in the same way senior married women were honoured, as well as its role in extending the Cree practice of honouring animal spirits to the Christian practice of honouring the spirit of God. In its intentions of continuing women’s practices and meanings of hood wearing, this hood was a continuation of Cree thought within new practices of Christianity, not a replacement for older patterns of thinking. And although men normally gave diplomatic gifts, the objects given were often made by women. Since Cree and Cree-Metis women had for so long been the “women in between” their tribal groups and Europeans – as wives, as teachers of survival skills to newcomers, as linguistic and cultural translators – it is not surprising to find them making a gift for a bishop’s wife that might have been intended as an “investment in long-term goodwill.” Despite their complexity and good intentions, Bishop Mountain rendered the women who made and gave him this hood in conventional, stereotyped terms. Consider his description of the items given him: “They work beautifully in bead-work, or embroidery with silk, or with the dyed hair of the moose, and with dyed porcupine quills. Fire bags, leggings, belts for the fire-bag and powder horn, all made of cloth, moccasins of moose-skin, mittens and gloves of the same, … with baskets and boxes of bark, are the most common articles upon which they employ their ornamental skill; and their sprigs and other decorative devices are executed not only with great accuracy, but often with a tasteful effect” (Mountain 1849, 114; see also 1844b). Mountain sounds appreciative of the workmanship but slightly surprised that Aboriginal women could do such fine work; there is a patronizing attitude behind his praise. This was a standard missionary perspective, widely shared, part of the construction and maintenance of perceptions of “racial” difference between civilized whites and less civilized “Natives.” Equally, Mountain did not see fit to record the names of any of the women or families who gave him gifts – again, a way of distancing himself from them. He does name clergy, senior traders, and a few Metis in his published journal, as well as people such as Joseph Cook, but no Aboriginal people and no women. This lack of names has the effect of making individual Aboriginal people disappear, shadowy figures despite the rather patronizing attention he pays them as a man of God. As Durba Ghosh (2004, 302) notes, this patterned refusal to name names – especially of Aboriginal women – matters: “Colonial records, such as

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those produced by the church, were crucial to maintaining racial and societal distance between Europeans and non-Europeans, colonizers and colonized … Excluding women’s names was representative of colonial anxieties.” There were a great many colonial anxieties embedded in Bishop Mountain’s description of his time at Red River, and some of these become evident in his description of his gifts. Faye Harrison (1995, 65) concludes that “Racism must be understood to be a nexus of material relations within which social and discursive practices perpetuate oppressive power relations between populations presumed to be essentially different.” Here “material relations” can be taken fairly literally. As in Victorian Britain and its other colonies, material culture was used in Red River both to construct difference and as an index symbolizing “racial” differences between peoples (van Keuren 1984, 175–8). Such objects were deliberately acquired and collected by clergy for exhibition in “Missionary and Colonial Exhibitions” in Britain, as the hood was displayed. The hood’s exhibition tag (“Headdress worn by squaws – made by Red River Indians – and given by them to Bishop Mountain when he visited them”) placed it within this divisive schema, as did its display within such exhibitions. As Classen and Howes (2006, 209) remind us, “Collecting is a form of conquest and collected artifacts are material signs of victory over their former owners.” Nonetheless, the hood is more than a sign of the enactment of colonial power; it is at the same time a material sign of resistance to power. Across the nineteenth century, these hoods reflected the accommodation of change, the layering of new materials and ideas onto older ones, with the retention of older meanings and forms beneath the new ones. Cloth replaced hide, glass trade beads replaced shell and seeds, and hoods were worn to church rather than to bear feasts before being replaced materially (but perhaps not spiritually) by shawls. They remained important to women’s identities and, even in the apparently acculturated Indian Settlement, remained something suitable to give to a powerful woman, the bishop’s wife. Here we have Pels’s (1997, 164) “third view of colonialism, as a struggle that constantly renegotiates the balance of domination and resistance.” This hood was no “trifling token of remembrance.” It was a statement about memory and identity, about remembering the wearing and meaning of hoods even if hoods were not currently worn, about respect for powerful others. That it was made at all suggests the church was perhaps less thorough in its conversions than it liked to claim. That several generations of women might have worked on it tells us that older beliefs and practices lived on in collective memory in the settlement, however Christian an appearance they had to the bishop. It speaks strongly to women’s history: Bishop Mountain may not have

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seen fit to record the names of any of the women who made or gave him his “tokens of remembrance,” but they left their work as evidence of who they were. As Sherry Farrell Racette (2009, 285) has stated, “Women’s voices are often conspicuously absent from historic documents,” yet their “artistic work gives evidence to the critical role they played in integrating new materials and ideas, while simultaneously maintaining a certain stable and continuous core of ancient knowledge.” That George Jehosephat Mountain understood so very little of the hood’s embodied meanings and that historians today can still so often fail to consider the meanings that material culture embodies about the complex, interior dynamics of colonialism are indications that the makers of the hood have given us all a very great gift: an object with which to think about the complexities of identity and history, about how Cree and Cree-Metis people have coped with the challenges of the past, about their shifting relationships with powerful human and other-than-human beings, and about how they have survived.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to staff at the Provincial Archives of Manitoba, the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, and the Church Missionary Society Archives for assistance and permission to quote. I wish also to thank the owner of the Bishop Mountain hood for providing access to the hood and to research notes on the Mountain family, as well as for permission to publish images of the hood. I also wish to thank Sherry Farrell Racette, with whom I have had many productive discussions on the complexities of objects and identities in Red River.

NoTeS

1 The hood’s biography after Bishop Mountain collected it is tantalizingly unclear. It was, as the tag notes, “lent by Miss Mountain” to the Missionary and Colonial Exhibition. There were many versions of missionary exhibitions, including one in Manchester in 1869 that featured a birch bark container from Red River and a portrait of Bishop Mountain. Exhibitions with the specific name “Missionary and Colonial Exhibition” are recorded in England between 1898 and 1901. This late date makes the identity of “Miss Mountain” uncertain. Kate Mountain, Bishop Mountain’s daughter, died unmarried in 1886. We do know that the hood descended in the family of the bishop’s son, Armin Wale Mountain, who had three daughters. It seems that the hood was sent to England and then returned to the

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2

3

4

5

6 7

Mountain family in Canada, but there is no documentation on this part of its history. The 1849 census counted 460 northern Crees, recent arrivals from northern communities. District of Assiniboia Census, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, MG 2, B3. For a list of heads of families, see Cockran, “Rec. Oct.26/52,” Church Missionary Society (CMS ) Records, University of Birmingham, Cadbury Special Collections, C C 1/016/100. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA ), B .239/z/10, fo. 45; see also Bishop Mountain’s (1849, 88–9) statement that the “population of the Red-River Settlement, according to a Census with which I was obligingly furnished, is 5143: of which number 2798 are Roman Catholics, and 2345 are Protestants … The heads of families are 870; of whom 571 are Indians or Half-breeds, Natives of the Territory; 152 Canadians; 61 Orkneymen; 49 Scotchmen; 22 Englishmen; 5 Irishmen; and 2 Swiss. Wales, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Poland, and the United States of America, have each contributed one to the list.” I am most grateful to the late Dr Cath Oberholtzer, another of Richard Preston’s students, for her informative responses to my questions about hoods and for sharing research materials. We had just renewed correspondence on this hood and related items shortly before her untimely passing in 2012. The 1840 census lists twenty-six women in the “Swampy Village.” HBCA E .5/10, fo. 36. There are many records for “Cree” women in the documents of the Anglican Church at Red River; for instance, between 1839 and 1877, the St Peter’s Indian Settlement recorded the baptisms of many adult women identified as “Cree,” often “Norway House, Cree.” Provincial Archives of Manitoba, reel M 275, St Peter’s baptisms, 1839–77. Many of the women identified simply as “Cree” would have been Muskaigo Crees from the bayside posts or from the Norway House area. On northern Cree history, see Lytwyn (2002), Beardy and Coutts (1996), Francis and Morantz (1983), and Carlson (2008). Later in his life, Cockran (1865) expressed his philosophy about training mission boys as servants in a letter to the Church Missionary Society while on furlough in Toronto: “I have advocated the necessity of giving the Indians an English education. To teach them to think and express their thoughts in English. That they might amalgamate with the English, and cultivate those social feelings which enables man to understand the Christian religion. The English are destined to spread over all North America. If the Indian is taught English habits, customs, laws, arts and religion he will be absorbed in their nationality. Everything that requires quickness of ear, quickness of sight, & dexterity of hand the Indian will exceed the white man. All subjects which require depth of thought, the white man will leave the Indian far behind. The white man is destined to exercise dominion; but the Red man will make an excellent servant. Every man has his proper gift from God.”

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8 See Cornelius Krieghoff ’s painting of an officer’s room in Montreal in 1846, depicted as heavily decorated with “Indian curiosities.” Royal Ontario Museum, 954.188.2. 9 On the age of the burial, see Renouf and Bell (n.d.). 10 Oberholtzer (1994, 111) notes that the highly elaborate beaded decoration on nineteenth-century hoods reflected an ancient tradition, an indication that such objects had taken a long time to develop. 11 The Cree term for “hood” was collected in the 1930s from Ellen Smallboy at Moose Factory. This term compares to that in Richard Faries’s A Dictionary of the Cree Language (1938) and reconstructs to proto-Cree (Pentland 1998). 12 Racette (2009, 286) discusses the “uniquely female relationships between women and the animals upon which they relied” in northern Cree society, and she notes the mention of female caribou spirits in Adelson (2000, 73). 13 My interpretation of “well-being” here is related to the Ojibwe concept of pimaadiziwin, articulated by Hallowell (1992, 97). 14 See comments by the Reverend E.A. Watkins and Bishop David Anderson in Oberholtzer (chapter 3, this volume). 15 On syncretic meanings of continued hood-wearing practices on James Bay, see Oberholtzer (1994, 147). 16 The published version of Bishop Mountain’s (1849) journal of the trip includes a frontispiece allegedly depicting the Indian Settlement, with very oddly shaped canoes – and women wearing hoods. In 1873 Bishop David Anderson noted that at most bayside communities after 1860, the hoods were replaced with shawls, “the girls[,] like the women, always wear(ing) a shawl over the head and shoulders, even to church” (in Oberholtzer 1994, 122). 17 On Catherine Sinclair Cook and her mother, Nahoway, see http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/METISGEN/2004–05/1085666372 and http://www.redriverancestry.ca/SINCLAIR-WILLIAM–1766.php. 18 On “relations of reciprocity,” see Kopytoff (1986, 69): “gifts are given in order to evoke an obligation to give back a gift, which in turn will evoke a similar obligation.”

reFereNCeS

Adelson, Naomi. 2000. “Being Alive Well”: Health and the Politics of Cree Well-Being. Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Beardy, Flora, and Robert Coutts. 1996. Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree Stories from York Factory. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Brownlee, Kevin, and E. Leigh Syms. 1999. Kayasochi Kikawenow – Our Mother from Long Ago: An Early Cree Woman and Her Personal Belongings from Nagami Bay, Southern Indian Lake. Winnipeg: Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature.

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Burnham, Dorothy. 1992. To Please the Caribou: Painted Caribou-Skin Coats Worn by the Naskapi, Montagnais and Cree Hunters of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum. Carlson, Hans M. 2008. Home Is the Hunter: The James Bay Cree and Their Land. Vancouver: UBC Press. Classen, Constance, and David Howes. 2006. “The Museum as Sensescape: Western Sensibilities and Indigenous Artifacts.” In Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture, ed. Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden, and Ruth Phillips, 199–222. Oxford: Berg. Clifford, James. 1997. “Museums as Contact Zones.” In Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, 188–219. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Cockran, William. 1831–32. Journal, 2 August 1832. Church Missionary Society Records, reel A 77. – 1833. “Cockran to Secretaries of the CMS ,” 30 July. Church Missionary Society Records, reel A 77. – 1865. “William Cochrane (London Hotel, 126 York St Toronto) to CMS ,” 3 August. Church Missionary Society Records, University of Birmingham, Cadbury Special Collections, C C 1/016/147. Crofton, John F. 1847. Diary, 4 June. Provincial Archives of Manitoba, MG 2, B 7-3, reel M155. Ettawageshik, Frank. 1994. “My Father’s Business.” In Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, ed. Ruth Phillips and Christopher Steiner, 20–30. Berkeley: University of California Press. Faries, Richard, ed. 1938. A Dictionary of the Cree Language. Reprint, Toronto: Anglican Book Store, 2001. Fidler, Peter. 1814–15. Journal at the Red River Settlement, 24 June 1815. Provincial Archives of Manitoba, MG 1, D 3, and Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, B .235/a/3. Finlayson, Isobel. 1840. Diary, Sunday 6 August. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, E.12/5. Flannery, Regina. 1990. “Ellen Smallboy: Glimpses of a Cree Woman’s Life in the Nineteenth Century.” Mushkegowuk Council News 2, no. 6: 21–4. Flannery, Regina, and Mary Elizabeth Chambers. 1985. “Each Man Has His Own Friends: The Role of Dream Visitors in Traditional East Cree Belief and Practice.” Arctic Anthropology 22, no. 1: 1–22. Francis, Daniel, and Toby Morantz. 1983. Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600–1870. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Ghosh, Durba. 2004. “Decoding the Nameless: Gender, Subjectivity, and Historical Methodologies in Reading the Archives of Colonial India.” In A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1600–1840, ed. Kathleen Wilson, 297–316. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press.

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Hail, Barbara A. 1989. “Maintaining Tradition.” In Out of the North: The Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, ed. Barbara A. Hail and Kate C. Duncan, 97–108. Bristol, RI : Brown University. Hallowell, A. Irving. 1992. The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Harrison, Faye. 1995. “The Persistent Power of ‘Race’ in the Cultural and Political Economy of Racism.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 47–74. Henrickson, Hildi. 1996. “Introduction.” In Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-colonial Africa, ed. Hildi Hendrickson, 1–16. Durham, NC : Duke University Press. Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 64–91. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Lytwyn, Victor P. 2002. Muskekowuck Athinuwick: Original People of the Great Swampy Land. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Manchester Missionary Exhibition Executive Committee. 1869. Official Catalogue. Manchester: Beresford and Havill. Marston, Monica. 1976. “George Jehoshaphat Mountain.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 9, 578–81. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mountain_george_jehoshaphat_9E.html. Mountain, George Jehosephat. 1844a. “Bishop of Montreal to Reverend Henry Venn,” 2 December. Church Missionary Society Records, reel A 78. – 1844b. “Bishop of Montreal to Reverend Henry Venn,” 16 December. Church Missionary Society Records, reel A 78. – 1846. Songs of the Wilderness. London: Rivington. – 1849. The Journal of the Bishop of Montreal during a Visit to the Church Missionary Society’s North-West America Mission. London: Seeleys. http://anglicanhistory.org/ canada/gjmountain/journal1849/02.html. Oberholtzer, Cath. 1991a. “Beaded Hoods of the James Bay Cree: Origins and Developments.” In Papers of the Twenty-Second Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 264–78. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1991b. “Embedded Symbolism: The James Bay Cree Beaded Hoods.” Northeast Indian Quarterly 8, no. 2: 18–27. – 1994. “Together We Survive: East Cree Material Culture.” P hD diss., McMaster University. Pels, Peter. 1997. “The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History, and the Emergence of Western Governmentality.” Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 163–213. Pentland, David. 1998. Personal communication with Laura Peers. Phillips, Ruth. 1984. Patterns of Power. Kleinburg, ON : McMichael Canadian Collection. – 1995. “Why Not Tourist Art? Significant Silences in Native American Museum Representations.” In After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyan Prakash, 98–128. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press.

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Racette, Sherry Farrell. 2009. “Looking for Stories and Unbroken Threads: Museum Artifacts as Women’s History and Cultural Legacy.” In Restoring the Balance: First Nations Women, Community, and Culture, ed. Gail Valaskaskis, Madeline Dion Stout, and Eric Guimond, 283–312. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Renouf, M.A.P., and Trevor Bell. N.d. “Table 1: Radiocarbon Dates from Cemetery Site and Gould Site, Port au Choix.” In “Searching for the Maritime Archaic Indian Habitation Site at Port au Choix, Newfoundland: An Integrated Approach Using Archaeology, Geomorphology and Sea Level History.” http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/ pao/arch_in_nl/arch_in_nl_1997/renour_bell_1997_pac_burial_site.html. Smithurst, John. 1844. “Report of Indian Settlement Red River for the Year Ending August 1 1844.” Church Missionary Society Records, reel A 78. – 1846. Journal, 4 June. Church Missionary Society Records, reel A 78. Tanner, Adrian. 1979. Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters. St John’s, NL : Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University. Tuck, James A. 1976. Ancient People of Port au Choix. Reprint, St John’s, NL : Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, 1988. van Keuren, David K. 1984. “Museums and Ideology: Augustus Pitt-Rivers, Anthropological Museums, and Social Change in Later Victorian Britain.” Victorian Studies 28, no. 1: 171–89. White, Bruce M. 1987. “A Skilled Game of Exchange: Ojibway Fur Trade Protocol.” Minnesota History 50, no. 6: 229–40.

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5 Anishinaabe Doodem Pictographs: narrative inscriptions and identities Cory WiLLMoTT

introduction A shaft of winter sunlight dazzled the snow-filled yard and cut through the double-glass doors, marking a path across the middle of the table, where it splashed diffused light onto the piles of coloured seed beads. On this industrious Sunday afternoon in January 1999, Diana Whiteduck and I were creating beaded eyeglass cases with animal motifs to be sold at the Toronto First Nations Day festival held annually in June. I designed the motifs for a beadwork class that I co-taught at the Native Women’s Resource Center in Toronto with Debbie MacDonald, a beadworker of Cree descent who grew up in Toronto. Diana, an Algonkin whose family roots in Ontario spread from Golden Lake through Mattawa to North Bay, was an especially accomplished beadworker who was well known for high-quality items such as moccasins and pipe bags. As Diana added row upon row of brown beads to fill in a bear paw motif, the conversation turned to her doodem,1 the Bear. Since the meaning of “doodem” is in large part what this chapter addresses, it is difficult to provide a concise definition at the outset. In the Anishinaabe language, it never appears without a possessive pronoun; however, rendered in English the convention is to use the singular “doodem” and the plural “doodemag” forms. Baraga (1878, 96, 314) describes it as “My Indian family mark.” Nichols and Nyholm (1995, 104) equate it with a “clan.” Bohaker’s (2013, 9) account is more akin to the nuanced definition developed in this chapter: “Doodemag are a type of kinship expressed through relationship with specific other-than-human entities of the Great Lakes region.”

Diana Whiteduck (1999) explained that she first became aware of her doodem in the early 1980s when she had resigned herself to living a EuroAmerican way of life. At that time she experienced disturbing dreams in which fierce animals would chase and harass her. As she escaped their attacks, an animal would appear and tell her, “You have to come back to who you are.” Since she began following this advice, those frightening dreams have been replaced by ones in which she receives guidance from ancestral, animal, and other spirits. “To me,” she says, “the doodem and the guardian spirit are one and the same. To me, that’s the ancestors. These ancestors guide me in dreams.” She says that her doodem “has always been there,” guiding her to know “what’s right for me regardless of the teachings that I hear.” As well, her doodem protects her from harm. When she first came to the city, she was not accustomed to crossing streets. Her doodem stopped her from crossing if a car was coming. However, she did not know the particular identity of her doodem until a series of dreams, events, and an elder’s interpretations made it clear. In Diana’s experience, her doodem serves the dual purpose of spiritual guidance and social identity. The association of ancestors with doodemag is in keeping with their social function of distinguishing lineage groups. The merging of spiritual and social functions is made possible by the fact that ancestral spirits appear in dreams to offer spiritual guidance. Given this cultural logic, however, I was puzzled to learn later that Diana’s brother has a different doodem, which an elder conferred upon him at a naming ceremony. I participated in several Anishinaabe2 naming ceremonies and also studied the ethnographic literature on them. When the puberty vision quest was mandatory for all males, and in some regions for females too, namers with visionary powers conferred sacred names that functioned as temporary powers that stood in for those one would later receive from guardian spirits during one’s puberty fast. At that time, sacred names from naming ceremonies and from vision quests were kept secret. They established a reciprocal bond between the giver and receiver of spiritual power (Silverstein 1992, 102–4). As acquired powers, both sacred names and guardian spirits were the exact opposite of doodemag, which were statuses ascribed at birth and publicly proclaimed. How could this apparent contradiction be reconciled? When I had this conversation with Diana Whiteduck, I had been immersed in the Toronto First Nations community for about seven years. I was well known as a beadworker and partner to Anishinaabe storyteller Alex (Zeek) Cywink and was lesser known as a student of anthropology. The community consisted of an urban core of Anishinaabeg (mainly Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Algonkin), Crees (mainly from James Bay), and Haudenosaunee

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(mainly from Six Nations and Oneida reserves). The majority of community members were from families stemming from Ontario First Nations reserves. A sizable portion, however, were from families that were enfranchised or never registered and that were therefore not recognized as “Indian” as defined in the Canadian Indian Act (Hawley 1984, 12–15).3 The urban community ebbed and flowed as its members travelled frequently between Toronto and Ontario reserve communities, as well as to more distant Canadian and American First Nations territories. As Zeek Cywink’s partner, I too travelled these routes. As a doctoral student at McMaster University, I was also privileged to travel, with Zeek, much farther afield throughout Chippewa and Odawa communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota during the summers of 1997 and 1998. These personal experiences in both urban and reserve Anishinaabe communities in the United States and Canada left me with a deep impression of the importance of local and regional historical approaches. When I first met Dick Preston in 1995, I had just completed a master’s thesis based on four years of “radical participation” among Toronto First Nations beadworkers (Silverstein 1995; Turner 2003, 146–7). My thesis emphasized the intimate connection between artistic creation and narrative processes. It employed Preston’s (1975, 14–15, 30) methodology by taking an inductive approach to Anishinaabe narratives that involved participation in the “valuetones or experience qualities of the basic categories and notions.” I was thoroughly immersed in both beadworking practices and spiritual beliefs. As I became more and more interested in the ways that Anishinaabe narratives interwove with artistic traditions (Silverstein 1995) and real life histories (Silverstein 1998, 363), Anishinaabe doodemag became a primary focus of my attention as the most “basic category” or “core” of Anishinaabe identity (Silverstein 2000a, 2000b). This chapter is a synthesis and elaboration of a chapter in my dissertation (Silverstein 2000a, 78–107) and two unpublished works on Anishinaabe doodem emblems that I wrote largely under the mentorship of Dick Preston (Silverstein 2000b; Willmott 2003). In 1998 I urged scholars to “allow the images embedded in Native narratives to ‘dialogue’ with their lives to at least the same extent as they do the conceptual models of the academy” (Silverstein 1998, 363). In order to do this, one must shift orientation from English-language categories of narratives to the Anishinaabe categories of aadizookaan and dibaajimowin.4 When narratives are told in the Anishinaabe language, there are linguistic markers that distinguish aadizookaanag from dibaajimowinan (Spielmann 1998, 186–8). However, I have relied mainly on English-language translations, partly because I have only introductory-level knowledge of the Anishinaabe language and partly because many of the earliest collections of narratives were published

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in English only. Without such linguistic cues, I distinguish between these two types of stories by (1) distance in time, (2) the key characters, and (3) the context of telling.5 Aadizookaanag refer to events that took place in the distant past, and they usually involve powerful beings whose identities are known to all Anishinaabeg. There is a taboo against telling aadizookaanag during the summer. Often men and women who were renowned for their storytelling prowess told these stories, but everyone learned them, and each household had its own storyteller. Dibaajimowinan are about events that took place within memory of the storyteller or of successive tellers of the story. They involve individuals widely known for their historical significance or locally known for their current presence in the community. Dibaajimowin stories of some historic depth may be told in similar contexts to those of aadizookaan stories but without restrictions on time of year. Indeed, stories about historic individuals who were renowned for their spiritual powers would eventually transform from dibaajimowin into aadizookaanag (Silverstein and Cywink 2000, 41). More commonly, however, dibaajimowin stories are told in everyday contexts, especially at the moment of meeting. While on visiting rounds in Ontario reserve communities during the 1990s, I found that my competence in telling dibaajimowin stories upon arrival was the crucial factor in whether or not people would continue normal social interaction or alter it to accommodate an “outsider.”6 This chapter is concerned with both aadizookaan and dibaajimowin stories of doodemag in individual life histories in order to gain insight into the spiritual agency of doodemag in Anishinaabe identities. In many ways, Bohaker’s (2006, 2010, 2013) works on Anishinaabe doodemag made it possible to complete my own work. In The Politics of Treaty Pictographs (2013, 34–75), she provides an interesting analysis of doodemag origin stories (i.e., aadizookaanag). She also gives invaluable detailed description and analysis of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documentary evidence that was out of my reach due to my limited skill in the French language. In contrast, the present chapter provides a more nuanced analysis of more recent time periods divided roughly into the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, and the late twentieth century. As well, Bohaker deals primarily with doodem signatures on treaty documents, whereas the present work focuses on narrative doodem inscriptions and doodem emblems on personal possessions. In so doing, it illuminates the relationships among identity, spirituality, and social structure that have enabled doodemag to maintain their vitality in the changing historical circumstances of the Anishinaabeg. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, three transformational trends may be identified with regard to doodemag. First, there is an increasing tendency to downplay the social

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functions of doodemag and to instead emphasize their spiritual powers. Second, a corollary to this trend is a shift from doodem and kinship terms of address to personal names as means of identification. Third, changes in residence patterns and group composition have facilitated a shift in the means of identification from doodemag to places of origin, particularly the names of communities. This last trend is a large enough topic for a separate paper and cannot be adequately dealt with here.7 As an abstract concept that simply underlies social structure, it is difficult to see how doodemag could have “agency.” As “persons” in a network of social relations, however, doodemag fit perfectly into both Anishinaabe worldviews and Alfred Gell’s (1998, 7, 16–17) theory of agency, in which “things” are analogous to “persons” when humans attribute intentional causation to them and/or when “objects mediate social agency.” In these senses, the agency of doodemag can be conceived of as latent (i.e., “the grounds, limits, and situated possibilities for action”) or as active (i.e., “effective action”) (Patterson 2006, 211). I argue that this distinction corresponds to the types of agency associated with doodemag and guardian spirits. Whereas Anishinaabeg and scholars alike have consistently classed guardian spirits as “persons,” which implies the possession and use of active agency, there has never been a consensus within either group on the classification of doodemag. At least since 1791, when fur trader John Long (1791, 86–7) coined the word “totem” in reference to guardian spirits, confusion between the two concepts has persisted. A few decades later, Schoolcraft (1855, 74) said the doodem was the “tutelary spirit of the tribe.” He may have derived this idea from an aadizookaan he collected in which a man took the Crane for his doodem after a “grandfather” crane saved his children from the severed head of their dead mother, which had been chasing them (Schoolcraft 1856, 209–11). In 1912 Paul Radin (c. 1913, 13–14) found conflicting views of the relationship between doodem and guardian spirits among informants at Sarnia, Ontario. In 1929 at Parry Island, Ontario, Diamond Jenness (1935, 9) recorded an aadizookaan in which the first doodemag were guardian spirits. These doodem origin stories vary slightly from other aadizookaanag in which humans are said to descend from their doodemag.8 If we grant, however, that the doodem is ascribed at birth and confers group membership, then it follows that it is fundamentally different from the exclusive, in fact secret, relationship individuals acquire from guardian spirits through naming ceremonies and vision quests. I agree with Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962, 18–23) and Schenck (1997, 57–60) that, during the early fur trade era, doodemag functioned as a principle of social organization, whereas guardian spirits had different functions.9 It is an oversimplification, however, to say that during this period there was no commonality between doodemag 134 CoRy wi LLM ot t

and guardian spirits.10 To rectify this deficiency, we need a close analysis of the spiritual agency of doodemag. I suggest that prior to contact and during the early fur trade period, doodemag possessed latent spiritual agency associated with ascribed social status and dibaajimowin narratives. During subsequent periods, however, this latent potential transformed increasingly into active agency associated with achieved social status and aadizookaan narratives. Doodemag and Guardian Spirits To understand the differences and similarities between doodem and guardian spirit agency in life histories, we must first explore Anishinaabe classification systems through linguistic evidence. Anishinaabeg generally draw no distinct line between the secular and the sacred. In particular, the Anishinaabe category of “person” encompasses humans and other-than-humans, including certain inanimate objects, animals, and spiritual beings (Hallowell 1960, 359–60, 363, 369). There is no term in the Anishinaabe language that precisely matches “guardian spirit.” Manidoo (plural -g) means “spirit.” When spirits appear in aadizookaanag, however, they may be referred to as aadizookaanag. When they appear in dreams, they are likely to be called bawaaganag (“dream visitors”). Hallowell (1942, 7) refers to guardian spirits as bawaaganag for this reason. Using different orthography for the same root term, Basil Johnston (2007, 18–19) gives pawaudjigaewin for “dream quest,” the context in which one would receive a guardian spirit, and pawauwaewin for “revelation; an awakening; a vision by which a person gains an understanding of matters not previously known.” Schoolcraft (1855, 426), however, discusses a man’s “tutelary spirit,” whom he calls “his manito.” Manidoog are not the only type of spirits to appear as bawaaganag. Entities classed as “persons” can be spirit “persons” whose essential nature is immaterial, even though they may sometimes take on corporeal form. Humans or animals, which are inherently corporeal, can also sometimes behave like bawaaganag manidoog by appearing in dreams. In all cases, a defining characteristic of Anishinaabe personhood is metamorphosis – that is, the ability to change form at will (Hallowell 1960, 373). Metamorphosis among “persons” who are innately corporeal is made possible by the existence of two souls. The “ego soul” (injichaag) gives life to the body, whereas the “shadow soul” (jiibay) is detachable and can appear in dreams and visions (Schoolcraft 1855, 79). Likewise, the “shadow souls” of animals and spirits are able to appear in any form (Jenness 1935, 20). The jiibay category of person is where the guardian spirit and doodem overlap. The root word form means “shadow soul,” as well as “ghost” and “specter” (Baraga 1878, 114; Nichols and Nyholm 1995, 73, 186). Derivative A n i S H i nAA B E Do oDEM P i CtoGRA P HS

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forms mean “the Milky Way, or dead people’s road” (chebiecekun) (Boyd c. 1830s), “graveyard,” “grave marker,” “Northern Lights” (Nichols and Nyholm 1995, 73), “corpse,” “dead person’s bone,” “coffin,” “the Day of the Dead, All Souls Day” (Baraga 1878, 381), “the Land of the Dead,” “the Feast of the Dead,” “an enclosure constructed over a grave,” “a grave yard,” “the Path of Souls,” and “Cheebyauboozoo” (also “Chibiabos” or “Chebiabose” and brother of “Nana’b’oozoo”) (Johnston 2007, 16, 18). After the Lower World beings killed him, Chebiabose became the keeper of the Land of the Dead and the leader of the ancestral dead (jiibayag). He gave the Anishinaabeg the drum, vision quests, songs, communication with spirits, and sacred rituals (Johnston 2007, 16; Schoolcraft 1851, 317–18; Schoolcraft 1969b, 149). Although there are many local usage variations, among these terms one can see a close association both with proximity to the dead person’s body and with the locations of the dead person’s soul after death. Jenness (1935, 107) says the “soul” (injichaag) travels to the Land of the Dead, whereas the “shadow” (jiibay) stays with the bones. In linguistic practice, however, jiibayag may linger at the gravesite, travel the Path of Souls, reside in the Land of the Dead, and return to visit the living. Following Darlene Johnson, Bohaker (2013, 83–9) argues that an Anishinaabe person’s “shadow soul” is shared with his or her doodem. Crucial to this argument is the notion promoted by Anishinaabe historian William Warren (2009, 23) and others that Anishinaabeg share physical and behavioural traits with their doodemag.11 Similarly, the social function of the doodemag may be seen as sacred in the same light as all relationships that entail reciprocal obligations (Hallowell 1960, 384–5). This principle applies to all terminological “grandfathers,” including old men generally, guardian spirits, and doodemag. The spiritual power of reciprocal relationships gives doodemag an agency that parallels that of guardian spirits in their real consequences on human social life and personal life histories. Shadow souls of doodemic ancestors can appear as bawaaganag to intercede in the affairs of their descendants. It is this spiritual agency that has caused both ambiguity among Anishinaabeg and confusion among scholars. Despite this overlap in the categories of doodemag and guardian spirits, there remain significant differences that merit exploration. First and foremost, up until the twentieth century, the doodem conferred an ascribed status that was given at birth through the patriline, whereas guardian spirits were acquired through a naming ceremony and/or a vision quest that resulted in an achieved status. One’s doodem was typically singular and dictated by birth, whereas individuals had freedom to both reject undesirable guardian spirits and accept multiple guardian spirits (see Densmore 1929, 84–5; Hallowell 1966, 467–8; Kohl 1860, 236–7; Radin 1936, 244;

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and Schoolcraft 1851, 390–7). The practical consequences of these differences can be seen only after exploring the social and political functions of the doodemag, as well as the pictographic traditions associated with them. Anishinaabe doodemag did not change throughout life no matter what other status individuals acquired. Women did not change their doodem upon marriage. Patrilineal descent formed the basis for doodemag with far-reaching political and economic functions, as well as for individual identities within doodemag. Lateral alliance through marriage formed the foundation of both a formidable political confederacy and the intimate environment of familial relations (Silverstein 2000a, 85). From the precontact period to as late as the early twentieth century in some regions, doodemag were exogamous. Members of the same doodem were not eligible marriage partners, but terminological cross-cousins were ideal or at least acceptable marriage partners. Hallowell (1937, 106–7) suggests that conversion to Christianity was responsible for the decline of the latter practice. Although there is no certain proof, the existence of doodemag territories suggests that patrilocality was the norm in the seventeenth century. Kinietz (1965, 326) infers patrilocality from La Potherie’s description of a lateseventeenth-century treaty between the Sioux and Ojibwa in which each gained access to the other’s territories through marriage exchanges. Evidence from as early as the seventeenth century, however, shows that temporary matrilocal residence was common (Nicholas Perrot, in Blair 1911, 1, 69–70; Peter Grant, in Masson 1889, 320). Later accounts suggest that bride service often became a more permanent arrangement (Hickerson 1962, 40, 51; Roark-Calnek 1996, 167). Throughout the fur trade era and into the early twentieth century, polygyny was a desirable type of marriage as a form of male status display and a means to increase the reproductive output of domestic groups (Landes 1937, 69; Roark-Calnek 1996, 162). Sororal polygyny was favoured but often among terminological rather than biological “sisters” (Hallowell 1992, 57). Levirate and sororate marriages were common through the nineteenth century and continued in some remote regions of northern Canada into the twentieth century (Hallowell 1937, 104–5; Landes 1937, 63). These various marriage practices created households that could be easily identified by the multiple doodemag that composed them. For this reason, up until about the mid-nineteenth century, the impermeability of ascribed doodem identity was necessary to the performance of its social and political functions. In particular, the use of doodemic emblems to identify individuals in a system of Anishinaabe pictorial inscription enabled enhanced communications across distances of time and space. There were essentially three contexts in which doodem emblems functioned to narrate personal and

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group identities: (1) descent narratives, (2) dibaajimowin narratives, and (3) aadizookaan narratives. With regard to the first, a single doodem emblem typically embodied a story about the individual’s lineage. The most well-known examples of this are the chiefs’ “signatures” or “marks” on treaties (Bohaker 2013). This chapter, however, is concerned with doodem emblems on personal clothing, regalia, religious paraphernalia, and an array of emergent forms in the late twentieth century. Unlike visual descent narratives, visual dibaajimowin and aadizookaan narratives are typically compositions consisting of multiple figures, only some or none of which may be doodemag emblems. I shall discuss each of these in turn, beginning with descent narratives. Doodemic Emblems as Descent narratives Henry Schoolcraft (1851, 338) noted that chiefs and warriors drew pictures of their doodemag on personal property such as their weapons, lodges, canoes, and war “trophies.” Because clothing is so intimately associated with identity, and Anishinaabe identity is largely determined by group affiliation, it is not surprising that Anishinaabeg also depicted their doodemag on their garments. During the mid-nineteenth century, Johann Kohl (1860, 144) noted that the Ojibwa had “picture-writing on their clothes, the leather side of their buffalo robes, or the blankets in which they wrap themselves.” In contrast to the buffalo robes, which had pictorial narratives painted on them, “the blankets [were] usually only decorated with their totems, or special personal signs.” Kohl notes that the figure of a bear or a bird, for example, may be sewn with blue thread in the selvedge of the blanket. In view of the confusion between doodemag and guardian spirits, it is difficult to know which of these were on the blankets observed by Kohl. It is certain, however, that at least some Anishinaabeg wore doodem emblems on their clothing. In 1849 Cornelius Krieghoff painted a portrait of Nebenagoching of Sault Ste Marie in which he wears a white hide shirt bearing a Crane doodem painted in red vermillion or ochre to denote his hereditary chieftainship (figure 5.1).12 The accuracy of Nebenagoching’s regalia in this painting is corroborated by two additional contemporaneous representations of him at the same time and place (Chute 1998).13 He wore this regalia in 1849 when, in the context of a dispute over mining rights on Anishinaabe land, he and Shingwauk of Garden River near Sault Ste Marie visited Montreal to discuss the issue with the governor of Upper Canada (Harper 1979, 54). As Bohaker (2013, 269) has insightfully observed, Anishinaabeg of the Crane doodem employed crane body language in their inscriptions to convey finely tuned political mes-

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fig. 5.1

Aboriginal Chief, Chippewa, the Eclipse, or Wabumagoging, 1849, by

Cornelius Krieghoff. the portrait actually depicts nebenagoching, chief of the Crane at Garden River, near Sault Ste Marie, ontario

sages. In this case, Nebenagoching’s message is unambiguous. The crane is depicted in the “defense posture” with neck extended, wings raised, and feet planted firmly on the ground.14 Just like actual cranes, this signals his intent to defend his territory. Other elements of his regalia provide further details of his visual narrative. During this period, the Anishinaabe style of dress was composed largely of fur trade goods. Nebenagoching’s white painted hide shirt and birch bark belt accessories can therefore be read in the context of revitalization movements that denounced the European trade goods (Silverstein 2000a, 227). He is wearing a large heart-shaped medal that bears the British coat of arms (Hamilton 1995, 148–9). Interpreted as a mere trade ornament, this may seem contradictory; however, in colonial eyes, it was a diplomatic medal that gave weight to his claim to chiefly authority. More importantly, among Anishinaabeg, it is a symbol of sovereignty that confirms the nation-to-nation relationship and frames the encounter in the history of diplomatic relationships and promises (A. Corbiere 2010, 12). The feathers on his headdress tell another interesting part of the story. Ostrich feathers were among the items that fur traders included in the “chief ’s outfits” that they gave to successful and loyal hunting chiefs (Willmott and Brownlee 2010, 68). Alan Corbiere (2012a, 42–3) found that eagle feathers lowered to either side of the head symbolized peace, whereas those standing straight up signified war. Nebenagoching has one “peace” feather falling on the side of his doodem,15 and three “war” feathers astride an illegible pictographic inscription. The upright feathers suggest that Nebenagoching’s mission was not a peaceful one. This is confirmed in Janet Chute’s (1998, 108–24) detailed account of the firm position of the Anishinaabe leaders in the fight to retain their land and mineral rights in the years leading up to the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850. During the nineteenth century, intermarriage with non-Anishinaabeg and conversion to Christianity put strains on the doodem system that caused adaptive innovations in its practice and functions. The father of Shingwauk, who accompanied Nebenagoching in Montreal, was either French or Scottish (Conway and Conway 1990, 69; Kohl 1860, 374). His mother was a member of the Crane lineage that held hereditary leadership at Sault Ste Marie, and his treaty signature appears to be a Crane doodem (Bohaker 2013, 460). However, he married a Crane of the same lineage, and his descendants say that his doodem was a Plover, which he acquired in a vision quest (Chute 1998, 10). Perhaps due to his questionable descent narrative, Shingwauk based his leadership claims upon his personal spiritual and military accomplishments. Shortly after his death, his son told Kohl (1860, 376) that he had a vision when he was a youth in which the Sun appeared to him dressed “from head to foot in white garments.” At Montreal in 1849, he wore a white hide

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shirt with a painted sun motif that clearly embodied the power that the Sun spirit bestowed upon him in his vision. In the late nineteenth century, one of his sons posed for a photograph holding a war club with a bird track motif that could have been that of either a crane or plover, both of which leave a track with three toes (Chute 1998). In Shingwauk’s case, we see a shift toward the rising power of achieved leadership roles, which his sons could nevertheless appropriate back into leadership claims that were based on ascribed doodem descent. By the early twentieth century, the practice of wearing doodem emblems on clothing had declined in some regions. During the 1930s, Parry Island Ojibwa told Jenness (1935, 8) that formerly Anishinaabeg had represented doodem animals or birds on their clothing and had painted their faces in designs representative of the doodemag for special occasions. It is possible this decline in doodem emblems is indicative of the disruption of the doodem social system itself. Around the same time, Ruth Landes (1937, 32) found that in Emo, Ontario, there was wide diversity in beliefs about doodemag, the only point of consensus being that it was “from the old days.” Seeing no group cohesion beyond the family, she characterized the Ojibwa as “atomistic.” Subsequently, ethnohistorians argued against this highly damaging characterization by showing that “atomism” was an artifact of colonization (Lovisek, Holzkamm, and Waisberg 1997; Rogers 1967). Doodem emblems on clothing and regalia are currently experiencing a dramatic revival of popularity in concert with the growth of the self-determination political movement. This development can be traced in the experience of Anishinaabe artist Anny Hubbard of Sault Ste Marie, who possesses extraordinary skill in the art of making birch bark cutouts (figure 5.2).16 The cutouts are an art form on their own, but Hubbard also uses them as patterns for ribbonwork on pow-wow regalia. She has employed a Bear doodem motif on her own regalia. Hubbard (1999) explains that the demand for doodemic animal motifs has increased in direct proportion to the increase in spiritual and political awareness. Her grandmother, who taught her the art, occasionally put small rabbits on Sunday-best dresses, but there were no animal designs on regalia during the early years of the pow-wow movement. At Sault Ste Marie, she notes, the American Indian Movement initiated pow-wow dancing during the 1970s: “At first I can remember shirts with just ribbons. Maybe two colors, you know, you just did what you could … [But now] more and more people know what clan they are, and as they know what clan they are, they’re more comfortable putting animals on their outfits. People would be hesitant to put a bear on their outfit if they didn’t know what clan they were. So as people have grown spiritually, it’s influenced what their outfits look like.”

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fig. 5.2 Birch bark cutout of bears, 1998, by Anny Hubbard

A magnificent dance fan by Ruth Shawanda of Wikwemikong, Ontario, provides another example of this trend. In the catalogue for the exhibit From Our Hands (Aarons et al. 1982, 30), which features this dance fan on its cover, Shawanda explains that the fan’s bear motif “is significant of the clans,” the “medicine man,” and “protection against evil.” She notes that the “Bear Clan’s” example of finding herbs for healing in seclusion is “very much a relevant message to the Indian people. Through a renewal of their arts, craft and culture their hands will ‘heal’ their spiritual illnesses.” The fan’s black and white colours represent the “Milky way – the path travelled by souls to reach the other world. The yellow and green diamond shapes represent bear tracks.” Shawanda’s explanation of this colour symbolism accords with my experience as a beadwork instructor in the Toronto Native community. Doodemag are often associated with particular colours that people use on their regalia and other ceremonial items. Debbie MacDonald (1995) dreamed colours for a necklace she was making for an Anishinaabe elder. When she gave it to the elder, she learned that they were her doodem colours. Jingle dress designer Marie Eshkibok-Trudeau of Manitoulin Island says that when she makes a dress for someone, she chooses the colours according to the person’s “Nation,

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Indian name and Clan.” She adds, “but the person has to know what their clan is or what their Indian name is for me to do this” (in Ireland-Noganosh 1995, 62). As I shall later discuss, it is significant that she distinguishes between the doodem and sacred name colours. By the late 1990s, there was a concerted effort to revive doodem identities as a means of asserting sovereignty. In a pamphlet published by the Woodland Printers and Native Art Gallery, for example, Peter Kokoko (2000, 4–5) addresses an Anishinaabe audience: Where at one time, [the sacred] fire almost died and even the ashes appeared cold, however, some embers remained unnoticed under the ashes. Once again the flames of this fire will rise and draw the Anishnabe[g] to come and share the warmth and to remember Anishnabe culture and heritage. The language will return as will the teachings that have been dormant. Its [sic] time to gather firewood … Our political organizations are faced with the tasks of making major decisions. Ideals of self government, self determination[,] are at an infancy stage. Focus groups are established to gather information. Some elders have mentioned the Clan System and have suggested perhaps it is time to revisit these ancient teachings. Kokoko presents doodemag as a clan-based social system whose spiritual power derives from renewed pride in cultural heritage and the sense of belonging acquired through deeper knowledge of one’s family history (10–11). He advises his readers to inquire into family oral history in order to learn to which doodem they belong. Interestingly, although he acknowledges many elders for sharing their teachings, Kokoko also quotes William Warren’s (2009) account of doodemag at length. Both Kokoko’s citation of a nineteenthcentury Anishinaabe author and his own pamphlet illustrate the important role of the printing industry in the revival movement. Doodem Emblems and Dibaajimowin narratives The most powerful evidence against the “atomism” theory is the way doodem emblems were employed to tell dibaajimowin narratives. In some regions, and at least until the early twentieth century, Anishinaabeg employed doodem emblems to designate individuals and groups on birch bark messages, for personal letters and stories, and in the historic records of communities. “Travellers’ messages” were attached to sticks that were placed at strategic locations along paths where their recipients were likely to find them (Silverstein 2000b).

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Travellers might encounter birch bark messages that conveyed information about the circumstances of groups or individuals. To read these messages, the recipients had to be familiar with both the system of visual symbols and the social composition of the community. John Tanner (1830, 175) describes how he read such a message: I found the mark of a rattlesnake with a knife, the handle touching the snake, and the point sticking into a bear, the head of the latter being down. Near the rattle snake was the mark of a beaver, one of its dugs, it being a female, touching the snake. This was left for my information, and I learned from it, that Wa-me-gon-a-biew, whose totem was She-she-gwah, the rattlesnake, had killed a man whose totem was Muk-kwah, the bear. The murderer could be no other than Wa-me-gon-a-biew, as it was specified that he was the son of a woman whose totem was the beaver, and this I knew could be no other than Netnokwa. As there were but few of the bear totem in our band, I was confident the man killed was a young man called Ke-zha-zhoons; that he was dead and not wounded, was indicated by the drooping down of the head of the bear. Nawajibigokwe, an elderly Anishinaabe woman at White Earth, Minnesota, made pictographic inscriptions that included “travellers’ messages” as well as “maps” and “narratives” (Densmore 1929, 179–83). In the latter category, Nawajibigokwe produced an example of a pictographic inscription of an episode in the life of her father’s grandmother, Wiigobiins (“Little Basswood Fiber”). The inscription takes the form of a map; yet the accompanying narrative tells a long and detailed story of Wiigobiins’s escape from a smallpox epidemic that began in the village of Wackokagon. She travelled through many other villages. In one, she encountered a medicine man who healed many people by transforming into a Water Serpent. At another location, she buried her sister and recovered her mother’s cache of maple sugar. The narrative ends with her happy marriage and many offspring. Clearly, this inscription is mnemonic rather than purely representational. Nawajibigokwe’s inscriptions show that, in some regions, literacy in narrative pictographs continued into the reservation era. Before her death in 1923, she also gave Densmore (1929, 177, figure 16; 178, figure 19) several examples of travellers’ messages. One of them shows two nuclear families travelling in two canoes. The front canoe contains a father and his three children of the Bear doodem followed by his wife of the Catfish (maanameg) doodem. In the second canoe are a father and his two children of the Eagle doodem followed

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fig. 5.3 travellers’ message, c. 1913–23, by nawajibigokwe

by his wife of the Bear doodem. This group likely represents a food-gathering expedition of an extended family consisting of a brother and sister with her husband and their children. They are probably living with the siblings’ parents, of whom the father would be of the Bear doodem. In the case of the brother-in-law, the inscription depicts an instance of matrilocal residence that has extended beyond the typical temporary period before the birth of the first child. Nawajibigokwe also provided a more complex pictorial narrative that tells the story of a group of Anishinaabeg of five different doodemag who camped at a certain location for two days where they were well supplied with food (figure 5.3). When they saw a group of Sioux warriors up a nearby stream, they departed by an alternate route. They placed the pictograph inscription at the site as a warning to other Anishinaabeg travelling along the same route. Anishinaabeg used these same pictorial conventions on other forms of inscription besides travellers’ messages. Hoffman (1888, 377, 380) gives an example of a “love letter” drawn by a woman of the Bear doodem in which she requests her lover of the Mud Puppy doodem to visit her where she is camping with two friends. He also published a birch bark record that was made to “commemorate a treaty of peace between the Ojibwa and the Assiniboine Indians.” Both chiefs are depicted in abstracted human form due to the intertribal context of the inscription. Similarly, in 1920 Anishinaabe participants in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC ) 250th anniversary presented HBC officials with two pipes and two belts in a ceremony that was a blend of celebratory pageant and diplomatic negotiation (figure 5.4). Both pipe stems

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fig. 5.4

Hudson’s Bay Company diplomatic belt and pipe, 1920

and one of the belts depict doodemag emblems, including Bear, Deer, Moose, Beaver, Otter, and Pelican, as well as unidentifiable fish and birds. They also portray two men, one with a feather and one wearing a hat, who are joined by held hands or by a single line. The remaining belt has the latter symbol of peaceful alliance, with triangular human forms that represent the Anishinaabeg. In 2003 the text of a Manitoba Museum exhibit interpreted these objects as “symbols of the spiritual meaning [the Anishinaabeg] accorded their historical trading partnerships.”17 Both pipes and belts, however, are political symbols associated with chiefly regalia (Willmott 2012, 78–9). Given the context in which HBC officials distributed medals to the assembled chiefs, there can be no doubt that these animal motifs are not guardian spirits but the doodemag of the chiefs they represented. Charles Bishop (1969, 4, 9) notes that nineteenth-century HBC factors recorded their northern Anishinaabe trading partners in terms of bilateral co-residential groups named after the doodem of the leaders, including Deer, Moose, Sucker, Sturgeon, Loon, Pelican, Crane, and Kingfisher. Doodem Emblems and Aadizookaan narratives I have been unable to find any examples of contemporary travellers’ messages. I believe this is due both to changes in the mobility patterns of Anishinaabeg during and after the reservation era as well as to changes in communication technology that make the need for these messages obsolete. On the one hand, messages concerning the movements of individuals and groups were less critical to survival. On the other hand, by the late nineteenth century, the

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clarity of doodemic relational identities was compromised to the extent that complex pictorial messages were no longer coherent. These circumstances led to the discontinuation of dibaajimowin inscriptions. In contrast, pictographic inscriptions of sacred motifs have continued to abound or have been revived. Sacred forms of pictographic inscription include song and ritual scrolls as well as rock art. Beginning in the nineteenth century, scholars found these aadizookaan forms of pictographic inscription more significant than the dibaajimowin genres.18 Their fascination with the aadizookaan inscriptions continued into the late nineteenth century (Hoffman 1891) and proliferated in the late twentieth century (Conway and Conway 1990; Dewdney 1970, 1975; Dewdney and Kidd 1967; Rajnovich 1994; Vastokas and Vastokas 1973). Controversies surround these studies due to the fact that the esoteric song and ritual inscriptions on birch bark were kept secret in Anishinaabe spiritual traditions and because contemporary Anishinaabeg discourage public display of the aadizookaan inscriptions that are now in museum collections.19 The popularity of aadizookaan imagery, however, has grown exponentially since the 1960s.20 The Anishinaabe painter Norval Morrisseau is significant in the revitalization of Anishinaabe aadizookaan traditions in two ways. First, he promoted the disclosure of formerly secret sacred names, and second, he publicized secret sacred imagery. With regard to the first, Morrisseau (1965, 1) proclaimed in the opening sentence of his book of Anishinaabe legends, “I am Norval Morrisseau and my Indian name is Copper Thunderbird.” He was raised by his maternal grandfather, an Assiniboine who was adopted by the Ojibwa. Thereby, the Plains Grizzly Bear doodem was introduced into the Lake Nipigon Ojibwa community. Morrisseau, however, had the doodem of his father, from whom he was estranged. He received his sacred name from a medicine man who cured him of an illness (Penney 2013, 16). We should view Morrisseau’s bold proclamation of his “Indian name” in the dual contexts of traditional Anishinaabe naming customs and a colonial assault on names. Commenting on Jackson Beardy’s name, art historian Kenneth James Hughes (1979, 4) remarks that the “wholesale surrender of Cree names probably resulted from the concerted actions of missionaries of many religious denominations.” To “stamp out” the “detestable heathen nature-religion,” they “attacked the traditional aboriginal system of naming.” The adoption of Christian names was accompanied by baptism and conversion, thereby undermining traditional society. Morrisseau considered himself a Christian, and his struggles to reconcile this orientation with his traditional beliefs exemplify those of many Anishinaabeg of this early revitalization period, which extended from the 1960s through the 1980s.

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Morrisseau’s transgression of Ojibwa name customs has seldom been remarked upon; however, his use of sacred imagery from Midewiwin scrolls in the painting style he created has attracted a lot of attention both within Anishinaabe communities and among art historians (McLuhan 1988, 35; Penney 2013, 15). Although Morrisseau was criticized at the time for painting sacred symbols, now dozens of Anishinaabe painters work in this style, which has since been called the Woodlands School. Moreover, mass distribution through print media has made the sacred imagery ubiquitous in Anishinaabe commercial arts such as posters, t-shirts, and coffee mugs. Another Anishinaabe painter, Daphne Odjig, was influential both in teaching a younger generation the Woodland School and in popularizing it within the mainstream art world through limited-edition prints (Hill 1984, 24). On the north shore of Lake Huron, the Woodland Printers and Native Art Gallery at Serpent River First Nation was influential in promoting the Woodlands School from the early years of revitalization. One of the owners, Jeremiah Day Duncan (2001), told me that during the 1970s they produced calendars featuring local artist Leland Bell that helped bring him and the Woodlands School national recognition. At the same time, his father founded the first commercial printing company in the region. Today, their print shop provides a full range of printing services from business cards to Woodlands art t-shirts. They support local Woodlands School artists by purchasing their work not only for their gallery but also for printed graphics of Anishinaabe service organizations and cultural events. Across the border in Michigan, the Ziibiwing Cultural Society has been influential in promoting the revival of Anishinaabe arts. Its logo of the Saginaw Swan Creek Black River Band of Chippewa, designed by Steve Pego, incorporates his own Fish doodem and the Turtle doodem (figure 5.5). Both are the “philosophers of our tribe,” says Pego, and the Turtle is also “round like Mother Earth.” Additional symbols include a swan for the nearby Swan Creek and a darkened river for Black River, a coming together of waters that serves as a meeting place (Pego, in MacDowell and Benz 1999, 56). This exemplifies how the doodemag emblems have become incorporated into a more general aesthetic lexicon derived from aadizookaan inscriptions. Moreover, such mobile everyday objects, especially event t-shirts, are incorporated into biographical narratives (Silverstein 2000b, 354–5)21 and into the Ziibiwing Cultural Society’s dibaajimowinan stories. This logo appears on a t-shirt commemorating the Indigenous Peoples Art Market held at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in 2000. On Manitoulin Island, the Manitou Arts Foundation began holding annual art camps for youth in 1971 (Odjig, Vanderburgh, and Southcott 1992, 73). By

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fig. 5.5 ziibiwing Cultural Society logo on t-shirt, 2000, by Steve Pego

1977 the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (OCF ) had inherited these camps (S. Corbiere 2013). In the summer of 2009, OCF camp leaders told student participants stories about Shawanasowe, who received healing powers in a vision quest on Dreamer’s Rock near Manitoulin Island. The students then hiked up to Dreamer’s Rock, where they could personally experience the spiritual power of the place for inspiration in their artwork. They were then shown a presentation about doodem signatures on treaty documents, which became a “focal point of the campers’ art” (A. Corbiere 2009, 8). The program of this artist camp exemplifies the contemporary Anishinaabe cultural matrix, in which the land, the manidoo bawaaganag associated with it, and the doodemag all blend together in a characteristic Anishinaabe visual style and in the personal life histories of Anishinaabeg. transforming Guardian Spirits, Sacred names, and Doodem narratives To understand the predominance of spiritual imagery in contemporary Woodlands School art, we must delve into the guardian spirit tradition. In

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contrast with the doodem, a guardian spirit is acquired through a naming ceremony and/or a vision quest. In nineteenth-century accounts, successful puberty vision quests resulted in relationships with one or more guardian spirits who conferred very particular gifts. In puberty dreams collected by Johann Kohl (1860, 206–8, 240–1) in 1855, Agabe-gijik received “health, and strength, and long life, and all creatures of nature.” Four spiritual grandfathers presented him with a box of medicines to symbolize the first two gifts, after which they told him that their white hair represented the old age that he would attain. They then showed him a wigwam full of animals of all descriptions, which they gave to him while stating that he would become a famous hunter. Similarly, when Kagagengs fasted, the Sun summoned him to his lodge, where he showed him four persons who he gave to him to be his future sons. Additionally, the Sun told him that his own white hair symbolized the long life that Kagagengs would live. Finally, the Sun handed Kagagengs an eagle and a white bear with a brass collar. The latter two were to be Kagagengs’ “protecting spirits,” images of which he subsequently sewed on his blankets and carved on his pipes. He also made wooden effigies that he kept in his medicine sack. Nineteenth-century recipients of guardian spirits’ favour represented their gifts in pictographic emblems on their clothing and other personal property. They also recorded entire visions on birch bark, which were nonetheless kept secret lest the visions lose their power (Schoolcraft 1851, 390–7). Some time between 1822 and 1836, a Christian convert, Catherine Wabose (also Ogeewy-ahn-oqut-o-kwa, or “Bright Blue Sky”), gave Jane and Henry Schoolcraft a drawing of her puberty vision quest, during which she received powers that enabled her to become a jessakid (“prophetess”) (figure 5.6).22 Schoolcraft provides three separate accounts of this pictographic inscription. Two of them are numbered lists that correspond to numbers in the illustration, and the final one is a transcription of an oral account that Wabose gave to Jane Schoolcraft, Henry’s wife. The two women were related through common descent from Wabojeeg (“White Fisher”) of the Caribou doodem and the “ruling chief ” of Chequamegon (Schoolcraft 1855, 525). This inscription illustrates several of the ways that nineteenth-century Anishinaabeg crafted their individual and collective identities to maximize social and spiritual benefits in Anishinaabe and settler worlds. It reads from right to left. Wabose drew herself in her menstrual lodge as a circular face with long hair extending from the top23 and an upright triangular body to represent her gender (nos 1 and 2). Travelling along a silver cord (no. 3), Wabose saw the moon with a flame on her right (no. 6) and a sun holding an object she thought might be a book (nos 7 and 8). These manidoog portend that Wabose will meet manidoog of the Sky World. Continuing along the path,

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fig. 5.6

Pictograph of a puberty vision, c. 1830, by Seth Eastman, after

Catherine wabose

she saw on her right a person who identified herself as Everlasting Standing Woman (no. 9). At the same time, she gave Wabose her name and the power to give her name to others, as well as the gift of long life and the power to cure others. Lines coming forth from Everlasting Standing Woman’s mouth signify not only that she spoke to Wabose but also that she granted her the power of naming. Sacred names contained the spiritual power of a guardian spirit and were most potent when not spoken aloud (Schoolcraft 1852, 66). The next person Wabose encountered also told her his name, Little Man Spirit, which he gave to her first son (no. 10). Next, Wabose encountered Bright Blue Sky (no. 11), who guarded the opening to the Sky World (no. 12). He made her undergo three trials with points jabbed into her skin (nos 15 and 17), and he gave her his name to give to others. He told her she had come to the limit beyond which she could not pass and directed her to mount a fish (no. 13) that would take her back to her body, which he said must be sustained with food when she got back. Indeed, her mother brought her a portion of dried fish as her first food to break her fast. However, she continued to fast another three days, during which she saw the previous vision again and had another vision in which a Woodpecker manidoo (no. 18) gave her the power to see into the future and thus to become a jessakid. At the far right of Wabose’s inscription are several figures that provide context but are not part of the vision story proper. According with convention, Wabose represented the ten days of her puberty fast with sticks (no. 5). Similarly, in the vision inscription that Amongs interpreted for Kohl (1860, 400–

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1), he drew nine sticks to represent the nine days he spent fasting. These sticks provide the context in which to read the inscription, and they lend weight to the authority of the dream powers it depicts. Wabose marked the sixth day, when she received the main vision, with a cross (no. 4). Schoolcraft (1851, 391) was probably mistaken that the crossed lines at number 16 represent “a symbol of harm.” In the 1880s a Midewiwin priest at Red Lake, Minnesota, told William Hoffman (1888, 372) that this figure, which appeared four times in two bark inscriptions, represented “a woman, and signifies that women may also be admitted to the Midewiwin.” Selwyn Dewdney (1970, 18–19) similarly interprets an hourglass rendering of an anthropomorphic figure with downward sloping projections at the top corners of the inverted triangle as a “female shaman.” If we are reading these correctly, this figure in Wabose’s inscription may also function to authenticate the powers of her vision and her right to them. The style Wabose used to represent herself in abstracted human form (no. 2) is characteristic of the esoteric lexicon used for sacred inscriptions but not of exoteric inscriptions used for everyday communications. In the exoteric style, Anishinaabeg portray themselves by their doodemag, whereas all non-Anishinaabeg are shown in human form. The remaining two figures in this design field are a “rabbit” (no. 19) and a “kind of fish” (no. 20) (Schoolcraft 1851, 391). Schoolcraft explains the “rabbit” as “a symbol of her present name” (wabose, meaning “hare”), but he gives no explanation for the fish. Both the important role of sacred names in Wabose’s vision and the fact that she adopted her Christian husband’s name as a surname give pause for reflection. First, we might take into account that Wabose is related in legends as synonymous with, or the brother of, Nanabozho, the Anishinaabe culture hero (Nicholas Perrot, in Blair 1911, 1, 32–40; Schoolcraft 1851, 317–18). He is also one of the original doodemag whose domain is the sky (Bohaker 2013, 88). Yet the adoption of her husband’s surname at marriage signifies Wabose’s conversion to Christianity. Anishinaabe women did not change their doodem at marriage. Because American kinship is bilateral, we cannot assume that when Schoolcraft said Wabose was “in a direct line of descent” from Waubojeeg, he meant to infer that she shared his doodem of the Caribou. More likely, the fish depicted in her inscription (no. 20) is her own doodem, the Catfish (maanameg). I surmise this because it is portrayed in the conventional style for drawing the Catfish doodem from above with eyes and whiskers, as seen on treaty documents and other exoteric inscriptions (Bohaker 2013, 461; Densmore 1929, 177–9). We can see from this cluster of images at the right side of Wabose’s inscription that she has appropriated a Western naming convention in order to add power to her association with the Sky World man-

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idoog of her vision. Conversely, the fish at numbers 13 and 20, as well as the first food she ate to break her fast, relate to her alliances in the realm of human social relations. As the nineteenth century progressed, cross-cultural contexts demanded creative new applications of the pictographic lexicon. During the first half of the century, a Minnesota fur trader used pictographic symbols to record the trade items, and how many of them, each customer took on credit. To designate individual customers, he employed the Ruffed Grouse doodem and unidentified emblems that may designate personal names (Anonymous c. 1836–48).24 Schoolcraft (1852, 222, plate 54) published an example of an 1849 “Indian Census” from Mille Lacs that similarly employs emblems for “family names.” Nago-nabe drew this census to ensure accurate accounting in annuity payments. According to Schoolcraft, it was necessary to draw family names rather than doodemag because the “band are nearly all of one totem.” Although he believed that mid-nineteenth-century Ojibwa villages were composed of a single doodem patrilineage and their affines, evidence suggests that villages in that region were already composed of two or three doodem patrilineages by the late eighteenth century (Schenck 1997, 64–6, 68). Moreover, seven out of the thirty-five census “names” are recognizable conventional doodem emblems. Although the doodem composition of the village is inconclusive, this evidence certainly shows that Nago-nabe employed pictographs to designate individuals’ personal names. These examples of the innovative use of inscriptions show that individual identities took on increasing importance in economic exchanges in both fur trade and diplomatic contexts. Among nineteenth-century Anishinaabeg, economic exchanges were governed by principles of reciprocity (White 1982). In this context, doodem bawaaganag were able to give gifts much like guardian spirits do. When the gift exchange was between the living and the dead, the hospitality expected between members of the same doodem was virtually indistinguishable from the help of guardian spirits. For example, John Tanner (1830, 108) relates an incident in which he camped at a place where two brothers “who bore the same totem” as himself had killed each other. During the night, these two appeared and spoke to him: “‘There, my brother,’ said the [jiibay], ‘is a horse which I give you to ride on your journey tomorrow; and as you pass here on your way home, you can call and leave the horse, and spend another night with us.’” Tanner was unable to speak or move from the spot in terror of their appearance. At dawn, however, his fear subsided and he contemplated the rest of his journey: “[T]he frequent instances in which I had known the intimations of dreams verified, occasioned me to think seriously of the horse the [jiibay] had given me. Accordingly, I went to the top of the hill, where

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I discovered tracks and other signs, and following a little distance, found a horse, which I knew belonged to the trader I was going to see.” In the realm of human interaction, doodem reciprocity took the form of hospitality and generosity, particularly the sharing of food (Bishop 1973, 8). Such reciprocity was extended to all members of one’s doodem even if they were of another nation (Howard 1965, 59). A corpus of stories that Maggie Wilson of Emo, Ontario, narrated between 1932 and 1936 shows that these customs continued into the reservation era. One story shows the ambiguity of manidoo and doodem bawaaganag (Wilson 1932–36, story 40, 20–2). A young woman had been wandering in the woods for about a month when she came upon a village. However, she was too shy to enter it “because she was all ragged and her hair never combed.” A young hunter dreamed of a young woman watching the village. Thinking it meant there was a bear there, he went to the spot shown in his dream and found the young woman. He then asked his sister to help clothe her, and “the young man and his sister came and other women which had the same doodem as her and gave her some things.” The story implies that the Bear doodem intervened to alert the girl’s doodem relatives of her needs by showing her to them in a dream. The dream format was so similar to those involving guardian spirits that, at first, the dreamer thought it was a message from a Bear manidoo in human form. It was only upon finding the girl that he realized the “bear” was his doodem relative. The story reverses the direction of reciprocity. Instead of the Bear manidoo offering itself to humans, the Bear doodem asked to be “pitied” by human relations. At least for this time period, not all shadow soul bawaaganag were doodem ancestors. Deceased household members of different doodem could also appear. In one of Maggie Wilson’s (2009, 148) stories, a boy’s dead mother came to him in a dream and gave him the gift of transforming poor pieces of meat into choice ones. In another of her stories, a girl’s dead mother came to her in the form of a skeleton and gave her the news that soon her father would also die (44). This appearance portended evil since it inferred that her father would become an aadizookaan baagaag, a ghost-like being who appears in the form of a skeleton.25 The father was destined to perpetual roaming as a skeleton because he had killed his brother in order to marry his brother’s wife (Johnston 2007, 17). Both of these stories feature the “wicked stepmother” motif. The retribution taken by the dead mothers is due to the failure of the fathers to adequately perform the rites of mourning. A widow or widower is expected to compensate the doodem relatives of his or her spouse for the loss of a life. Only after the relatives ritually release the mourner is it considered proper to remarry (Landes 1937, 44). Retribution of the deceased or his or her

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doodem relations, living or dead, is the inevitable outcome of such a breach of social mores. In the absence of a doodem, a guardian spirit may provide the gifts of power necessary to live a successful life. Maggie Wilson (1932–36, story 10, 1–21) told a story about Queses Begge, the daughter of a Cree woman and a “half-breed” with no doodem. After her father’s death, her mother married an Ojibwe of the Moose doodem. Wilson describes at length the measures Queses’s mother took to ensure that her daughter had a proper puberty fast and reincorporation ceremony. Afterwards, however, the girl became so accomplished that her mother became jealous and drove her away. Her stepfather had no opportunity to adopt her into his doodem. Queses married a half-breed and moved to Kenora, where she raised a family of ten children, all of whom became successful in the growing settler society. She lived to be very old and had a proper funeral, even though she had no doodem. This story contains a double irony. First, Queses acquired the powers she needed to succeed in settler society through her puberty fast, and second, lacking doodem relatives, she found her place among her doodemless father’s people. Here Anishinaabe doodem exogamy is replaced with Metis endogamy. Survival in the twentieth century could not depend on doodemag; hence manidoo bawaaganag came to the fore. During the early twentieth century, not only did doodem bawaaganag appear in the dreams of their human relatives, but the spiritual powers humans acquired in vision quests could also be passed through the doodemic line. For example, Matthews and Roulette (2003, 267, 274, 278, 281) note that one of the reasons why the Ojibwe medicine man Naamiwan could not be consoled over the death of his grandson was that the boy was “seen as the direct heir to Naamiwan’s gifts through Angus,” Naamiwan’s oldest son. After the first grandson’s death, the spiritual gifts fell to his younger brother, Charlie George Owen. Significantly, Angus, who also had the spiritual powers associated with his father’s drum, had to legitimate this gift through his own visionary encounter with bawaaganag. The transference of power was not automatic, and it also had to be proven empirically by successful healing ceremonies. In contemporary times, spiritual powers may still be passed through the ancestral line if subsequently legitimated through one’s own efforts. Two instances known to me involve Shawanasowe, a medicine person from Birch Island, Ontario. My friend Marilyn Johnson served an apprenticeship under his descendant John-Paul before his death in 1976. In her master’s thesis about this experience, Johnson (1983, 1–2) notes that John-Paul “inherited his shamanic power from his father’s lineage, his grandfather being Shawanasowe.” John-Paul’s father descended from Shawanasowe’s daughter who married

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a Scottish fur trader. It appears, therefore, that ancestral power can also be passed through the maternal line, particularly when a suitable candidate has European paternal ancestry. Such was also the case with Marilyn: “When I was about five years old, my mother’s grandfather died; I believe that I inherited his ‘power’ or his spiritual energy at that time. My spiritual abilities were heightened after that event. In addition to soul traveling, spirits come from the Land of the Dead from the Western direction to ‘speak’ to me; I ‘see’ visions and interpret them into art – embroidery on fabric” (1). This form of power transference is indirectly related to the doodem system. Shawanasowe achieved his legendary powers by acquiring guardian spirits through fasting. He has been immortalized at Birch Island through many stories of his healing powers26 and a public school dedicated to his name. He also encountered the artist Paul Kane (1858, 11–16), who painted his likeness and recorded a story about him.27 Like John-Paul, Zeek Cywink is a descendant of Shawanasowe’s daughter. Cywink (1993–2000) does not claim her doodem of the Pike28 because he holds strictly to the patrilineal principle. Rather, he recalls that during childhood dreams certain ancestors, Shawanasowe among them, introduced him to their guardian spirits, who were the sources of their powers. Like the gifts acquired by Naamiwan’s sons, therefore, the spiritual inheritance from Cywink’s ancestors was not something that could be passed directly from one person to another. Instead, it consisted of a set of spiritual relationships that required his active engagement to develop. However, it took him many years to arrive at his present understanding and to develop his powers since there were no teachers to assist him in his childhood. John-Paul, for instance, was at that time shunned for his shamanism in the Catholic community of Birch Island, and children were expressly warned against visiting him. Doodemag and Empowerment The use of travellers’ messages declined rapidly after the creation of reservations, where seminomadic lifeways were no longer practicable. By the early twentieth century, the doodem system had ceased to function as a corporate lineage, with exogamous marriage remaining its sole function as a principle of social organization. Simultaneously, youths no longer customarily practised puberty fasting. Despite all these changes, the latter half of the twentieth century saw a revival of doodem identities and emblems, which are imbued with spiritual, social, and political power. As was the case 200 years ago, these emblems both reflect and influence the social cohesion of the Anishinaabe nation. The experiential phenomenon of ancestral visitations and the transference of power relationships have facilitated an increase in the spiritual functions

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of doodemag in the years since residential schools and other factors forcibly removed puberty fasting from the customary practice of the Anishinaabeg. Specifically, spiritual aspects of doodemag were passive or latent when they were functioning as a cohesive social system. The mid-twentieth-century state of social disintegration, however, necessitated that doodemag take an active spiritual role with regard to both community and individual concerns. Thus, as in Diana Whiteduck’s (1999) case, ancestral bawaaganag exhort their descendants to embrace their Anishinaabe traditions and identities. In contemporary Anishinaabe culture, doodem bawaaganag have become virtually interchangeable with manidoo bawaaganag due to the transformation in the roles of sacred names and the pervasiveness of the Woodlands School, which blends imagery of aadizookaanag and doodemag. Both of these trends are integral to the revitalization of Anishinaabe language and spirituality. In this context, it is as valid to discover one’s doodem through genealogical research as it is to acquire one in a naming ceremony. Both are part of the healing process. In this manner, Anishinaabe individuals are spiritually empowered by affirming their place among their human and spiritual relations.

Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful for the Anishinaabe friends with whom I shared the portion of my life that this chapter draws upon. They, and the Anishinaabe consultants whom I interviewed, helped me to glimpse within an Anishinaabe view, which I hope I have respectfully and accurately represented here. I am also grateful for the encouragement and mentorship of Dick Preston, Harvey Feit, and Trudy Nicks, each of whom guided my academic development through this period. Jennifer S.H. Brown, John S. Long, Alan Corbiere, Elizabeth Willmott, Donald Willmott, and several anonymous reviewers made valuable editorial suggestions. I also want to thank Heidi Bohaker and Alan Corbiere, colleagues in the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Culture (GRASAC ), with whom I have shared many journeys, real and metaphorical, in relation to this project. All errors and omissions remain my own. Finally, I wish to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support of this project.

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NoTeS

1 Apart from variants quoted in other sources, all Anishinaabe-language terms used in this chapter employ the double-vowel orthography of Charles Fiero as set out in Nichols and Nyholm (1995). “Anishinaabe,” “doodem,” and “manidoo,” as well as their plurals, are not italicized upon first mention because they have become integrated into the English language from frequent usage. 2 Anishinaabe (plural -g) is a self-designatory term for Algonquian-speaking groups such as the Ojibwe (or Chippewa), Odawa, Potawatomi, Menominee, Algonkin, and sometimes Crees. It does not include the Wendat (or Huron), Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois), or Sioux (Lakota, Dakota, Oglala, etc.) peoples, all of whom are members of other language groups. This chapter focuses mainly on the Ojibwe, although it touches on examples from the Odawa, Algonkin, and Crees. 3 During the 1990s, the Toronto First Nations community also included many individuals who had recently, or were imminently expecting to, gain or regain their “Indian” status through Bill C –31, a 1985 amendment to the Indian Act that corrected gender bias by allowing descent to be traced through the maternal line. For an extended discussion of the origins of Bill C –31, see Silman (1987). 4 Many scholars have described the differences between these two categories for the Ojibwe (Bohaker 2013, 39–40; Hallowell 1976a, 364–5; Silverstein and Cywink 2000, 40–1) and for the Crees (Brightman 1989, 6–7; Preston 1975, 288–93). 5 It should be noted that these categories vary greatly among Anishinaabe communities (Silverstein and Cywink 2000, 40). Even the word aadizookaan, which is animate in Southwestern Ojibwa, as employed in this chapter, is rendered as aansookaan, an inanimate term in the Manitoulin dialect (A. Corbiere 2014). 6 For a similar situation among the eastern James Bay Crees, see Preston (1975, 16–17). 7 This was a theme in my dissertation chapter that needs further elaboration (Silverstein 2000b, 91, 102–3). Alanson Skinner (1914, 481) noted this trend among the Plains Ojibwe. On the change from doodem territories to “multiclan villages” during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Bishop (1998, 259), Hickerson (1962, 69–71, 82–5), and Schenck (1997, 39–45). 8 See Bohaker’s (2013, 47–8) discussion of an aadizookaan story that Nicholas Perrot recorded in which Anishinaabeg descended from their doodemag. 9 Hallowell (1966) argued that the puberty fast functioned as a mechanism of social control by fostering both self-discipline and self-confidence, which enabled Anishinaabeg to take responsibility for their own behaviour while providing assurance of support for right behaviour. I partly agree with this interpretation, but my approach in this chapter is not as narrowly functionalist. 10 This chapter is, in part, a clarification of the assertion made by me and Kevin Brownlee that doodemag and guardian spirits “bore no relation to each other” (Willmott and Brownlee 2010, 74). Although a clear distinction is desirable in the context of reading doodem emblems and inscriptions on regalia, the deeper

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11 12

13

14 15

16

17 18

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relationship between them must be drawn out in order to fully comprehend these doodemic symbols in their cultural and historic contexts. For extended discussions and examples of this concept, see Bohaker (2013, 114– 16) and Silverstein (2000a, 86–8). As was typical for Krieghoff, he produced at least two similar paintings of Nebenagoching. The other one is in the Thompson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario and is published in Harper (1979, plate 52) and Reid (1999, plate 26). Differences between the two renditions include the addition in the Thompson Collection version of a fan, wampum string necklaces, a circular medal, and two more feathers in the headdress. The background is also different. The 1849 photograph reproduced in Chute (1998) suggests that both of these paintings have elements of his actual regalia but that neither exactly represents it. Krieghoff shared a studio with Somerville, who, on the same occasion, made pencil drawings of Shingwauk and Nebenagoching. An etching produced from these drawings, in which the two chiefs wear outfits identical to those depicted by Krieghoff, was published in the Illustrated London News on 15 September 1849 (Chute 1998; Harper 1979, 52–3). For an explanation and illustration of this crane posture, see International Crane Foundation (n.d.). This feather is not clear in the photograph and lithograph reproduced in Chute (1998). It may be explained by the poor quality of these images, or it may have been a Krieghoff addition. For discussions of this art form, and illustrations of traditional designs, see Densmore (1929, 88–90, plates 84 and 85), Lienke (1976, passim), and Howard (1980, passim). This text appeared next to a display of one of the pipes and belts in an exhibit of the Hudson Bay Collection at the Manitoba Museum in 2003. In his essay on the “Intellectual Capacity and Character of the Indian Race,” Schoolcraft (1851, 333–54, 358–411, 416–20) devotes almost twice as many pages to his discussion of religious practitioners’ pictography as he does to secular genres. Following Schoolcraft, Kohl (1860, 150–5, 285–97, 386–94, 397–404) seeks esoteric inscriptions. I was aware of this movement during the 1990s. I have also encountered it in collaborative museum collections research with members of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Culture (GRASAC ). In a community consultation that I conducted for GRASAC in 2009, a majority of respondents from the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa and from the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation suggested that sacred materials could be drawn but not photographed (Willmott 2014, 6, 9). For more information about GRASAC , see Bohaker, Corbiere, and Phillips (2014) and Phillips (2011, 289–96). There are innumerable individuals and organizations that could be mentioned in connection with the revitalization and popularization of Anishinaabe art based

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on aadizookaan. The discussion that follows touches on only some of the best and least known of these influences. For an interesting discussion of the similar functions of t-shirts with Northwest Coast crest motifs among the Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia, see Glass (2008). Schoolcraft (1851, 390) explains that Wabose drew this inscription herself, but it was then transcribed to a smaller sheet for publication. This contrasts with another pictographic inscription of a vision that Schoolcraft says merely “imitates the Indian method of drawing” (389). I would be tempted to interpret these as power lines, but Wabose says that in number 14 the lines are “my hair floating behind me in the air” (in Schoolcraft 1851, 393). This trade ledger has been attributed to Louis Provençale, an American who traded furs with the Sioux around St Peter, Minnesota. The ledger’s donor, Clement H. Beaulieu, was not sure whether the author was in Sioux or Ojibwa territory. He described all of the name symbols as “arbitrary signs,” apparently not recognizing the Anishinaabe Ruffed Grouse emblem. The presence of the latter, clearly in the “drumming” posture of the male during the mating season, strongly suggests that the Provençale attribution is erroneous. It is more likely that the ledger was written by a trader who dealt with Ojibwa customers in northern Minnesota and/or across the Canadian border. Densmore (1929, 76, plate 29a) gives an example of a Ruffed Grouse doodem grave marker, which she attributes to “Canadian Chippewa,” presumably at Manitou Rapids, Ontario, where she conducted fieldwork. The term “baagaag” does not appear in Nichols and Nyholm (1995). From working with linguists and Anishinaabe elders, Alan Corbiere (2014) found that there is uncertainty about the vowel length at the end of the word, but he recommended “baagaag.” This term is often given as some variation of “paukuk,” but in Fiero style, p would be b and k would be g. For two of Cywink’s stories about Shawanasowe, see Silverstein and Cywink (2000, 37–40). Radin (c. 1913, 109–10) also collected a story about Shawanasowe at Birch Island in 1913. Cywink (1993–2000) denounces the story Kane relates about Shawanasowe because it has never been told in his family or community. Kane’s painting is in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM 912.1.6). Kane erroneously translates Shawanasowe as “Faces to the West.” Realizing that zhaawanong means “south,” rather than “west,” I asked Lillian McGregor, Cywink’s aunt (also descended from Shawanasowe) what the name means. She and a number of other fluent speakers agreed that the name derives from zhaawanong and bmose (“he or she walks”). The translations they suggested were “He Walks South,” “He Who Walks South,” or “Walking South.” More plausibly, Alan Corbiere (2014) argues the name derives from zhaawanong and inaaswe (an archaic term meaning

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“facing a certain direction”), which suggests that Kane had only the direction wrong. 28 Alan Corbiere (2012b, 15) published an image of Shawanasowe’s treaty signature doodem. It can easily be identified as a Pike through Bohaker’s (2013, 462) detailed analysis of doodemag images, which enables us to make fine-tuned identifications of the images’ referents. reFereNCeS

Aarons, Anita, Walter T. Sunahara, Mary Lou Fox-Radulovich, and Tomson Highway. 1982. From Our Hands: An Exhibition of Native Hand Crafts. Toronto: Ontario Crafts Council. Anonymous. c. 1836–48. Indian trade ledger. Attributed to Louis Provençale, with notes by Clement H. Beaulieu. Minnesota Historical Society, P 1255. Baraga, Frederic. 1878. A Dictionary of the Ojibway Language. Reprint, St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992. Bishop, Charles. 1969. “Changes in the Social Organization of the Northern Ojibwa during the First Half of the 19th Century.” Canadian Museum of Civilization Archives, III -G -7M , box 15, fol. 3. – 1973. “Environmental Degeneration among the Northern Ojibwa: Cultural and Biological Consequences.” Canadian Museum of Civilization Archives, III -G -11M , box 16, fol. 5. – 1998. “The Politics of Property among the Northern Algonquians.” In Property in Economic Context, ed. Robert C. Hunt and Antonio Gilman, 247–67. New York: University Press of America. Blair, Emma Helen, ed. 1911. The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes. 2 vols. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Bohaker, Heidi. 2006. “Nindoodemag: The Significance of Algonquian Kinship Networks in the Eastern Great Lakes Region, 1600–1701.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 63, no. 1: 23–52. – 2010. “Anishinaabe Toodaims: Contexts for Politics, Kinship, and Identity in the Eastern Great Lakes.” In Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories, ed. Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers, 93–118. Vancouver: UBC Press. – 2013. “The Politics of Treaty Pictographs: Inscribing Anishinaabe Kinship Networks in the Eastern Great Lakes Region.” Unpublished manuscript. Bohaker, Heidi, Alan Corbiere, and Ruth B. Phillips. 2014. “Wampum Unites Us: Digital Circulation, Interdisciplinary and Indigenous Knowledge – Situating the GRASAC Knowledge Sharing Database.” In Translating Knowledge: Global Perspectives on Museum and Community, ed. Ray Silverman, 45–66. London: Routledge. Boyd, John P. c. 1830s. “Col. Boyd’s Account.” Burton Historical Collection, Chippewa Manuscripts, MS /14C , Trowbridge Papers, Detroit Public Library.

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Brightman, Robert. 1989. Acaoohkiwina and Acimowina: Traditional Narratives of the Rock Cree Indians. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization. Chute, Janet. 1998. The Legacy of Shingwaukonse: A Century of Native Leadership. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Conway, Thor, and Julie Conway. 1990. Spirits on Stone: The Agawa Pictographs. San Luis Obispo, CA : Heritage Discoveries. Corbiere, Alan. 2009. “OCF Anishinaabe Art Camp.” Ojibwe Cultural Foundation Newsletter 4, no. 6: 1, 8–11. – 2010. “Medals: Heirlooms, Baubles, or Reminders of Our Rights?” Ojibwe Cultural Foundation Newsletter 5, no. 2: 10–12. – 2012a. “Anishinaabe Headgear: Symbolic, Cultural and Linguistic Meanings.” American Indian Art Magazine 37, no. 3: 38–47. – 2012b. “Shauwunauseway.” Ojibwe Cultural Foundation Newsletter 7, no. 2: 15. – 2014. Personal communication with Cory Willmott. Corbiere, Sophie. 2013. “OCF Artcamp.” PowerPoint presentation. Ojibwe Cultural Foundation. Cywink, Zeek. 1993–2000. Personal communication with Cory Willmott. Densmore, Frances. 1929. Chippewa Customs. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution. Dewdney, Selwyn. 1970. Dating Rock Art in the Canadian Shield. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum. – 1975. Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Dewdney, Selwyn, and Kenneth Kidd. 1967. Indian Paintings of the Great Lakes. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Duncan, Jeremiah Day. 2001. Taped interview with Cory Willmott. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory of Art. Oxford: Clarendon. Glass, Aaron. 2008. “Crests on Cotton: ‘Souvenir’ T-Shirts and the Materiality of Remembrance among Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia.” Museum Anthropology 31, no. 1: 1–18. Hallowell, A Irving. 1937. “Cross-Cousin Marriage in the Lake Winnipeg Area.” In Twenty-fifth Anniversary Studies, ed. D.S. Davidson, 95–110. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. – 1942. The Role of Conjuring in Saulteaux Society. New York: Octagon Books. – 1960. “Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior and Worldview.” Reprinted in Contributions to Anthropology: Selected Papers of A. Irving Hallowell, ed. R. Fogelson, F. Eggan, M.E. Spiro, G.W. Stocking, A.F.C. Wallace, and W.E. Washburn, 357–90. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. – 1966. “The Role of Dreams in Ojibwa Culture.” Reprinted in Contributions to Anthropology: Selected Papers of A. Irving Hallowell, ed. R. Fogelson, F. Eggan, M.E. Spiro, G.W. Stocking, A.F.C. Wallace, and W.E. Washburn, 449–74. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

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– 1992. The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Hamilton, Martha. 1995. Silver in the Fur Trade, 1680–1820. Chelmsford, MA : Martha Hamilton. Harper, John Russell. 1979. Krieghoff. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hawley, Donna Lea. 1984. The Indian Act Annotated. Calgary: Carswell. Hickerson, Harold. 1962. The Southwestern Chippewa: An Ethnohistorical Study. Menasha, WI : American Anthropological Association. Hill, Tom. 1984. “Indian Arts in Canada: An Historical Perspective.” In Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers, ed. Tom Hill and Elizabeth McLuhan, 11–27. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario. Hoffman, Walter James. 1888. “Pictography and Shamanistic Rites of the Ojibwa.” Reprinted in Native North American Art History, ed. Z.P. Mathews and A. Jonaitis, 376–81. Palo Alto, CA : Peek, 1982. – 1891. The Midéwiwin or “Grand Medicine Society” of the Ojibwa. Washington, DC : Government Printing Office. Howard, James. 1965. The Plains Ojibwa or Bungi: Hunters and Warriors of the Northern Prairies with Special Reference to the Turtle Mountain Band. Vermillion: University of South Dakota Museum. – 1980. “Birch Bark and Paper Cut-Outs: An Art Form of the Northern Woodlands and the Prairie Border.” American Indian Art Magazine 5, no. 4: 54–61, 86–7. Hubbard, Anny. 1999. Taped telephone interview with Cory Willmott. Hughes, Kenneth James. 1979. “Jackson Beardy: Life and Art.” Dimension 14, no. 2: 1–49. International Crane Foundation. N.d. Field Guide to Crane Behavior. Pamphlet. http://www.savingcranes.org/images/stories/pdf/educators/Field_Guide.pdf. Ireland-Noganosh, Dawn. 1995. “The Jingle Dress.” Aboriginal Voices 2, no. 2: 62. Jenness, Diamond. 1935. The Ojibwa Indians of Parry Island: Their Social and Religious Life. Ottawa: National Museum of Canada. Johnson, Marilyn. 1983. “My Apprenticeship with a Modern Ojibwa Shaman: A Personal and Comparative Analysis of Shamanic Flight.” MA thesis, York University. Johnston, Basil. 2007. Anishinaubae Thesaurus. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Kane, Paul. 1858. Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1996. Kinietz, W. Vernon. 1965. The Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 1615–1760. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Kohl, Johann Georg. 1860. Kitchi-Gami: Life among the Lake Superior Ojibway. Reprint, St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1985. Kokoko, Peter. 2000. Anishnabe Doodemwin. Cutler, ON : Woodland Printers and Native Art Gallery. Landes, Ruth. 1937. Ojibwa Sociology. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. Totemism. Boston: Beacon. Lienke, Nancy Way. 1976. “Persistence and Repetitions of Algonquian Woodlands Design in a Contemporary Chippewa Community.” Minnesota Archaeologist 35, no. 1: 2–15. Long, John. 1791. Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader. Reprint, Toronto: Coles, 1971. Lovisek, Joan, Tim Holzkamm, and Leo Waisberg. 1997. “Fatal Errors: Ruth Landes and the Creation of the ‘Atomistic Ojibwa.’” Anthropologica 39, nos 1–2: 133–45. MacDonald, Debbie. 1995. Taped interview with Cory Willmott. MacDowell, Marsha, and Charmaine Benz, eds. 1999. E’aawyaang: Who We Are. Mount Pleasant: Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. Masson, L.R., ed. 1889. Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest: Récits de Voyages, Lettres, et Rapports Inédits Relatifs au Nord-Ouest Canadien. Vol. 2. Reprint, New York: Antiquarian, 1960. Matthews, Maureen, and Roger Roulette. 2003. “Fair Wind’s Dream: Naamiwan Obawaajigewin.” In Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, 2nd ed., ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, 263–92. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McLuhan, Elizabeth. 1988. “The Woodland Indians.” In Canada’s Native Peoples, ed. Charles Humber, 26–35. Toronto: Heirloom. Morrisseau, Norval. 1965. Legends of My People, the Great Ojibway. Ed. Selwyn Dewdney. Toronto: Ryerson. Nichols, John, and Earl Nyholm. 1995. A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Odjig, Daphne, Rosamond Vanderburgh, and Beth Southcott. 1992. A Paintbrush in My Hand. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History. Patterson, Mary. 2006. “Agency, Kinship, and History in North Ambrym.” Royal Anthropological Institute 12, no. 1: 211–17. Penney, David. 2013. “Introduction: Water, Earth, Sky.” In Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes, ed. David Penney and Gerald McMaster, 9–36. Washington, DC : National Museum of the American Indian. Phillips, Ruth B. 2011. Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Preston, Richard J. 1975. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events. Ottawa: National Museum of Man. Radin, Paul. c. 1913. “Social and Religious Customs of the Ojibwa of Southeastern Ontario, Including Extracts from Earlier Published Records.” Canadian Museum of Civilization Archives, III -G -39M , box 67, fol. 1. – 1936. “Ojibwa and Ottawa Puberty Dreams.” In Essays in Anthropology Presented to A.L. Kroeber in Celebration of His 60th Birthday, June 11, 1936, 233–64. Reprint, Freeport, NY : Books for Libraries Press, 1968. Rajnovich, Grace. 1994. Reading Rock Art: Interpreting the Indian Rock Paintings of the Canadian Shield. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History.

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Reid, Dennis. 1999. Krieghoff: Images of Canada. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre. Roark-Calnek, Sue N. 1996. “A Wedding in the Bush: Continuity and Change in Algonquin Marriage.” In The Algonquins, ed. Daniel Clément, 155–92. Gatineau, QC : Canadian Museum of Civilization. Rogers, Edward S. 1967. “Comment on Some Implications of the Theory of Particularity, or ‘Atomism,’ of Northern Algonkians by H. Hickerson.” Current Anthropology 8: 333–4. Schenck, Theresa M. 1997. “The Voice of the Crane Echoes Afar”: The Sociopolitical Organization of the Lake Superior Ojibwa, 1640–1855. New York: Garland. Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe. 1851. Historical and Statistical Information, respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States: Collected and Prepared under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, per Act of Congress of March 3rd, 1847. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo and Company. – 1852. The American Indians, Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts. Vol. 2. Reprint, New York: Palladin, 1969. – 1855. The American Indians, Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts. Vol. 5. Reprint, New York: Palladin, 1969. – 1856. The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians. Reprint, Marquette, MI : Avery Color Studios, 1997. Silman, Janet. 1987. Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak Out. Toronto: Women’s Press. Silverstein, Cory. 1992. “Ojibwa Naming Ceremony: Life-Line of the People.” In Prize Winning Essays, vol. 5, 1991–1992, ed. Faculty of Arts, York University, 101–17. Toronto: York University. – 1995. “Gifts of Nokomis: Spiritual Power in the Arts of Ojibwa and Cree Women.” MA thesis, York University. – 1998. “‘That’s just the kind of thing this lake does’: Anishnaabe Reflections on Knowledge, Experience and the Power of Words.” In Papers of the Twenty-Eighth Algonquian Conference, ed. David Pentland, 354–64. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. – 2000a. “Clothed Encounters: The Power of Dress in Relations between Anishnaabe and British Peoples in the Great Lakes Region, 1760–2000.” P hD diss., McMaster University. – 2000b. “Marks of Identity: Anishnaabe Totemic Emblems in Historical Perspective.” Paper presented at the Thirty-Second Algonquian Conference, McCord Museum, Montreal, 27 October. Silverstein, Cory, and Zeek Cywink. 2000. “From Fireside to TV Screen: SelfDetermination and Anishnaabe Storytelling Traditions.” Canadian Journal of Native Studies 20, no. 1: 35–66. Skinner, Alanson. 1914. “Political Organization, Cults, and Ceremonies of the PlainsOjibway and Plains Cree Indians.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 11, no. 6: 475–542. New York: American Museum of Natural History.

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Spielmann, Roger. 1998. “You’re So Fat!”: Exploring Ojibwe Discourse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tanner, John. 1830. Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner during Thirty Years Residence among the Indians of the Interior of North America. Ed. Edwin James. Reprint, New York: Garland, 1975. Turner, Edith. 2003. “The Reality of Spirits.” In Shamanism: A Reader, ed. G. Harvey, 145–52. New York: Routledge. Vastokas, Joan, and Romas Vastokas. 1973. Sacred Art of the Algonquians: A Study of the Peterborough Petroglyphs. Peterborough, ON : Mansard. Warren, William. 2009. History of the Ojibway People. 2nd ed. Ed. Theresa Schenck. St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society. White, Bruce. 1982. “‘Give Us a Little Milk’: The Social and Cultural Meanings of Gift Giving in the Lake Superior Fur Trade.” Minnesota History 48, no. 2: 60–71. Whiteduck, Diana. 1999. Informal interview with Cory Willmott. Willmott, Cory. 2003. “Ojibway Nation: Helps and Hindrances in a Nineteenth Century Aboriginal Nation-Building Project.” Unpublished paper. – 2012. “Anishinaabe Ceremonial Regalia of the Reservation Era, c. 1870s–1930s.” American Indian Art Magazine 37, no. 3: 70–81. – 2014. “Museum Collections Image Documentation for Visual Heritage Recovery.” Paper presented at the 2nd GRASAC Research Conference: Generating New Knowledge from the GKS , Brantford, Ontario, 12 June. Willmott, Cory, and Kevin Brownlee. 2010. “Dressing for the Homeward Journey: Western Anishnaabe Leadership Roles Viewed through Two Nineteenth Century Burials.” In Gathering Places: Essays on Aboriginal Histories, ed. Laura Peers and Carolyn Podruchny, 48–89. Vancouver: UBC Press. Wilson, Maggie. 1932–36. Letters. In Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives, Ruth Landes Papers, 1928–1992, box 36. – 2009. Rainy River Lives: Stories Told by Maggie Wilson. Ed. Sally Cole. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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Part Three Songs and Narratives

6 John Kawapit’s Hunting Songs STAN L. LouTTiT

John Kawapit John Kawapit was a hunter, trapper, and respected Eeyou elder from Whapmagoostui on southeastern Hudson Bay in northern Quebec (Morantz 2002, 45, 50–1, 106, 121, 229, 286n, 296–7n). He was born in the hunting territory of his parents’ trap line in 1898, 150 miles inland within the Great Whale River area. On his parents’ hunting land, John learned to hunt, trap, and fish. John and his wife Suzanne had nine children, five girls and four boys. John began singing hunting songs in the tradition of his elders in his teens, and the more he hunted the more he sang. His daughter Agnes Kawapit (2014) has said that most of her father’s songs were original, but he also very much liked singing other hunters’ songs. John’s songs described what happened while he was hunting and how he felt about the animals he hunted. The animals in his songs were the caribou, beaver, otter, and fish. John often sang in Cree, but since he was part Naskapi, he also sang in Naskapi. As John became older and a respected elder, he often sang his songs at night before he went to bed, but he could also be heard singing his songs during daily chores or as he worked on carvings (A. Kawapit 2014). John often accompanied his singing with a hunting drum. He made his own hand drums out of caribou hide. John learned how to make them from the elders with whom he spent much time growing up. It is from these elders that John learned about his peoples’ spiritual ways and beliefs. His daughter Agnes says that he often spoke about Native spirituality, the animals, and hunting,

noting that he readily spoke to anyone from the village who would listen and learn from his deep knowledge of life. At times, John communicated his dislike that hunting songs and drums were frowned upon by the local church clergy. He strongly believed that this was not right (A. Kawapit 2014). John Kawapit passed away in 1990 at the age of 102. Today, his family continues to cherish his memory and take care of the drums he used to play while singing his hunting songs (A. Kawapit 2014). This work is dedicated to John Kawapit. introduction This chapter is a spiritual and musical discussion of John Kawapit’s hunting songs. I first discuss a Cree spiritual view of animals within the medium of hunting songs and their relationship to hunting. I then provide a musical analysis of the form of these hunting songs to outline what I believe to be a general pattern of hunting song structure. But to set the context, I begin by acknowledging the community I come from, my family background, and my initial introduction to Cree hunting songs. Moose Factory is a small island community located in the Moose River Basin in northern Ontario. It was one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC ) main trading posts during the fur trade. During more than 300 years of contact, our economic and social lives became intertwined with those of British, French, and Scottish fur traders (Morantz 2002, 17). Yet it must be recognized that our territory existed long before the arrival of Europeans and the establishment of a colonial trading post. Between the 1930s and 1950s, many James Bay Cree families migrated from James Bay coastal villages farther north and settled in Moose Factory to pursue employment opportunities (e.g., hydro dam construction, railway clearing, and hospital construction) in the area. Today, our island population is comprised mainly of Moose Crees, indigenous to the watershed, plus other coastal Cree people. Together we have formed a community of approximately 3,000 (and growing). My late father, Redfern Louttit, was an ordained Anglican minister from Fort Albany on western James Bay. He married my late mother, Agnes Gilpin, from Eastmain in northern Quebec. Like many other Crees, they too settled in Moose Factory for work reasons. My father was one of the few of his time to have attended and completed residential elementary school, high school, and university studies during the 1930s and 1940s. Consequently, by the time he was in his early twenties, my father acted in many respects like a “southern” person. According to my mother, he dressed like a “city” person, spoke like one, and embodied the

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mannerisms of an educated “white man” (A. Louttit 2003). Despite these early influences, my father felt strongly compelled to relearn his language and the traditions that had become foreign to him. Hunting songs were one Cree cultural tradition that crossed my father’s path at some point during his community work. Indeed, during my father’s diocesan work in the 1970s, he devoted time to recording hunting songs performed by Cree hunters and trappers from the villages he had lived in. Reflecting upon my own childhood, I remember times of hearing “strange” singing coming from the tapes my father listened to. I wondered what this strange singing was about. Of course, to a child, these kinds of questions were not important and were largely forgotten. As I pursued my master’s degree at Carleton University in Ottawa from 2002 to 2005, I had an opportunity to visit the Canadian Museum of Civilization and listen to various collections of eastern James Bay Cree hunting songs again. In this instance, my experience of the songs became rooted in attempting to understand, formulate, and discuss them from my own cultural understanding and within an academic scope. The research and writing that ensued as I tried to discuss hunting songs became a challenging but rewarding task, as there was limited literature on the topic. However, one person who had written about hunting songs was Richard Preston, and it was through his book Cree Narrative (2002) that I began to understand the meaning and importance of Cree hunting songs to hunters and animals. The original version of this chapter was written from 2002 to 2004, and it was not until some years later, in 2007, that I became aware of Lynn Whidden’s work on Cree songs. Lynn’s writing is also very important for its contribution to an understanding of hunting songs, and I was very fortunate to be asked by Lynn to write the afterword to her book Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music (2007). Like Preston’s, her work has been helpful to many of us learning about these songs. This chapter is the result of my desire to add to the literature on the subject of hunting songs and to thank Dick Preston. the Cree Context: Humans and Animals – a “Spiritual” Connection Cree hunters of eastern James Bay have a unique relationship with the land and the animals they harvest. The Canadian subarctic is not heavily populated, either by animal or human life. Animals exist but are hard to find, and Cree hunters have learned to respect them (Richardson 1991, 4). Hunters have developed a special relationship with their quarry in which animals are viewed as having “spiritual power” and “being.” Essentially, different animals

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each have a spirit that the hunter acknowledges, respects, and understands in order to participate in the hunt (Feit 2002, 3). For Cree hunters, the animal gives itself, along with its spirit, to the hunter just as much as the hunter’s skill takes its life. This is a unique and, for many people, a very different understanding of harvesting animals. As my sister Eva explains, it works only if the hunter practises and maintains a spiritual connection to the animals (E. Louttit 2003). For Cree hunters such as Isaiah Awashish, the balance between animal and human life is the most important element of the hunting experience. The hunter follows a spirituality that is developed and passed on by parents, grandparents, and elders, as well as practised over time and space to maintain a spiritual human-animal balance (Richardson 1991, 7). Animals, land, water, and fish are all natural forces that are personalized and made intimate in the Cree mind. Animals make decisions, just as humans do, and if their personal qualities are not respected, they can and will make it difficult for the hunter to harvest them (Feit 2002, 3). Similarly, consider the following Cree understanding of how humans, forest, and animals are interconnected: “The land, the trees have to be respected. The animals live off trees, and if there are no trees, there are no animals and the Indians suffer. A hunter cannot just go and demand of a tree that it give him something, help him, aid him, cure him from sickness. You have to give something back for what it gives you” (elder Isaiah Awashish, in Richardson 1991, 9). As Richard Preston (2002, 199) explains, the Cree hunter considers himself to be associated on a personal and intimate level with the animals he kills. In Preston’s view, the relationship between Cree hunters and animals involves a very sincere belief in a reciprocal attitude of love between the two. In short, the attitude of the Cree hunter and his relationship with animals are important parts of a unique spirituality found in Cree hunting traditions, which encompass much more than simply killing animals for food. This is a significant and essential concept for understanding why Cree hunters sing hunting songs. Songs are performed by hunters to connect them not only to animal spirituality but also to their own sense of individual spirituality and responsibility to the animals they kill. Songs are revealed in dreams. In the next section, I present a detailed musical analysis of three hunting songs to illustrate their style. John Kawapit’s Hunting Songs As stated earlier, John Kawapit was an eastern Cree, or Eeyou, hunter who, as an elder, resided in Whapmagoostui in northern Quebec. John spent most of

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his life hunting, with his expeditions ranging inland as far as the lower Caniapsicau River (Taylor 1980). The land and everything it offered provided all of life’s meaning, all knowledge, and all health for Cree hunters such as John. He was one of the elders who testified in Montreal when the Crees of Quebec opposed a massive hydroelectric project that had been announced without their consent (Richardson 1991, 42). John was a very capable hunter and singer. The written text that I provide here does not do John justice, as one needs to listen to his songs with a patient ear to understand the subtlety and style of his performances. During his songs, John also offered narrative, in Cree of course, describing some important aspects of animals and his own hunting life experience with the animals. This is a unique style of narrative and singing that many Cree hunters express during songs. John Kawapit’s (1978) hunting songs, recorded on 4 September 1978, are held by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec (CMC III-D -35T). Although not discussed in this chapter, John also knew canoebuilding songs (Taylor 1980). Song 1

At the beginning of the recording, John asked in Cree whether the “thing” (i.e., the tape recorder) was going. An unidentified female answered, “Yes,” in Cree. John began to drum quite quickly, with a style described as fast quarter notes. John’s singing had a rhythmic figure that was repeated throughout the song, something on the order of a small interval (major second) followed by a levelling-off of the melodic line. The singing line was also small in melodic contour, with no major interval changes or leaps, remaining within the range of a perfect fourth from the tonic note (pitch E). The singing was close in nature to a sung vocable or some type of sung syllable that is unclear but is generally utilized in Cree singing. In some traditional Cree hunting songs, sung by other hunters, recognizable Cree words may be used, but this is rarely the case. In John’s songs, he seems to be singing random vocables, perhaps ones that he had personalized over the years. I do not recognize them as Cree words and can offer no translation of the content of his singing. I perceived no steadfast or strict form or structure in John Kawapit’s first song and certainly no formal beginnings or endings. At one point, the singing and drumming seemed to change rhythmically to a triple-metre “feel,” creating the sense of a “skipping” pulse. John’s voice sounded like an extended “drone-like” hum, and the drum’s triple-metre rhythm seemed to have adapted to or suited his voice’s rhythmic figure. Throughout the first song, it sounded like John had periodic instances of stopping for very brief moments

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and then continuing after catching his breath. I believe John worked his way through the song in order to refine his performance as he sang. However, it could also be plausible that John became tired as the song slowed from its original tempo. In comparison to the songs of John Mayapo from Eastmain, south of Whapmagstooui, the first song by John Kawapit seemed to be longer than other hunting songs.1 It lasted for approximately four minutes. Song 2

This song began with a triple-metre “feel,” with the same rhythmic voice pattern or drone-like singing heard in the first song. This song was different in melodic profile, as it was sung in a wider interval range (pitches F to D) and utilized a grace note to the tonic F. An interesting feature of this song is that we have an example of Cree storytelling done in a rhythmic, excited type of Cree language, which is interspersed throughout most hunting songs. John gave a taste for his excitement by speaking three or four rhythmic Cree words that possibly referred to some event in his hunting life experience. This type of “rhythmic language” has been previously witnessed and described: “Before each song he [Isaiah Awashish] moved into a more formalized sort of language, heightened in tone and intensity, not singing exactly, but certainly not conversational. They [interpreters] told me later it was an ancient Cree, a particular type of formal imagery which the young people seldom heard and had difficulty in understanding” (Richardson 1991, 150). John’s brief use of this type of rhythmic narrative perhaps reflected an “older” type of Cree language, one that I do not understand. In song 2 the metre settled into a steady pattern in which voice and drum merged. At times, John’s drum style was punctuated by a slowing and rushing of the tempo of the drum pattern; whether this was due to John’s exhaustion cannot be ascertained. It seemed like this song was comprised of numerous beginnings and endings that could be the cues of new songs. However, in my view, these quasi endings were probably “resting places” for John, as any singer requires rest and breath in order to continue. Moreover, it could be that I was looking for beginnings and endings, as they are a fixture of my own mental categories and Western music concepts. This particular song continued for about eight minutes before John gave a clear and complete ending. Song 3

John again began with a rhythmic narrative containing an example of the type of language described earlier. The interesting dimension of this particular song is that it provides a good example of storytelling, solo voice/singing, and 174

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drum accompaniment. John started off this performance by telling a story in Cree. He then began with a short section of solo voice before introducing a medium-fast drum rhythm. John sang and drummed for a very short time, stopped, and spoke on some aspect of the story again. John continued singing and, with a triple-metre feel, the rhythm took on a “skipping” type of tempo, emphasizing the first beat of each bar. John continued in a mixture of storytelling, singing, and drumming, dotted by his “rhythmic, poetic” language. The form of this kind of performance can perhaps be described and outlined as follows:

A1 section: story begins, individual narrative B1 section: solo singing or singing with drum begins A2 section: story elaborated upon, more narrative B2 section: solo singing or singing with drum resumes In my view, the above form is a general structure of how some of these songs are built around a repetition that can vary or end solely upon the singer’s intuition. In my understanding, an important point to recognize is that the number of “A ” or “B ” sections and the length of time this type of performance is maintained rest solely with the discretion of the individual singer. In this particular song, John’s drum and vocal rhythm became quicker and steadier, as though he had received more strength or become more engaged with the song. A question came to my mind during my listening: do Cree hunters attempt to refine their voice and drum accompaniment as they develop their performances? The answer to this question from a Cree hunter would likely be yes, but that is not the main reason why they sing hunting songs. In my view, Cree hunters like John Kawapit have the desire, or aspiration, to be competent at fishing, hunting, and trapping or simply to develop and use their skills, such as those needed in making snowshoes or canoes. In the Cree sense, hunting songs are spiritual practices that are directed at the animals the hunters harvest rather than particularly focused on the way the music or song is performed. However, certain hunters may perhaps be aware of how they perform and may try to refine or improve various aspects of their songs to please the animals. This performance was long, and after the rhythm slowed down, John again spoke a few words before continuing to sing. This structural repetition carried on further. At this point, another issue and question arose in my mind. To an inexperienced listener, or with an outsider’s listening skills, the songs sound the same. How is each song different? I propose that, prior to performance, the singer’s initial explanation about content and context enables each song to become individualized and distinctive. A successive song may sound Jo Hn KAwA P it’ S HUn t in G So nGS

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the same, but it is an entirely new song, certainly for a singer such as John Kawapit, and much easier to understand if one is fluent in Cree. The singer’s mental imagery is different with each new song, but we as listeners have difficulty in perceiving that notion. We hear what sounds like the same drum pattern and vocal delivery. In the Cree sense, we must learn to imagine hunting landscapes and animal images. We have to strive to imagine the song’s context. Moreover, we have to seek to create a mental image of the content the individual singer has described in rhythmic narrative before the song began. In this aural activity, we must learn how to listen to Cree narrative and likewise “feel” the ensuing song; we must listen closely and acutely to every narrative that may follow in the course of a hunter’s overall performance. We may get into the “mental” landscape of the hunter’s performance by practising respect, observing proper protocol (explained below as “staying with the task”), and listening carefully. For impoverished listeners, this is no easy feat, as listening to a Cree hunter’s song demands a focused concentration, attention to subtlety, and a committed effort directed at hearing and understanding his hunting experience. Songs 4 to 10

I would like to offer some final thoughts in regards to John Kawapit’s songs 4 through 10 since there isn’t space here for a full-length discussion of each song. From this point forward, throughout the rest of the archival recording, John’s drum and voice continued in the same “skipping” rhythmic pattern. John’s performance was further punctuated at spontaneous times by a slowing of the drum tempo before he resumed the previous quicker tempos. I have conceptualized John’s tempo structure and the general structure of his performances in a simplified manner below. I offer my version of John’s overall arrangement style and have laid it out in a form that uses two “A ” sections and one “B ” section:

A1 section: beginning, starts slowly, drummed in triple-metre pattern B section: middle, a little faster, quicker drum pattern (possibly 8th note pattern)

A2 section: ending, returns to slow section, drummed in triple-metre pattern

In John’s performances of songs 4 to 10, it was again difficult for me to recognize the beginnings and endings of each of the songs. Perhaps in the greater scheme of understanding these hunting songs, clear-cut Western music con-

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cepts and ideals such as fixed introductions, clear endings, time signatures, or strict metre are not important. However, I suggest that the above structure is quite accurate in describing John’s style. At one point, John began a song with solo voice and subtly introduced the drum; this is a special expression of John’s style that I have not heard in other hunters’ songs. John’s innovation is perhaps a distinctive personal arrangement developed by him. Indeed, it is quite possible that any Cree hunter would develop his own arrangements and musical nuances over a long lifetime. In listening to John’s performances, I had the sense that there was a recurring pattern to the way that sounds and pitches were repeated approximately six to eight times, and on the last figure, the pitch would be slightly changed. It also seemed like John was exploring ideas and different variations by altering his vocal pattern over the same drum rhythm, suggesting a kind of exploration or improvisation. Moreover, it seemed that each new variation was extended in duration, upon which a new vocal pattern was explored and expanded. This is a very subtle approach and a very impressive one, from my point of view, as John was practising a high level of creativity. In fact, I propose that John’s continued performance (over twenty minutes in duration) operated on a level that enabled him to become more attuned to the spiritual world he was singing about. John’s performance was a very lengthy one, and it was essential that I stay with his performance in order to understand it. If one can accomplish this task, one is rewarded with a “feel” for the slight variations in John’s drum patterns, vocal adjustments, and arrangements. In terms of arrangement, some Western classical performances embody themes and variations or structural qualities such as fast movement, slow movement, dance-related movement, and a return to fast movement (Kamien 1988, 212). I believe John Kawapit’s style, in my formulation, reflects analogous structural qualities that are as complex, intricate, and focused as any found in Western musical performance. One aspect that has become clear for this writer is that John’s music provides a “total” experience and performance. By this, I mean I would not have been able to perceive any individual style such as John’s if I had not devoted myself to a total and serious listening endeavour. In fact, the Cree value of patience is required in order to grasp the complete, “whole” picture. For Richard Preston (2002, 70), Cree “narration serves to show how some event has a particular meaning (an inherent meaning for the speaker), and that the Crees are commonly concerned to convey such particular meanings.” Indeed, Preston extends the “complete story” concept further by describing how Cree elder John Blackned was surprised at his willingness to listen to detailed oral narrative: “John Blackned once told me, after I had recorded

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detailed narrations for several successive days, that he had talked to a number of Whitemen in his life, but I was the first one who wanted to hear all that he had to say. This meant, I believe, that I showed a willingness to understand these things in their meaningful Cree context, rather than demanding, expecting, or attending only to … specific answers to specific questions.” Conclusion One of the deficiencies in the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s collection of John Kawapit’s songs, and in previous research associated with them, is the absence of his unique “voice” in any dialogue or analysis concerning his songs. This deficiency has partially silenced John, who should be the focal point of any description surrounding those recordings. We are fortunate that his songs were recorded, but it is unfortunate that John Kawapit was never asked to give his interpretation and understanding of his songs.2 John’s comments would have been highly valuable, providing us with much cultural elaboration and understanding. Although there can be additional in-depth music analysis of Cree songs, my intention in this chapter has been simply to articulate and describe one Cree hunter’s song style. In addition, I have tried to give “voice” to John Kawapit’s hunting songs. This is a matter that can be problematic for some scholars. For George E. Marcus (1986, 264), “textualization is at the heart of the ethnographic enterprise, both in the field and in university settings … fieldwork is synonymous with the activity of inscribing diverse contexts of oral discourse through field notes and recordings.” I have layered meaning onto John Kawapit’s recordings. It is my hope that with the addition of my own contemporary Cree voice, his “voice,” along with voices of other Cree elders, has emerged here as a “collaborative voice” and been described with some measure of accuracy. As a Cree researcher separated from John Kawapit in time and space, I am indeed one of the few who have tried to give “voice” and interpretation to his songs. It would be interesting to know whether John Kawapit would agree with the music analysis I have outlined in this chapter. I think, as a fellow Cree, he would definitely agree with the spirituality I have presented. John Kawapit, Isaiah Awashish, John Blackned, and I share Cree history, environment, food, language, animals, and lifestyle. I believe they would agree that Cree hunting spirituality is the most important aspect of hunting songs. The fundamental understanding of hunting lifestyle connects with basic Cree attitudes toward human life itself (Niezen 1998, 25). The symbology that conveys concepts of hunting to Cree people also orders their understanding

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of life and death. Cree hunters know that one day they will die, just as the animals do. Humans kill animals to survive, but a fundamental mystery of life is that humans eventually pass on too (Feit 2002). Human beings and animals equally participate in the spirituality of hunting; Cree symbolic hunting imagery acknowledges this mystery. Hunting songs are a unique Cree hunting ritual that mitigates, enhances, and eases the dilemma of reliance on animals that give their lives in order that humans may live. Hunting songs are the “vehicle,” or medium, by which humans and animals can enhance the relationships that prolong life for each other. Humans and animals do this by respecting each other’s mind and spirit.

Acknowledgments I want to first acknowledge my late father and mother. My parents always encouraged and supported me, in many things, music being one of them. They never discouraged me. Being very religious, my parents could have put many restrictions on the music I listened to and on what I could bring into the house. But they didn’t. My siblings and I consider ourselves very fortunate to have had the family, and home life, that we did. I am grateful to my parents. Although I never met him, I am thankful to John Kawapit, as I mentioned earlier, and this chapter is dedicated to him. Thanks also to his daughter Agnes for answering several questions, as well as for giving me permission to write about John and his songs. In addition, I want to express my appreciation to the Kashechewan First Nation for supporting my studies during the time that I visited the Canadian Museum of Civilization and listened to John Kawapit’s songs. As a final word, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and recognize Richard Preston as someone I have always admired for his writing and intellect. He was always supportive of the writing presented here and has continuously offered advice and knowledge based on what he knows about Cree culture and people. Richard was, and still is, someone always willing to share his knowledge. He was also an important external reader on my master’s thesis committee (S.L. Louttit 2005), and I gratefully thank him for his patience and encouragement. More importantly, Richard is a great friend and colleague whom I am proud to have met and known over the years. Meegwetch, Richard.

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NoTeS

1 John Mayapo’s songs were generally short (fifteen to thirty seconds) and consisted of a solo voice with no instrumentation. His recordings can also be found in the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC -III -D -9T ). 2 Garth Taylor (1980) recognized that the canoe-building songs John Kawapit sang were an important cultural heritage, so he asked John to record them. John recorded them on his own, in his closet in the evening, and gave the tapes to Taylor, who was pleased that the recordings were being studied (Taylor 2013).

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Feit, Harvey. 2002. “Animals as Political Partners: James Bay Cree on Reciprocity, Persons, Power and Resistence.” Paper presented at the Ninth International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Edinburgh. Kamien, Roger. 1988. Music: An Appreciation. New York: McGraw-Hill. Kawapit, Agnes. 2014. Personal communication with Stan L. Louttit. Kawapit, John. 1978. “Cree Music.” J. Garth Taylor Collection, Audio-Visual Archives, Canadian Museum of Civilization, III -D -35T . Louttit, Agnes. 2003. Personal communication with Stan L. Louttit. Louttit, Eva. 2003. Personal communication with Stan L. Louttit. Louttit, Stan L. 2005. “Diabetes and Glimpses of a 21st Century Eeyou (Cree) Culture: Local Perspectives on Diet, Body Weight, Physical Activity and ‘Being’ Eeyou among an Eeyou Youth Population of the Eeyou (Cree) Nation of Wemindji, Quebec.” MA thesis, Carleton University. Marcus, George. 1986. “Afterword: Ethnographic Writing and Anthropological Careers.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 262–6. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morantz, Toby. 2002. The White Man’s Gonna Getcha: The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Niezen, Ronald. 1998. Defending the Land: Sovereignty and Forest Life in James Bay Cree Society. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Preston, Richard J. 2002. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events. 2nd ed. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Richardson, Boyce. 1991. Strangers Devour the Land. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre. Taylor, J. Garth. 1980. Canoe Construction in a Cree Cultural Tradition. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. – 2013. Personal communication with John S. Long. Whidden, Lynn. 2007. Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

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7 Cultural Structures of first nations imagination: A Social Science view regNA DArNeLL

Building on the work of Dick Preston Dick Preston embodies the respect for First Nations persons and cultures that stands at the heart of both anthropology and literature and thus at the crossroads of the social sciences and humanities. His work dissolves the artificial boundary between these purportedly separate domains of knowledge. When queried about his methodology at a long-ago conference, Dick paused for a thoughtful moment and then said, “I think about things a lot.” When the student looked even more puzzled, he added helpfully, “for a long time.” And so he did. He mulled over the teachings of his own teachers, particularly John Blackned, and made sense of them in increasingly sophisticated and integrated ways over the course of his career. Even in the days before shared authorship was de rigueur, Dick was careful to attribute the knowledge he interpreted for an anthropological audience to its originators and to the relationships he maintained with them. These concerns with the ethics of ethnographic research were also reflected in Dick’s scrupulous attention to epistemology, to the way that the James Bay Crees’ knowledge and their process of coming to know were matters of cultural imagination. Dick’s narrative method of recording oral tradition and personal experience draws heavily on the methods of literary study. Ideally, the reader of ethnography deploys the same suspension of disbelief, with its recognition of the implicit relativism of cultural worlds, that is required for the appreciative reading of good fiction. This chapter explores how this potential cross-over brings cross-cultural

understanding to a wider public audience through the imagination, which is fundamental to all cultural traditions. the Pedagogy of first nations imagination Some years ago, I designed a course at the University of Western Ontario entitled “Cultural Structures of First Nations Imagination,” which I taught twice in the Anthropology Department and once cross-listed between the Anthropology Department and the First Nations Studies Program. The title initially was designed to avoid perceived conflict of interest with the English Department. Later, I came to see it also as a commitment to something going on across “Indian country” that helped to sustain contemporary Native identity through the transformation of oral tradition dependent on face-to-face communication into a new and productive form based on the technology of writing. I argue that the imagination (any)one brings to experience is necessarily a cultural product, an evolving form of expression that is potentially available to individuals as agents. On each occasion that I taught the course, however, the students, mostly from the social sciences, were uncomfortable with reading fiction to learn about culture. They seemed to equate fiction with the untrue and unreal, to dismiss it as merely anecdotal. They wanted facts about Native peoples in Canada, not someone’s imagination, even if that someone happened to be Native. Despite my efforts, something was falling through the cracks, whether pedagogically or because of the artificial disjuncture, from a First Nations point of view, between the separate Arts and Social Sciences Faculties at the University of Western Ontario. Or maybe the students just thought that the truths of story were alien to the truths of the university. In the days before Western had a separate program in First Nations studies, of which I became the founding director in 2002, a modest amount of Native literature was taught in the English Department – mostly drama, with heavy emphasis on the work of Western alumnus Tomson Highway. In contrast to many courses in the English Department, the students actually read the primary texts rather than merely the literary criticism about them. There was also some interest in comparative literature. Less than a decade later, First Nations Studies at Western now include visual art and film alongside literature on the humanities side and culture, politics, history, and the traditional Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) and Haudenosaunee (Iroquoian) languages of southern Ontario on the social science side. The number of Indigenous faculty teaching these courses has slowly increased, although most are still hired on short-term course contracts, and little progress has been made toward ac-

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knowledgment of alternative credentials reflecting cultural experience and expert knowledge. The interdisciplinary intention of the original curriculum intensified as the program moved from an offshoot of the Anthropology Department to the joint aegis of the Social Science, Arts and Humanities, and Health Sciences Faculties. However, despite this considerable progress, there is still something missing. I do not, of course, take the view that no outsider can understand what is going on when Native writers talk about their own experience. Nonetheless, literary criticism in its conventional mode too often excludes the ethnographic context that, for me, properly informs any reading, particularly when temporal, spatial, or cultural boundaries separate reader responses from the likely intentions of the writer and thereby from the complexity and nuance of her or his argument. Decontextualized knowledge is not interpretable in any accurate or reliable form. On the other hand, there is a danger that too much context can ruin a good story. The Anishinaabe and Plains Cree storytellers who have taught me how to listen are wont to say that they dread telling stories to white folks because it takes so long – everything has to be explained that a Native person already would know by virtue of traditional socialization. Yet both storytellers and writers choose to direct their words to outsiders as well as those to whom cultural intellectual property properly belongs. They aspire to work across the communication gap. My good friend the late Keith Basso was told by a Western Apache elder that telling a story is like stringing pegs on a clothesline – the job of the storyteller is to tell the story plot and trust the listener to hang her or his own clothes on the line. For my own part, I am appalled by the implicit arrogance of literary critics who assume that their academic training automatically enables them to decipher meanings arising outside the presuppositions and narrative forms of the mainstream canon. It seems to me disrespectful to make no effort at ethnographic verisimilitude, at supplementing unbridled and potentially ethnocentric imagination with accurate information. Meaning depends on holding sufficient shared assumptions to calibrate the writer’s imagined world with that of a particular reader. In this sense, the challenges of cross-cultural miscommunication are inherent to writing outside the canon. Such matters are deeply disputed within literary theory. My own position precedes my direct engagement with the First Peoples of the Americas, going back to my undergraduate double major in anthropology and Medieval English literature. In the heyday of the new criticism, my efforts to read with the empathy and imagination of the social scientist were, to say the least, not met with enthusiasm. Nonetheless, I habitually use the tools of my literature

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degree when I interpret my First Nations fieldwork experience as well as when I speak as a historian of anthropology and linguistics about the often skewed and stereotypic interpretation of Native North Americans in the Western, European-derived imagination. So I would like to explore from my side, the non-Native side, the kinds of bridges that might be built – both between literary studies and the social sciences and between First Nations thought-worlds and the Euro-American mainstream. Both cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary miscommunication abounds. We are in need of translators from both sides of the fence. In the years since I first attempted to teach in this cross-space, literary criticism has become increasingly interesting with the emergence of an Indigenous criticism, much of it by the same writers who have produced widely acclaimed works of fiction. Thomas King’s (2003) Massey lectures on “the truth about stories,” for example, position his explication of the underlying meaning in Native literature at the heart of Canada’s ongoing national reflexivity and provide non-Native readers with a template for interpretation. King’s CBC radio series Dead Dog Café, a spin-off from his novel Green Grass, Running Water (1993), attained near cult status and mobilized mutually intelligible forms of Native and mainstream humour. Drew Hayden Taylor’s (2000) National Film Board of Canada production on Native humour foregrounds “puppy dog stew” among its core images and argues for the cross-cultural resonance of humour, with its utility in enhancing effective communication. Gerald Vizenor, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Paula Gunn Allen, all key members of the so-called Native American Renaissance in the United States, have undertaken similar projects in the explication of characteristic storied forms of Indigenous expression. Such writing dissolves genre boundaries with abandon. Many of these writers are also artists, performers, and media personalities. Multimedia productions are virtually de rigueur. Unsurprisingly, much of this work is not situated in the academy. Moreover, First Nations students are choosing literature or history as their field of specialization rather than the social sciences, especially anthropology. The biggest obstacle seems to be the traditional social science exclusion of personal experience as a ground for authorial authority. Many Native students do not believe that social science writing has changed, at least for some of us. At an early point in my own work, when I was bogged down in the utter inauthenticity of a monograph on language retention and revitalization among the Plains Crees of northern Alberta, I began to write ethnographic poetry. The genre dissolved the barriers to particularity of experience that seemed inherent in the social science prose of the 1970s (Darnell 1991). There were

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some ethical advantages too. My poetry spoke about my own experience and growing understanding of what I was being taught. Because I was working with language, I spent a lot of time with elders who had much to teach, even to outsiders who came as respectful learners. They liked my poems because they did not purport to speak for anyone else or generalize beyond what I perceived with personal certainty. Today, I write social science prose again, but it is a prose replete with stories – stories of my experience and of experience that has been shared with me. As for the academic choices of First Nations students, many make their career decisions in relation to the practical needs of their home communities. Unlike students of other ethnic backgrounds whom I have taught, most First Nations students go home – either to their own communities or to somewhere nearby. The first generation to come to university studied education because there was such a clear need for teachers who could validate the experience brought to the classroom by the children of their communities. The next batch wanted to be lawyers because Indigenous knowledge was finally beginning to be taken seriously in terms of land claims and other practical political issues. Today, at least in southern Ontario, there is great emphasis on the health sciences in response to urgent community needs for amelioration of appalling Aboriginal health conditions. In partial contrast, albeit in smaller numbers, some Native students have always turned to the expressive disciplines. This too serves a pragmatic need – a communicative need that operates both within Aboriginal communities and between them and the mainstream. Students who choose history often report that this field allows them to explore the contexts of contemporary identity – to generalize personal, family, and community experience. They document the intergenerational experience that has come to them through oral tradition, in contrast to the demeaning stereotypes and genocidal policies to which their communities have been subjected over the five centuries since Christopher Columbus got lost on his way to China. Native scholars who study the history of encounter need no longer blame themselves for being contemporary victims trapped in the ravages of pain and loss. Rather, they are vindicated by their documentation of the coercion that has rendered their people powerless. Reclaiming cultural autonomy, partly through the act of writing itself, annuls many of the debilitating effects of colonial hegemony. One of my favourite pieces in this mode is Winona Wheeler’s (2003) description of seeking archival records of her Cree-Assiniboine grandfather’s grandfather, Askenootow, known in English as Charles Pratt, who was remembered by his family as a highly revered guide to rapid culture change.

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He was also an itinerant catechist in the church, which was not perceived by his community as a contradiction to the memory of his traditional wisdom. In contrast, the archival record revealed a lackey of the church who could not advance in its ranks and was used merely to convert recalcitrant holdouts to Christianity. It took Wheeler some time and emotional distress to reconcile these dichotomous images and to honour again a man who had walked with grace between worlds. She presents both personal experience and historical analysis of information interpreted very differently by two cultures and in alternative modes of historical imagination – the oral and the written (see Darnell 2011). I argue with Hayden White (1981) that “history” exists only when at least two interpretations are assessed relative to one another and a choice is made. Restoring academic respect for the modes of historical imagination in oral tradition goes a long way to providing such a corrective to mainstream accounts of the settling of the Americas and to the contemporary circumstances of the First Peoples. The autobiography of Oglala Sioux elder Black Elk was told to a poet in 1930 (Neihardt 1961). It is usually treated as literature, with John Neihardt identified as the author of Black Elk’s words. Although these words were much edited by Neihardt, many features of the resulting text remain profoundly Oglala (as documented in DeMallie 1984). For example, the narrative is organized around Black Elk’s visions, beginning in childhood and correlated explicitly by him with the fate of his nation, represented in his visions as a broken hoop or circle. More recent scholars have foregrounded Black Elk as a Christian catechist rather than (exclusively) as a medicine man (Holler 1995; Rice 1991; Steltenkamp 2009). Both literature and ethnography need to document alternating sides to such life stories, acknowledging that both are real and that conflict of roles was not necessarily as salient to cultural actors as it seems to contemporary listeners. Some Native students have turned to literature because it privileges overt discussion of experience, in its affective as well as in its cognitive modes; the value of autobiography and reflexivity can be taken for granted. A writer of “fiction” may decline to engage in the distortion of cultural teachings or personal experience that social science conventions of writing might require. Fiction may be truer in this sense than “reality.” I contend that Native American writing today provides an alternative and corrective to social science analysis. Further, I suggest that some of the conventions of this literary writing emerge from and can be incorporated into a contemporary anthropology that aspires to amplify Native voices and enter into dialogue with them – in a spirit of exploring cultural structures of imagination that are commensurable, albeit with effort.

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Literary and Ethnographic Milestones The kind of anthropology that allows us to explore the cultural structures of imagination in both First Nations writing and ethnographic writing in the narrative or textual mode is grounded in what I have called “the Americanist tradition” (Darnell 2001; Valentine and Darnell 1999), a tradition in which my own work as well as that of Dick Preston is embedded. This paradigm coalesced around the work of Franz Boas in the late nineteenth century and dominated anthropology in North America at least until the end of World War Two. It persists, particularly in the study of Native North American languages and cultures. The distinctive features of this tradition are compatible, I believe, with the kind of literary endeavours for which I attempt to provide useful context. Boas and his students believed that culture was not a set of behaviours but a fluid amalgam of the values, symbols, and experiences underlying human actions. Language, culture, and the nature of reality were understood to be culture-specific and inextricably meshed. Outsiders could get at other thought-worlds by examining texts – that is, spontaneous (nonelicited) continuous speaking by fluent native speakers of Native languages. These texts would facilitate the writing of grammars and ethnographies as well as reveal the “native point of view,” one of Boas’s most characteristic phrases. The Americanist research program involved “salvage ethnography,” under the then-tenable assumption (although it soon proved to be mistaken) that Native cultures and languages were rapidly and irretrievably disappearing. Boas and his students often met knowledge keepers whose children and grandchildren no longer wanted to learn ceremonies and traditional teachings; many chose to share their stories with anthropologists rather than let them be lost altogether. Today those documentary recordings are a source of recoverable knowledge for descendant communities. The last three features of the Americanist tradition are outgrowths of these core ideas. Boas would not have formulated them the same way, but the tradition he promulgated enables us to build on it in these directions: “tradition” is not static but a moving target; oral transmission of knowledge enables adaptation and exegesis. Research subjects are collaborators, not “informants.” And this kind of work takes a long time, a lifetime in fact. Mostly, this is a tradition of study by outsiders whose primary audience is also one of outsiders. Nonetheless, the hospitality and generosity inherent in most Native North American traditions have enabled collaborations that often have led to empathy, mutual respect, and social justice. In short, it is not difficult to blur the lines between literary studies and the social sciences. I will begin with texts about encounter, texts that reinforce

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the possibility of understanding across cultural boundaries. Next, I will turn to texts produced by anthropologists in collaboration with First Nations and Native American persons who did not or do not consider themselves “writers” but whose words come to us through writing. Then I will consider how we ought to talk about writing in relation to cultures that still highly value the strengths of face-to-face transmission of significant information through oral tradition, through story. And finally, I will discuss how the emergence of Indigenous criticism has cemented the place of story and enhanced its legitimacy as a mode of cultural imagination that we might even envision returning to the mainstream. Images of the encounter between Euro-Americans and the First Peoples are salient in contemporary writing and reflection because of their ongoing consequences. Aboriginal identity today cannot be separated from the historical circumstances that have produced it. There is a narrative of loss but also of hope, of change that does not preclude persistence. Many of the writers who produce such reflections are of mixed ancestry. They do not necessarily participate or live in the communities from which they came, although this may be less true in Canada than in the United States. Those who do not retain ties at home are often received with sharp criticism when they claim to speak from “a Native point of view,” especially if that point of view is homogenized and unspecific. To speak about one’s own experience and genealogy, however ambiguous, may be preferable. Such writers acknowledge and retain linkages to multiple sides of their heritage. Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve’s The Trickster and the Troll (1997) is one of my favourites in this genre of reconciliation. Like many very serious stories in Native North American traditions, it is billed in the mainstream as a children’s story. The author’s Swedish ancestors brought the Troll with them to protect their farm, but the children of the immigrants forgot the protective figure and no longer believed. The Lakota Trickster, representing the other side of Sneve’s heritage, was also abandoned by a secular generation impatient with the old stories. So the two exiles holed up together in the Black Hills, in the sacred territory of the Lakota, to lament the absence of their audiences and charges. Eventually, however, each went home, and the children who have now become grandparents tell the stories again. Drew Hayden Taylor’s Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock (1990) places greater emphasis on cumulative loss across generations. A teenage boy raised in the city, apart from his traditions, finds himself in a sacred place of his people. He meets not an animal spirit-helper but a boy from the past, almost unaffected by the changes that are to come, and another from the future. Each finds the others almost unintelligible on the surface, but they discover a sense of iden-

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tity that enables them to recognize these places of power and helps them to transcend dramatic changes in the symbols and practices of identity. For the future, being Aboriginal has become an archival exercise. From the past, identity is taken for granted because there is nothing to contrast to it. The ambiguity that brings the three positions together belongs to the present, our present. Increasingly, the voices that record First Nations histories and current reflections upon them are those of Native people. Much has been passed down through oral tradition, but much is also present in the written record. David Carlson’s Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography and the Law (2006) demonstrates the progression of three Native American writers – Seneca Ely S. Parker, Pequot William Apess, and Sioux Charles Eastman – from missionaryinspired conversion stories to reflexivity about their experience and positioning between cultures and eventually to political activism. Carlson envisions sovereignty as control over narrative and, therefore, over identity rather than solely as a form of governance. Writing, in its reference to the individual, is as political as more overt activism. The genres of storytelling deployed by Native North American writers are highly variable, moving from parable to epic, often within the work of the same writer. Some stories are bounded within the conventions of Native communities that seem to remain apart from the mainstream. Others draw Native content and experience into larger worlds where urban and rural, Native and non-Native, constitute shifting foci of identity. Many have written, in more or less biographical ways, about traditional rites of passage, especially passing from adolescence into adulthood with the help of traditional teachers and spirit guides. N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1977) follows a young man through such an experience. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977) tells the story of a Laguna Pueblo veteran who returns from Japanese captivity during World War Two to seek reintegration through the ancient stories of his people. The quest is both traditional and personal, and it is ceremony that restores balance. Silko has been criticized for saying more than is necessary to her plot about Laguna rituals of reconciliation, whose details should not be imparted to outsiders, but there is no question of the power of her narrative. In Almanac of the Dead (1992), Silko turns to an epic genre that takes her narrative through settings from the traditional and seemingly timeless ritual space of the Pueblo to the complexity, confusion, and temptation of the contemporary Southwest, with its often cacophonous meeting of peoples, juxtaposing the very different traditions of Pueblo and Navajo, Hispanics, African Americans, and foreigners. This is the everyday experience that faces contemporary people and also reflects the historical reality of mélange and interchange. Similarly, anthropologist James Brooks’s Captives and Cousins

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(2002) captures historic dimensions of this meeting in a way that grounds Aboriginal experience among the peoples sharing and travelling through the territory that is now the southwestern United States. He identifies a network of slavery and adoption that stretches from Canadian fur traders to Mexico and to the post–Civil War American South, incorporating Indians, southern whites, blacks, Mexicans, and others. In this fluid system, individuals held serial ethnic identities, and traditional societies expected multicultural encounters. The archaeological record suggests widespread movement in the area over generations far prior to Euro-American contact – there apparently is nothing new about this. In a third critical mode, Silko’s poems, images, and reflections under the simple, inclusive title Storyteller (1986) provide exegesis and literary criticism that underlie and expose the ethnographic truths of her fiction. In the work of Thomas King, a parallel movement surfaces that cuts across the mythic and the phenomenological, as well as across the individual experience of community and the epic of wider contact, with its juxtaposition of traditions, symbols, and relations of power. King’s Medicine River (1989) is on the surface a low-key chronicle about a rite of passage and the reintegration of a young man who returns home for his mother’s funeral and is persuaded to stay by an ambiguous Trickster-mentor who engages him in an attempt to revitalize the community. The modern reinstates the traditional in new clothing, with humour rather than formal ritual as the mode of integration. But King is also the author of Green Grass, Running Water (1993), a complex epic romp whose inversions of white men’s symbols by the Trickster Coyote and a series of somewhat hapless Native actors rewrite the power relations of cultural encounter. That novel has spawned a minor industry of literary criticism; with or without pinning down every allusion, it is a magnificent read. The ethnographic literature is replete with collaboration between fluent speakers of Aboriginal American languages and anthropologists or linguists eager to record them. Boas supplemented his time in the field in British Columbia through correspondence with George Hunt and other literate and bilingual field assistants, some of whom became scholars in their own right. Republications of their work today are often produced in collaboration with contemporary speakers and under the name of those who gave the texts. For example, Alexander Goldenweiser recorded a text of the Haudenosaunee Great Law from Chief Arthur A. Gibson early in the twentieth century that was reworked by linguist Hanni Woodbury and contemporary Onondaga ritualist the late Reg Henry (Woodbury and Henry 1992), and John Fredson’s (1982) Kutchin texts were published in Alaska with minimal acknowledgment of their recording by anthropologist Edward Sapir.

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Anthropologist and historian Jennifer S.H. Brown, along with collaborators from the Universities of Winnipeg and Manitoba, has been retracing for some years the pathway of A. Irving “Pete” Hallowell through the Berens River district of northern Manitoba in a series of fieldtrips in the 1930s. She and ethno-journalist Maureen Matthews, and later Ojibwe-language teacher Roger Roulette, went north to seek out descendants with memories of Hallowell and his work (Matthews and Roulette 2003). Hallowell’s (2010) amalgamated Ojibwe articles have been issued under a single cover, but his version of this work can now be supplemented by its preservation as passed down through oral tradition, a different kind of history. Hallowell comes out of the history-making accountability exercise pretty well; he is remembered with affection, and his writings are appreciated by many members of the contemporary community. Based on materials in the Hallowell papers at the American Philosophical Society, Brown and Susan Elaine Gray have also edited the words of William Berens, his key informant, in Memories, Myths, and Dreams of an Ojibwe Leader (Berens 2009). Hallowell’s collaborator and close friend, through this methodology, conveys his experience, including his collaboration with the anthropologist, in his own words and under his own name. Another project, initiated by George Fulford and Brown at the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies, drew James Bay Cree elder Louis Bird to Winnipeg, resulting in two compilations of his stories about his experience of tradition and his concerns for the future of his community: The Spirit Lives in the Mind: Omushkego Stories, Lives, and Dreams (Bird and Gray 2007) and Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay (Bird 2005). These works are not fiction, but they are easily read alongside, and with many of the same assumptions about cross-cultural encounter, as novels and stories within an overtly literary framework. Anthropologist Robin Ridington collaborated with Omaha tribal historian Dennis Hastings to tell the story of Umon’hon’ti, or Venerable Man, the sacred pole of the Omaha Tribe (Ridington and Hastings 1997). Ridington interweaves the story of the pole’s removal for a century to Harvard University’s Peabody Museum with the story of the community’s struggle to recover, largely based on early-twentieth-century ethnography by Alice Fletcher and her adopted Omaha son Francis LaFlesche, the knowledge needed to care respectfully for this living symbol of Omaha persistence as a collectivity. Their text The Omaha Tribe (Fletcher and LaFlesche 1911) provided a rich resource for contemporary ritual innovation in traditional terms. Many texts that come to us through the efforts of outsiders evoke the richness of the knowledge held by expert narrators, whose expertise is validated by their communities. Robert Bringhurst, a writer who collaborated extensively

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with Haida artist Bill Reid, notably in a widely circulated children’s book The Raven Steals the Light (Reid and Bringhurst 1984), retranslated what he calls the “classic” poetry of Haida Gwaii. Bringhurst’s A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World (1999) presents the texts that Skaay and Ghandl, a cripple and a blind man, imparted to Boas’s protegé John Swanton at the turn of the twentieth century. Two more volumes of texts followed, but Bringhurst’s initial effort interweaves his retranslations of the texts themselves with the story of the collaboration that rendered the poetry of these Haida speakers accessible to a larger audience beyond their community of origin. Translation of such works has much to do with their potential audiences. Most translations from the salvage ethnography era are crashingly dull, stylistically, although their content may be fascinating and provide a comparative database for a variety of projects – such as Claude Lévi-Strauss’s (1963) illustration of his structuralist method by two cases, treated equally in terms of both methodology and mythological import: the Greek Oedipus myth and the Tsimshian Asdiwal cycle. Bringhurst is himself a poet, and his poetry translation is beautiful for a non-Native audience. His narrative text provides key interpretive context. The initial volume, however, produced a furor in Haida Gwaii. Bringhurst did not consult widely with contemporary speakers because he believed that the language had changed dramatically due to the influence of English and wanted to concentrate on its earlier, classic forms. Political controversies ensued on at least two fronts. First, Bill Reid had recently died, and criticisms were rampant about his commodification of Haida tradition, personal profit from his art, and distance from the Haida community. Bringhurst, of course, was associated with his contemporary collaborator. Further, the Haida already had a linguist who had worked on the contemporary language for many years and was understandably threatened by a different kind of project. His critiques of the translation and of Bringhurst’s qualifications were quite vicious. Moreover, some Haida argued that no one had the right to appropriate their traditional literature and make it available to outsiders, regardless of the quality of the translation or the informed consent of the text’s original producers. Much about the ethics of research concerning communities vulnerable to appropriation of intellectual property has yet to be resolved. Other text series have been more collaborative. H.C. Wolfart at the University of Manitoba has worked for many years with Plains Cree elder, linguist, and language teacher Freda Ahenakew to record texts from the last generation of monolingual Cree speakers, who speak what Bringhurst would call the classical version of the language. Most speakers in the Manitoba text series

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are women, giving a cultural perspective rarely present in the conventional ethnographic literature. Ahenakew and Wolfart (who alternate first editorship in their text volumes) present bilingual literal translations alongside traditional syllabics, as well as notes on vocabulary and ethnography that enable readers to work through the language, thus providing reading material for Cree people, whether or not they are fluent in the language (as many still are on the Canadian Prairies). The stories of seven grandmothers in their own words (Ahenakew and Wolfart 1992; see also 1998) reveal the variety of experience and reflection within a single generation. Emma Minde (1997) tells the story of living with her in-laws in obedience to tradition and family, presenting a version of feminism deeply unintelligible to contemporary mainstream society. Sarah Whitecalf harangues contemporary youth in a series of “lectures” from the Saskatchewan cultural centre, where she served as an elder (Wolfart and Ahenakew 1993). Male-oriented stories of war, trade, and diplomacy have made way for stories of everyday life and the primarily gradual, although cumulatively dramatic, cultural change during the lifetimes of these women. History as a discipline has moved in directions that now provide such works with legitimacy in the mainstream. A similar project in English is reflected in Julie Cruikshank’s Life Lived Like a Story (1990). Three Yukon women elders tell their life stories as self-conscious representatives of the last generation to live off the land in the times before the Yukon Gold Rush of 1898, emphasizing the crucial importance of the girl’s initiation rite of puberty: seclusion at first menses. These elders, Angela Sidney, Annie Ned, and Kitty Smith, deploy images from traditional stories as templates to make sense of their own experiences (e.g., the stolen bride story resonates with the experience of arranged marriage and movement away from family and community of origin). That individual lives are “lived like a story” is more than a metaphor. These elders recognize a special responsibility to record a kind of experience of socialization that ended with their generation. The immediate audience for the speakers is their children and grandchildren on into the future. Later generations may read, or hear on tape, the words of elders long gone. The Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and anthropologist Shirleen Smith have collaborated over three decades to produce People of the Lakes: Stories of Our Van Tat Gwich’in Elders (Smith and Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation 2009). The volume is organized by generation, beginning with the “long-ago” stories of those no longer remembered by name, continuing with a first generation that came of age in the nineteenth century, followed by a second generation born in the early twentieth century, and ending with the contemporary oral history that these elders shared with a generation of their community’s youth, whose

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participation in this research enables them to pass on the community’s traditional knowledge, albeit in greatly changed and changing circumstances. Life history has long been a staple of anthropological documentation, a means of moving between the cultural and the individual, of making other worlds real for readers without first-hand exposure to them. In this way, ethnography and literature form a continuum. Boas’s student Paul Radin (1927) experimented with life history as a means of getting at the remembered history transmitted from one generation to another through shared experience and memory of past events and people. Life history also sets up the conditions for a dialogue between outsider/learner and member-of-culture. Radin emphasized that anthropologists seek out the philosophers in the cultures they study, those who like to think about things, and eagerly share their speculations with visitors grounded in other times and places. Dennis Tedlock argues that absence of dialogue in ethnographic texts has been a recurrent challenge of entextualization and is deeply embedded in logocentric thought (Tedlock and Mannheim 1995). He contrasts the dialogue inherent in the creation story of the Kiche Maya, told in the Popol Vuh, with the monolithic Creator-God of Judeo-Christianity (Tedlock 1999). In anthropological texts, he emphasizes that the “other” and the anthropologist qua analyst all too often speak in alternation rather than directly to one another. The conversations that are always already part of fieldwork increasingly find their way into monographs and articles, using literary techniques as a method of both analysis and audience intelligibility. And the line between fiction and ethnography blurs still further. One of anthropology’s finest writers of dialogue, allowing the reader to peer over his shoulder as he tells how he came to understand certain teachings, is Keith Basso. In Wisdom Sits in Places (1996), he relays his conversations with four named knowledge keepers, each having a different take on and experience of the sacred landscape surrounding the White Mountain Apache community of Cibecue, Arizona. These cultural experts use stories about known places and the things known to have happened there to address the moral authority integral to contemporary identity (alongside community need for documentation of land use in ongoing court cases). When I assigned this book several years ago, one of my more culturally separatist students asserted, “It couldn’t have been written by an anthropologist. I like it.” I, of course, prefer to think that we need not work at such cross-purposes. Another version of places and the interdependence of natural and social worlds comes from Julie Cruikshank’s Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (2005). She juxtaposes early explorers’ accounts taken from archives with southern Yukon stories of living

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respectfully alongside glaciers. Over the time periods encompassed by oral tradition and communal memory, the people moved back and forth in relation to the movement of glaciers. The Aboriginal and the explorer accounts are more alike than either is to the objective scientific account likely to be produced today. Our own tradition has also changed, losing its ability to acknowledge the animacy and power to be found in the world. Perhaps we too need to reanimate the world; for the most part, white people deny the intense interactive bond between land and the people and other beings (which the Anishinaabeg refer to as “all my relations”) living thereupon. Ted Chamberlin’s If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground (2003) more explicitly castigates the superficiality of colonial claims to Indian land and insists on the storied character of land-person interactions. Narrative also suggests ways of dealing with trauma. Much has been written about the intergenerational suffering engendered by residential schools. The schools are now widely recognized as having involved violence on dual levels; both the individual sexual and physical abuse of children and their very removal from family, community, and cultural continuity – symbolized by the prohibition against speaking traditional languages – are expressed across North America in terms of what was “stolen” from the people, along with their land. The gaps in community knowledge due to interrupted chains of transmission need to be filled through conscious reconstruction based on archives, oral teachings, and personal reflection, some fictional and some autobiographical, often with a thin line between them. Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), for example, evokes not only the loss of grounding in place and community for the brothers sent away from home but also the disintegration of home when a community’s children are taken from it. Moving more to the autobiographical side, Neal McLeod’s Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times (2007) deliberately blurs boundaries of the personal and the historical in passing on the knowledge he consciously sought out from elders within his own family genealogy. In McLeod’s text, the history of the Plains Crees in what is now the Province of Saskatchewan is situated within Cree experience, or “narrative memory,” rather than within Euro-Canadian memoirs of disrespect and conflict. His tellings restore the associations implicit in the transmission of memories through family members qualified by their experience to keep and transmit historical and moral knowledge. Across the continent, Trickster is both a powerful creator and a buffoon who bumbles through misadventures that give the world its present character while providing cautionary wisdom about the consequences of selfish and impulsive behaviour for one who would live well, live what the Anishinaabeg

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in my part of Canada call bimaatsowin (“the good life”). Trickster is part of myth-time, creation-time, but this is not separated off from contemporary experience. The reappearance of Trickster characters in the interpretation of contemporary everyday experience is widespread, and the figure of ambiguous power engendering humour is recurrent in Native North American writing, as it is in traditional storytelling. Allan Ryan documents how Native artists use traditional images to comment on the world around them, the ongoing discrimination arising from cross-cultural contact, and the strategies of resistance. The Trickster figure is central to speaking indirectly, especially when speaking truth to power, so its words leave much to the respondent’s interpretation and can mean more than one thing simultaneously, as well as different things to different people. Ryan’s The Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art (1999) not only presents the work of a range of Indigenous visual artists but also includes excerpts from his extensive interviews about their intentions, their multiple audiences, and the centrality of the elusive Trickster voice that can never quite be pinned down. The Trickster voice entails a critical shift out of ordinary assumptions about cause and effect, or stability of species form, that amplifies the voice of the artist. Tomson Highway’s paired Trickster dramas The Rez Sisters (1988) and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989) provide an elegant structural reversal of gender with difference. Simple inversion fails to capture the complexity of community gender relations or the darker skewed sexuality of emasculated men threatened by a women’s hockey team. For the women of the Rez in particular, the Trickster Nanabush is a figure of metamorphosis – appearing with white feathers as a powerful (and “traditional”) bird spirit, as the ambiguous bingo master promising fulfilment of unattainable dreams, and as the black-feathered dancer who seduces the dying Marie Adele Starblanket with the innocence and freedom of her girlhood. The potential for metamorphosis among “all our relations” – across species and modes of understanding – is myth rendered in relation to contemporary experience. I attended a performance of the Rez Sisters at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. I found it stunningly effective, except that the pauses between bits of dialogue were too short for my everyday life expectations of familiar speakers like those portrayed by the actors. Not long afterward, a colleague spontaneously reported to me his puzzlement at the slow pace of the dialogue. Artistic compromise I suppose – but a sobering ambiguity of authenticity nonetheless. The London Free Press’s review of the performance waxed ecstatic over the all-Native cast but evaluated neither the play nor the performance. It was

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multicultural tolerance in action rather than an invitation to think otherwise about the world, to envision an alternative cultural structure of imagination. Robin Ridington, in an elegant little paper entitled “Coyote’s Cannon” (1999), enters into a dialogue with Thomas King’s Coyote figure, the Trickster voice at the centre of his magisterial Green Grass, Running Water (1993). King adopts First Nations conventions of storytelling as dialogic emergence, thereby challenging the linear thought processes codified/fossilized in most canonical literature. The holographic, holistic figure of Coyote leaves the message, like the possibility of meaningful conversation, open-ended, to be mulled over and applied to experience. Another figure from traditional stories that reappears in contemporary imagery is the Windigo (Anishinaabeg) or Wihtigo (Plains Cree), the cannibal spirit. Long read only literally by outsiders as a personification of huntergatherer fear of starvation and resulting cannibalism under extreme climate conditions, Wihtigo has become an image for overarching greed, a hubris that dehumanizes by removing ties to community. Encounters with Wihtigo are calls to change one’s behaviour or lose one’s being. Like Trickster, Wihtigo turns up in everyday life today as a cautionary voice of moral authority. I am struck repeatedly by the strategic reflexivity of contemporary Native North American writing. Writers retain from oral tradition the responsibility of the teacher to the learner/listener/reader and to his or her moral development over the course of a lifetime. Whether literature, ethnography, or history – all problematic terms insofar as they are understood to have nonpermeable boundaries – these works speak to contemporary identity and traditional continuity in ways that are simultaneously representative of community and individual to their authors. We should not be surprised at the reflexivity. After all, many of these writers are English professors, hardly naive representatives of the exotic or recently “primitive.” They have “reinvented the enemy’s language” in the title words of Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird’s (1997) pithy anthology of Native writing. English, even when supplemented by words from traditional languages, has become a tool to be adapted to Native North American purposes. I am intrigued by reclaimings of voice through comparators in the spiritual journey across Indigenous traditions on a global scale. Both ostensibly “postmodern” writer Gerald Vizenor and political activist Ward Churchill write haiku and have been fascinated by the knowledge traditions of the East. Cross-cultural contrast defamiliarizes the known and allows it to become visible and conscious, as every anthropologist knows. Clifford Geertz (1973) spoke about “another country heard from” as the goal of engaging each cultural

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variant of human nature on its own terms. His “anti-anti-relativism” argued that, whatever the inherent contradictions of a relativist standpoint, the only ethical stance is to oppose its opposite, to understand a position without imposing unexamined cultural presuppositions before dismissing and critiquing it. Voices from the margins, whether the margins of the literary canon or of global capitalism, remind us that we cannot be omniscient observers. From whatever our disciplinary standpoint or life experience, we have a responsibility to seek effective cross-cultural communication based on imagination and empathy. I believe that such a responsibility can best be exercised at the intersections of literature, history, and ethnography.

Acknowledgments I came to these perspectives by way of my own work with the Plains Crees and later the Anishinaabeg of southern Ontario. I was always glad to see Dick in the audience when I delivered a paper because he intuitively understood my point. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the American Indian Workshop in Prague in 2012, organized by Klara Kolinska and Christian Feest with support from the Canadian Embassy Regional Leadership Program. I was much relieved to see Dick and Betty Preston sitting front and centre, as their presence eased my nerves and made me more confident that Canadian First Nations scholarship in this reflexive mode arising from long-term participant-observation fieldwork would be well received by the interdisciplinary audience. Tomson Highway was also there, and that was quite daunting. I would not want to speak for him. The relationships that sustain such a humanistic tradition are relationships among scholars as well as between scholars and their research subjects and collaborators.

reFereNCeS

Ahenakew, Freda, and H.C. Wolfart, eds. 1992. Our Grandmothers’ Lives as Told in Their Own Words. Saskatoon: Fifth House. – 1998. The Counselling Speeches of Jim Ka-Nipehtetew. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Basso, Keith. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Berens, William, as told to A. Irving Hallowell. 2009. Memories, Myths, and Dreams of an Ojibwe Leader. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Susan Elaine Gray. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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Bird, Louis. 2005. Telling Our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown, Paul W. DePasquale, and Mark F. Ruml. Peterborough, ON : Broadview. Bird, Louis, and Susan Elaine Gray. 2007. The Spirit Lives in the Mind: Omuskego Stories, Lives, and Dreams. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Bringhurst, Robert. 1999. A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre. Brooks, James. 2002. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Brown, Jennifer S.H., and Elizabeth Vibert, eds. 2003. Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Carlson, David. 2006. Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography and the Law. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Chamberlin, Ted. 2003. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: A.A. Knopf. Cruikshank, Julie. 1990. Life Lived Like a Story: Life Stories of Three Yukon Elders. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. – 2005. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonialist Encounters, and Social Imagination. Vancouver: UBC Press. Darnell, Regna. 1991. “Ethnographic Genre and Poetic Voice.” In Anthropological Poetics, ed. Ivan Brady, 267–82. Savage, MD : Rowan and Littlefield. – 2001. Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. – 2011. “What Is History? An Anthropologist’s Eye View.” Ethnohistory 58, no. 2: 213–27. DeMallie, Raymond J., ed. 1984. The Sixth Grandfather. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Fletcher, Alice, and Francis LaFlesche. 1911. The Omaha Tribe. Reprint, New York: Johnson, 1970. Fredson, John. 1982. Stories Told by John Fredson to Edward Sapir. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Hallowell, Alfred Irving. 2010. Contributions to Ojibwe Studies: Essays, 1934–1972. Ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Susan Elaine Gray. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Harjo, Joy, and Gloria Bird, eds. 1997. Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writing of North America. New York: W.W. Norton. Highway, Tomson. 1988. The Rez Sisters. Saskatoon: Fifth House. – 1989. Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing. Saskatoon: Fifth House. – 1998. Kiss of the Fur Queen. Toronto: Doubleday. Holler, Clyde. 1995. Black Elk’s Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism. Syracuse, NY : Syracuse University Press. King, Thomas. 1989. Medicine River. Toronto: Penguin.

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– 1993. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Perennial. – 2003. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. Vol. 1. New York: Basic Books. Matthews, Maureen, and Roger Roulette. 2003. “Fair Wind’s Dream: Naamiwan Obawaajigewin.” In Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, 2nd ed., ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, 263–92. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McLeod, Neal. 2007. Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times. Saskatoon: Purich. Minde, Emma. 1997. Their Example Showed Me the Way: A Cree Woman’s Life Shaped by Two Cultures. Ed. Freda Ahenakew and H.C. Wolfart. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Momaday, N. Scott. 1977. House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper and Row. Neihardt, John. 1961. Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Radin, Paul. 1927. Primitive Man as Philosopher. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1957. Reid, Bill, and Robert Bringhurst. 1984. The Raven Steals the Light. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre. Rice, Julian. 1991. Black Elk’s Story: Distinguishing Its Lakota Purpose. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Ridington, Robin. 1999. “Theorizing Coyote’s Cannon: Sharing Stories with Thomas King.” In Theorizing the Americanist Tradition, ed. Lisa Philips Valentine and Regna Darnell, 19–37. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ridington, Robin, and Dennis Hastings. 1997. Blessings for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Ryan, Allan J. 1999. The Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art. Vancouver: UBC Press. Silko, Leslie Marmon. 1977. Ceremony. New York: Penguin. – 1986. Storyteller. New York: Henry Holt. – 1992. Almanac of the Dead: A Novel. New York: Penguin. Smith, Shirleen, and Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. 2009. People of the Lakes: Stories of our Van Tat Gwich’in Elders. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Sneve, Virginia Driving Hawk. 1997. The Trickster and the Troll. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Steltenkamp, Michael F. 2009. Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Taylor, Drew Hayden. 1990. Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock. Saskatoon: Fifth House. – dir. 2000. Redskins, Tricksters and Puppy Dog Stew. Documentary. National Film Board of Canada. Tedlock, Dennis. 1999. “Dialogue between Worlds: Mesoamerica after and before the European Invasion.” In Theorizing the Americanist Tradition, ed. Lisa Philips Valentine and Regna Darnell, 163–80. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tedlock, Dennis, and Bruce Mannheim, eds. 1995. The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Valentine, Lisa Philips, and Regna Darnell, eds. 1999. Theorizing the Americanist Tradition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Wheeler, Winona. 2003. “The Journals and Voices of a Church of England Native Catechist: Askenootow (Charles Pratt), 1851–1884.” In Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, 2nd ed., ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, 237–62. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. White, Hayden. 1981. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” In On Narrative, ed. W.J. Thomas Mitchell, 1–27. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolfart, H.C., and Freda Ahenakew, eds. 1993. The Cree Language Is Our Identity: The La Ronge Lectures of Sarah Whitecalf. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Woodbury, Hanni, and Reg Henry, eds. 1992. Concerning the League: The Iroquois League Tradition as Dictated in Onondaga by John Arthur Gibson. Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics.

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Part Four indigenous rights, Compassion, and Peace

8 A Roadmap for Reconciliation and Justice: the United nations Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples JeNNiFer PreSToN

introduction As the youngest child of Richard and Sarah Preston, I had a childhood that included many connections to the people and territory of James Bay. Summers were spent in the Cree community of Waskaganish, and Cree visitors were often in our home as well. My father’s life work has never been “just” a job, or even just a career. His work and later my mother’s work were part of our family identity. His life’s profession is very much a large indicator of who he is – and naturally that affected my development, my identity, and ultimately, my profession. My late mother’s snowshoes hang on the wall in my house in southern Ontario. They were made for her by John and Harriet Blackned in the mid-1960s, which is when I was born. John made the frames, and Harriet did the netting. When he came into my father’s life, John was a Cree elder and storyteller. He became my father’s mentor. They had a profound relationship, much larger than that of storyteller and researcher. A large aerial photograph of Waskaganish hangs in my home office. The photo was a gift from my mother’s “sisters” when she left Waskaganish for the last time, the year before her untimely death in 1991. Both are reminders of the connections between my family of origin and the Cree people who are extended family to us. The seamless links between my parents’ professional work, and also their personal relationships, contributed to my direction as a young adult when I

moved from academia to work in the vibrant world of urban Aboriginal theatre. A master’s thesis on the importance of the Trickster in the work of Cree playwright Tomson Highway (J. Preston 1990) developed into a professional tenure with Native Earth Performing Arts, where Highway was the artistic director. Becoming a parent myself made me leave theatre behind. Later, my return to the professional world was connected to another strand of meaning I got from my family. My parents became Quakers in the mid-1960s. I was raised in a faith tradition that is built on foundations of working for peace, equality, and justice. Similar to their professional relationships, my parents’ spirituality flowed through our home in a manner that connected it with all other aspects of life. Suffice to say, the formative influences of my growing-up were never compartmentalized in our home but formed an interwoven context from which I could approach my future. Since 1996 I have worked for the Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC ), a nongovernmental organization (NGO ) that carries out the peace, justice, and human rights work of the national body of Quakers in Canada. Working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples has historically been a major priority for Quakers. My background both as a Quaker and as someone with lifelong connections to Aboriginal people made me a good fit to carry the Indigenous rights portfolio at CFSC . For more than fifteen years, this portfolio has had a key focus on Indigenous peoples’ human rights at the international level. It has been my privilege to represent the international body of the Quakers at the United Nations while employed in this capacity.1 The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN 2008c, 15) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 13 September 2007 after more than twenty years of negotiations. I was professionally engaged both in the final years of the development of the Declaration and in the intense lobbying effort that ensured its final adoption by the General Assembly.2 As a representative of a non-Indigenous NGO , my role began as that of an observer and grew with the development of relationships inside the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus.3 A contribution that I was able to bring to the work came from the solid international reputation of the Quakers and their longstanding relationships. The Quakers have resident offices at the United Nations, ongoing interactions with many government representatives, and an international reputation as human rights defenders.4 Many Indigenous peoples’ representatives recognized that human rights NGOs could play a useful role in convincing state representatives to engage more collaboratively with Indigenous peoples. We were generally seen as defenders of the human rights system rather than simply advocates for Indigen-

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ous rights. Existing relationships facilitated access to state representatives. We were careful not to take a position on issues where the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus was still working to achieve a common position. The non-Indigenous NGO s, including Quakers, sought to use their influence in a number of ways, both publicly and privately. In addition to dialogue with state representatives, this included issuing press releases, developing educational materials, making statements to the working group that completed the negotiations on the Declaration, convening informal meetings of states and Indigenous representatives, and hosting side events at related UN meetings. For the final year of negotiations, I worked in New York, closely collaborating with Renzo Pomi of Amnesty International and Paul Joffe, an international human rights lawyer representing the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee). We met with dozens of state representatives, carefully explaining how the Declaration strengthened the existing human rights system and answering questions about the meaning and effect of the Declaration. For all of us involved, it was an important personal and professional moment when the world community overwhelmingly adopted the Declaration. After years of intense work, the actual moment at the General Assembly was brief, but there was an enormous sense of elation, relief, and euphoria. Significance of the Declaration International human rights declarations are intended to guide governments, courts, and other institutions in ensuring that human rights are respected, protected, and fulfilled. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes a critical contribution to the international human rights system, being the most comprehensive universal instrument specifically addressing the human rights of the world’s Indigenous peoples. Its adoption was celebrated globally in recognition of the extraordinary achievement it represents and the need that it fills. The human rights of Indigenous peoples are routinely trampled, even when their protection is entrenched in national laws. Indigenous peoples urgently require international affirmation and protection of their human rights. Developed in response to the deep injustices and extreme human rights violations that they suffer, the Declaration is a symbol of triumph and hope. The development of the Declaration was a unique and democratic process. A critical element was that, for the first time, a UN human rights instrument was created with the rights holders themselves as active participants. Indigenous peoples’ representatives participated in both working groups that

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developed the text, first with the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP )5 and then in the intersessional Working Group on the Draft Declaration (WGDD ) set up by the Commission on Human Rights (see UN 1996, 44).6 The Declaration provides a principled legal framework for achieving reconciliation, redress, and respect. It affirms the economic, social, cultural, political, environmental, and spiritual rights of Indigenous peoples. It is important to note that the Declaration does not create new rights. As described by the special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, Professor James Anaya, “The Declaration does not affirm or create special rights separate from the fundamental human rights that are deemed of universal application, but rather elaborates upon these fundamental rights in the specific cultural, historical, social and economic circumstances of indigenous peoples. These include the basic norms of equality and non-discrimination, as well as other generally applicable human rights in areas such as culture, health or property, which are recognized in other international instruments and are universally applicable” (in UN 2008b, para. 40). The Declaration makes a unique and much-needed contribution to global understanding and the promotion of human rights through its emphasis on inherent collective rights, which are indispensable to the survival, dignity, security, and well-being of Indigenous peoples and their development as distinct peoples. These collective rights include treaty rights, land and resource rights, and the right to self-determination. In late 2010 the Declaration achieved the status of a consensus instrument. At the time of the 2007 vote, 144 states supported the Declaration in the General Assembly.7 Only four – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States – voted against it. Eleven abstained. States that did not vote in favour of the Declaration at the time of its adoption can later endorse or express their support for it. All four dissenting states have since reversed their position and have expressed support for the Declaration (Canada 2010a; Macklin 2009; Obama 2010; Sharples 2010). Colombia and Samoa, two of the abstaining states, have now also endorsed the Declaration (Colombia 2009; UN 2009b). Declarations adopted by the General Assembly are universally applicable upon their adoption and are not signed or ratified by states. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted as an annex to a General Assembly resolution. Such resolutions, including declarations, are generally considered to be nonbinding. Human rights declarations are different from legally binding treaties or conventions, to which states are bound after they ratify them. As confirmed by a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Norway, Carsten Smith (2009), “this does not mean that the Declaration is without any legally binding effect.” Such “soft law” instruments are increasingly used

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as a primary form of standard setting at the international level and can have far-reaching significance. Soft law instruments may have some advantages over hard law instruments (such as conventions). Mauro Barelli (2009, 966, citing Boyle and Chinkin 2007, 212) says, Soft law may … “provide more immediate evidence of international support and consensus than a treaty.” This is so because, even once agreed upon, a treaty will have to wait the necessary number of ratifications before entering into force. For indigenous peoples, instead, it was crucial that, after more than twenty years of negotiations, the final instrument could be instantly effective. This is so because urgent action is key to the protection of their rights. In addition, the possibility of entering reservations on fundamental provisions of a treaty may weaken importantly the idea of international support, which, instead, represented a crucial factor in the context of indigenous rights. Although the Declaration has the distinction of being one of the most discussed and developed human rights instruments in the international system, it is well recognized that the critical work of implementation is key to its importance and success. There are many ways that the Declaration can be used. Substantially, it can guide the development of new relationships between Indigenous peoples and states. An important example is the evolving relationship between Greenland and Denmark. On 21 June 2009 Greenland achieved significantly enhanced self-government, changing its political relationship with Denmark (Greenland 2009). In his address to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the premier of Greenland, Kuupik Kleist (2009, 2), underlined that “this new development in Greenland and in the relationship between Denmark and Greenland should be seen as a de facto implementation of the Declaration and, in this regard, hopefully an inspiration to others.” In addition to recognizing Greenlanders as a people under international law (Greenland 2009, Preamble), the new Act on Greenland Self-Government recognizes Greenlandic as the official language (s. 30) and provides for Greenland’s ownership and control of all natural resources (ss. 2–4, 7). Similarly, the standards in the Declaration can be used in the engagement between Indigenous peoples, governments, corporations, and other third parties. Indigenous leaders and other members of civil society are increasingly invoking the Declaration to assert the rights of Indigenous peoples in relation to resource development. In particular, the Declaration is being used

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to encourage governments and resource companies to honour the right and principle of free, prior, and informed consent in their relationships with Indigenous peoples (see Ethical Funds 2008; Garrick 2009; and Weitzner 2009). The Declaration is increasingly being used at the international and domestic levels to interpret Indigenous rights and related state obligations. It is one of the tools available as Indigenous peoples continue to seek redress for rights violations, including violations of treaty rights. The Declaration can fill the gaps in treaties, particularly numbered treaties that often include less detail than contemporary treaties related to lands, resources, and governance. When used as a framework for interpreting Indigenous rights and state duties in a manner consistent with contemporary human rights standards and law, the Declaration can serve to ensure that treaties remain dynamic and lasting agreements (Saganash and Joffe 2010, 135). Further, the application of the Declaration by domestic courts as a tool to guide the interpretation of constitutions and legislation will strengthen its normative significance and legal effect. The landmark case of Cal & Coy v. Attorney General of Belize, in which the Supreme Court of Belize (2007, 131–3) relied in part upon the Declaration in upholding the constitutional rights of the Maya people to lands and resources, is an example of this potential. The Declaration is being promoted internationally through the work of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples. In September 2009, members of these mechanisms jointly concluded, “The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is the principal normative framework for the three United Nations mechanisms with a specific mandate regarding indigenous peoples’ rights, and it should also constitute an important frame of reference for the United Nations treaty bodies and other relevant international and regional human rights mechanisms” (UN 2009a, para. 5). The international system has embraced the Declaration, and considerable work has been done to mainstream it at all levels. As UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon emphasizes, “The Declaration is a visionary step towards addressing the human rights of indigenous peoples. It sets out a framework on which States can build or rebuild their relationships with indigenous peoples. The result of more than two decades of negotiations, it provides a momentous opportunity for States and indigenous peoples to strengthen their relationships, promote reconciliation and ensure that the past is not repeated” (UN 2008a). The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is an essential catalyst for achievement and well-being among Indigenous peoples. On a global level,

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it is also generating renewed hope. Former chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (2008, 97), states, “The Declaration is an important instrument for indigenous peoples  for their liberation from discrimination and oppression. Its implementation, however, will be an uphill struggle. Edmund Burke’s exhortation that the ‘price of freedom is eternal vigilance’ very much applies to us, indigenous peoples, and to our supporters. Indeed, the price for our assertion to be recognized as distinct peoples, and to have our rights, as contained in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, protected, respected, and fulfilled is eternal vigilance.” As affirmed in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, “Each state has a prime responsibility and duty to protect, promote, and implement all human rights and fundamental freedoms” (UN 1998, art. 2(1); see also art. 3). Implementation includes internalization, which occurs as we use the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in many ways. The more it is referenced and used, the more internalization and implementation increase (see Koh 1999, 1413). In Canada, there is an active ad hoc coalition that has collaborated for several years on the Declaration. It consists of some national Aboriginal organizations, regional Aboriginal organizations, Indigenous nations, and human rights and faith-based organizations. I represent Quakers through CFSC . This ad hoc coalition was built over several years, as trust developed through relationships based on common objectives. Now that the Declaration has been adopted, the coalition is working on implementation, which includes human rights education. We are perhaps best known for producing a booklet version of the Declaration; two years after the booklet’s publication, we had distributed 100,000 copies in English and 10,000 in French. Numerous resources prepared by the coalition can be found on the CFSC (n.d.) website. Not surprisingly, for me, an important relationship within our group has been with the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee). Throughout the development of the Declaration, the GCC (EI ) played a leadership role, both domestically and internationally. Members of the ad hoc coalition have had opportunities to speak in various forums, which are essential for engaging the public. Human rights education is key to the general understanding of and respect for the Declaration. We are working on engaging churches, trade unions, other NGO s, human rights bodies, professional organizations, and educational institutions. Partners from the ad hoc coalition are also participating in workshops within Indigenous communities to discuss the Declaration.

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In November 2008, at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco, I was part of a Presidential Panel organized by the University of Lancaster’s Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics. Each member of the panel spoke about his or her involvement in the development of the Declaration and about its implementation. We also offered suggestions on how this academic professional association could integrate this instrument into its work so as to effectively promote the rights affirmed in the Declaration. The organizers of the panel expressed their support for the Declaration. They plan to follow up with specific suggestions, including examining the code of ethics used by their membership, with a view to integrating the Declaration into their work as a standard. The Declaration reinforces the international human rights system as a whole, benefiting a diverse spectrum of states, peoples, and individuals. In the global Indigenous context, an approach based on human rights should be an integral part of any objective or strategy. Experience shows that, for the Declaration to have genuine meaning and to effect concrete change, NGO s should continue to work in partnership with Indigenous peoples. On the day of the Declaration’s adoption, human rights organizations issued a joint press statement entitled “Adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Joint Statement by International Non-Governmental Organizations.” They explained, “Adoption of the Declaration sends a clear message to the international community that the rights of Indigenous peoples are not separate from or less than the rights of others, but are an integral and indispensable part of a human rights systems dedicated to the rights of all … These organizations call on all states to seize the historic opportunity presented by adoption of the Declaration to enter into a new relationship with Indigenous peoples based on a principled commitment to the protection of human rights” (Amnesty International et al. 2007). Canada and the Declaration There is not adequate space in this chapter to describe the role Canada has played in the development, adoption, and current implementation of the Declaration. For an in-depth analysis, readers may refer to Paul Joffe’s law article “UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Canadian Government Positions Incompatible with Genuine Reconciliation” (2010). Throughout most of the history of the Declaration’s development, Canada did not contribute positively to the advancement of Indigenous peoples’ human rights. However, the final years of the instrument’s creation saw

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Canada take real leadership and encourage other states to support some of the controversial articles, notably the right of self-determination (art. 3). Regrettably, in January 2006 Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s newly elected Conservatives did not support a declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Weeks later, the UN Intersessional Working Group completed its final meeting. In March 2006 the chair of the Working Group forwarded a compromise text to the Commission on Human Rights. Increasingly, the unsubstantiated and extreme positions of the government moved Canada from being a strong supporter of Indigenous rights to being an active opponent. Such resistance did not stop with the overwhelming vote in favour of the Declaration in September 2007 in the UN General Assembly. Canada spent the next three years aggressively undermining the Declaration at every opportunity. It therefore came as a surprise when it was announced in the Speech from the Throne in March 2010 that Canada would “take steps to endorse the Declaration in a manner fully consistent with Canada’s Constitution and laws” (Canada 2010b). This qualification was severely criticized in Canada. In a statement to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous and human rights organizations emphasized, “A central objective of any international human rights instrument is to encourage States to reform laws, policies and practices so that human rights are respected. International human rights standards cannot merely condone or sustain existing State practices. To limit UN declarations in this way would defeat the purpose of having international standards” (“Joint Statement” 2010). The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues also pushed Canada and the United States to endorse the Declaration without qualifications: “The Permanent Forum urges the Governments of Canada and the United States to work in good faith with indigenous peoples for the unqualified endorsement and full implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and urges that such endorsement and implementation honour the spirit and intent of the Declaration, consistent with indigenous peoples’ human rights” (UN 2010, para. 92). To avoid further criticism, Canada’s endorsement was quietly released on a Friday afternoon. The transition from opposition to qualified support is described by Amnesty International Canada’s secretary general, Alex Neve (2011): Part of what went sour for Canada during the Security Council vote can be traced back to our appalling behaviour in 2006 and 2007, when the UN finally adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which had been in the works for more than 20 years. We not only voted

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against it, we aggressively (and fortunately unsuccessfully) pressed other countries to oppose it. And when it was passed by an overwhelming majority we claimed it did not apply to us because we had voted against it. That was an unacceptable view of the status of UN decisions that we would never accept from other countries. Finally in 2010 – after four years of bullying and defiance – Canada changed its mind. It wasn’t announced until November, after the Security Council vote. And it could have been such a good news moment. Only it was clear there was nothing proud or genuine about the change of heart. In fact, the decision was announced to no fanfare, with a posting to government websites on a Friday afternoon (a wellestablished trick for burying a news story). In the first legal opportunity following endorsement, the Canadian government sought to minimize its commitment to the Declaration and its implementation. In an important case before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which alleged federal government discrimination in funding child welfare services for Indigenous children living on reserves, Canada attempted to devalue its endorsement of the Declaration: “As Canada noted in its public statement of support, the Declaration does not change Canadian laws. It represents an expression of political, not legal, commitment. Canadian laws define the bounds of Canada’s engagement with the Declaration” (Attorney General of Canada 2010, para. 10). As indicated by the Assembly of First Nations (2010, para. 22), “It is especially prejudicial for Canada to claim: ‘Canadian laws define the bounds of Canada’s engagement with the Declaration.’ Such an extreme and ideological statement, if accepted, would set back Canadian jurisprudence on human rights by decades. It ignores the rulings of Canada’s courts, which increasingly take into account international law and rely on a wide range of relevant and persuasive sources that include declarations” (emphasis in original). This complaint, filed by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and by the Assembly of First Nations, highlights how the government has increased the vulnerability of Indigenous children. Yet Canada has chosen to play politics and deny responsibility in regard to both Indigenous children and the Declaration. These are not inspiring actions by the Canadian government toward Indigenous children, whose human rights are being jeopardized. Indeed, the Federal Court of Canada (2012, para. 353) affirmed the legal applicability of the Declaration in the decision on this case. In its ruling, the court stated, “International instruments such as the UNDRIP [the Declara-

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tion] and the Convention on the Rights of the Child may also inform the contextual approach to statutory interpretation.” In February 2012, during its mandated review by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN 2012, para. 39) in Geneva, Canada did indicate, “While [the Declaration] had no direct legal effect in Canada, Canadian courts could consult international law sources when interpreting Canadian laws, including the Constitution.” Although Canada continues to devalue the Declaration, it has conceded the instrument’s legal effect. Amnesty International and CFSC (2013) have argued before the Supreme Court of Canada the importance of using the Declaration in domestic Indigenous rights cases. As interveners in the landmark case on land title brought by the Tsilhqot’in Nation, these organizations specifically focused on how standards in international law, including the Declaration, need to be used by the courts. The Supreme Court had previously determined that international declarations are “relevant and persuasive” sources for interpreting human rights in Canada’s Constitution and laws. This case presented a historic opportunity to use international human rights law in order to affirm Aboriginal title, as well as Indigenous peoples’ right to determine their own priorities for development. On 26 June 2014 the Supreme Court released the historic decision, a tremendous victory for the Tsilhqot’in, which marks the first time that a Canadian court has affirmed land ownership of a particular Indigenous nation, including rights to own, benefit from, and determine future use of these lands. The decision strengthens the jurisprudence on Indigenous governance rights. The court repeatedly emphasized the constitutional requirement of obtaining Indigenous peoples’ “consent.”8 The right to “control” title land “means that governments and others seeking to use the land must obtain the consent of the Aboriginal title holders.”9 If the Aboriginal group does not consent to the use, “the government’s only recourse is to establish that the proposed incursion on the land is justified under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982” (Supreme Court of Canada 2014, para. 76). Regardless of the positions of the government of the day, the positive momentum around the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples continues to grow. The Declaration is a living instrument with an auspicious past and a tremendous future. It is increasingly championed in grassroots communities and throughout the United Nations. Among the possibilities it suggests, it can provide a blueprint for justice and reconciliation for 370 million Indigenous people in more than seventy countries globally. True reconciliation includes a commitment to change. Indigenous peoples, civil society, and state governments are all actors in the critical work of implementation.

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Conclusion When asked how I got involved in this work, part of my answer is, “Well, my father is an anthropologist, and I spent childhood summers in James Bay.” My professional work, like my parents’, has been enhanced by personal relationships nurtured throughout my childhood and adult life. This interconnectivity was taught in the household, grounded in Quaker spiritual values, and developed through my family’s relationships with the Crees of Eeyou Istchee. When I was a small child, my mother had a loom on which she wove. Creating snowshoes is another form of weaving. The gifts from my parents enabled the strands of my childhood to come together so that I could expand my horizons through human rights work. In light of my upbringing, I look forward to continuing to work in partnership with Indigenous peoples and to strengthening the “tapestry” of the Declaration. As Paul Joffe (2010, 229) explains, The UN Declaration is much like a tapestry, carefully woven over many years with countless interrelated and mutually reinforcing strands. These fibres are based on the thousands of interventions of Indigenous peoples worldwide, who repeatedly travelled to Geneva to recount the legacy of colonization and the injustices, discriminations and other human rights violations that they continue to suffer. Should any State seek to remove a “strand” of the Declaration, it would affect its integrity. And the overall strength of the tapestry may be severely weakened. This tapestry of human rights remains a work in progress, since their significance and interrelationships are always evolving. Thus, it is the responsibility of present and future generations of all concerned to continue to weave new strands and collectively reinforce its indelibility and relevance.

Acknowledgments I am delighted to contribute this chapter as a tribute to my father. I give sincere thanks to John Long for his great care and dedication in bringing this book to fruition. My thanks and admiration as well to Paul Joffe for his valuable insights and edits during the writing of this chapter. Finally, I am grateful for the profound influence of two women named Sarah Jane, my mother and my daughter, who both inspire me and keep me grounded.

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NoTeS

1 The Quakers work globally through their world body, the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC ), which has had NGO status with the UN Economic and Social Council since 1948. The Quaker UN offices in Geneva and New York work under the auspices of FWCC . National service committees such as CFSC work in liaison with FWCC . The work on the Declaration was mandated by FWCC and carried out mainly by CFSC. 2 This chapter includes work I previously published both as an author and as an editor (see J. Preston 2010, 95). 3 It was essential that nonstate involvement be led by representatives of Indigenous peoples. The NGO s therefore worked in a manner that complemented the strategies established by the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus but would not speak on its behalf. Although NGO representatives were not part of the caucus, they were included by many as partners, and over time relationships grew. 4 In 1947 the Quakers received the Nobel Peace Prize. They have been active at the UN since its inception. 5 The creation of the WGIP was authorized by the UN Economic and Social Council in resolution 1982/34 of 7 May 1982. The WGIP worked on the draft declaration from 1985 to 1993. A draft was approved and subsequently submitted to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which unanimously approved the text. The sub-commission text was then forwarded to the Commission on Human Rights (UN 1994, 103). 6 The WGDD met at least annually from 1995 until January 2006. 7 UN records indicate a vote of 143 states in favour of the resolution on the adoption of the Declaration. Montenegro subsequently advised that it had intended to vote in favour of the resolution (UN 2007, 19). 8 In regard to “consent,” see Supreme Court of Canada (2014, paras 2, 5, 76, 88, 90–2, 97, and 124); and United Nations (2008c, art. 32(2)). 9 In regard to “control,” see Supreme Court of Canada (2014, paras 2, 15, 18, 31, 36, 38, 47, 48, 50, 75, and 119); and United Nations (2008c, art. 26(2)).

reFereNCeS

Amnesty International et al. 2007. “Adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Joint Statement by International Non-Governmental Organizations.” 13 September. http://www.quakerservice.ca/wp-content/uploads/ 2011/07//NGOstatement091307.pdf. Amnesty International and Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC ). 2013. Intervener factum. In William vs British Columbia 2013 SCC . http://quakerservice.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2013/10/Factum-Supreme-Court-of-Canada.pdf. Assembly of First Nations. 2010. “Reply of the Complainant, Assembly of First Nations.” 23 December. Filed in response to Attorney General of Canada submissions

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of 17 December 2010. In FNCFCS et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, tribunal file no. T 1340/7008. Attorney General of Canada. 2010. “Reply of the Defendant, Attorney General of Canada.” 17 December. Filed in response to Assembly of First Nations submissions on the endorsement by Canada of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In FNCFCS et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, tribunal file no. T 1340/7008. Barelli, Mauro. 2009. “The Role of Soft Law in the International Legal System: The Case of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 58, no. 4: 957–83. Boyle, Alan, and Charlotte Chinkin. 2007. The Making of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canada. 2010a. “Canada’s Statement of Support on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” 12 November. http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ap/ia/ dcl/stmt-eng.asp. – 2010b. “A Stronger Canada. A Stronger Economy. Now and for the Future.” Speech from the Throne, 3 March. http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2010/ bcp-pco/SO1–1–2010-eng.pdf. Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC ). N.d. “UN Declaration.” http://quakerservice.ca/our-work/indigenous-peoples-rights/un-declaration. Colombia. 2009. “Gobierno anuncia respaldo unilateral a la Declaración de Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas.” 21 April. http://web.presidencia.gov.co/sp/2009/abril/21/10212009.html. Ethical Funds. 2008. “Winning the Social License to Operate: Resource Extraction with Free, Prior and Informed Community Consent.” February. http://www.neiinvestments.com/neifiles/PDFs/5.4%20Research/FPIC.pdf. Federal Court of Canada. 2012. First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada v. Canada (Attorney General), 2012 FC 445, affirmed 2013 FCA 75. Garrick, Rick. 2009. “Concerns about Mining Act Revisions.” Wawatay News 36, no. 10: 1. http://www.wawataynews.ca/archive/all/2009/5/14/Concerns-about-Mining-Actrevisions_16625. Greenland. 2009. Act on Greenland Self-Government. http://naalakkersuisut.gl/en/ Naalakkersuisut. Joffe, Paul. 2010. “UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Canadian Government Positions Incompatible with Genuine Reconciliation.” National Journal of Constitutional Law 26, no. 2: 121–229. http://quakerservice.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2011/05/NJCLPJArticleUNDeclaration2010.pdf. “A Joint Statement with Indigenous World Association; Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee); International Organization of Indigenous Resource Development (IOIRD ); Ochapowace First Nation; Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers); and Amnesty International.” 2010. Delivered by Kenneth Deer to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 3rd sess., Geneva, 12–16 July. Kleist, Kuupik. 2009. “Statement by Mr. Kuupik Kleist, Premier of Greenland.” Delivered to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2nd sess., Geneva, 10–14 August. 218 J Enni f E R PR E Sto n

Koh, Harold Hongju. 1999. “How Is International Human Rights Law Enforced?” Indiana Law Journal 74, no. 4: 1397–413. Macklin, Jenny (Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Australia). 2009. “Statement on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” Parliament House, Canberra, 3 April. http://media. knet.ca/node/6667. Neve, Alex. 2011. “Is Canada a Human Rights Good Guy?” Toronto Star, 3 January. http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2011/01/03/is_canada_a_human_rights_ good_guy.html. Obama, Barack. 2010. “Remarks by the President at the White House Tribal Nations Conference.” 16 December. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/ remarks-president-white-house-tribal-nations-conference. Preston, Jennifer. 1990. “Tomson Highway: Dancing to the Tune of the Trickster.” MA thesis, University of Guelph. – 2010. “Realizing the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Partnerships with NonIndigenous NGO s.” In Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, Hope, and Action, ed. Jackie Hartley, Paul Joffe, and Jennifer Preston, 95–110. Saskatoon: Purich. Saganash, Romeo, and Paul Joffe. 2010. “The Significance of the UN Declaration to a Treaty Nation: A James Bay Cree Perspective.” In Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, Hope, and Action, ed. Jackie Hartley, Paul Joffe, and Jennifer Preston, 135–54. Saskatoon: Purich. Sharples, Pita (Minister of Maori Affairs, New Zealand Permanent Mission to the United Nations, Te Mängai o Aotearoa). 2010. “New Zealand Statement.” Presented at the Ninth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 19–30 April. Smith, Carsten (Expert member, Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues). 2009. “Comments on Article 42 as Legal Basis for a Declaration ‘Treaty Body.’” Presented at the International Expert Group Meeting on the Role of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in the Implementation of Article 42 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, New York, 14–16 January. UN doc. PFII /2009/EGM 1/5. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/ documents/EGM_Art_42_Smith.doc. Supreme Court of Canada. 2014. Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, SCC 44, 26 June. Supreme Court of Belize. 2007. Cal v. Attorney General of Belize and Minister of Natural Resources and Environment; Coy v. Attorney General of Belize and Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Claims no. 171 and 172 (Consolidated), 18 October. Tauli-Corpuz, Victoria. 2008. “The Concept of Indigenous Peoples at the International Level: Origins, Development and Challenges.” In The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia: A Resource Book, ed. Christian Erni, 77–97. Copenhagen and Chang Mai: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs and Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact Foundation.

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United Nations (UN ). 1994. Report of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities on Its 46th Session. UN doc. E /CN .4/Sub.2/1994/56, E/CN.4/1995/2, 28 October. – 1996. Establishment of a Working Group of the Commission on Human Rights to Elaborate a Draft Declaration in Accordance with Paragraph 5 of General Assembly Resolution 49/214. ESC Res. 1995/32, UN ECSOR , 1995, Supp. no. 1, UN doc. E /1995/95. – 1998. Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. GA Res. 53/144 (Annex), UN GAOR , 53rd sess., Supp. no. 49, vol. 1, UN doc. 53/49. – 2007. General Assembly, Official Records, UN GAOR , 61st sess., 107th plen. mtg., UN doc. A /61/PV .107. – 2008a. Department of Public Information, “Protect, Promote Endangered Languages, Secretary-General Urges in Message for International Day of World’s Indigenous People.” Press release, SG /SM /11715 HR /4957 OBV /711, 23 July. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/sgsm11715.doc.htm. – 2008b. Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, James Anaya. UN doc. A /HRC /9/9, 11 August. – 2008c. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. GA Res. 61/295 (Annex), UN GAOR , 61st sess., Supp. no. 49, vol. 3, UN doc. A /61/49. – 2009a. Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, James Anaya, Addendum: Conclusions and Recommendations of the International Expert Seminar on the Role of United Nations Mechanisms with a Specific Mandate Regarding the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. UN doc. A /HRC /12/34/Add.7, 1 September. – 2009b. “Implementing Declaration on Indigenous Rights Will Bring ‘Historical Justice,’ Develop Stronger, Democratic, Multicultural Societies, Third Committee Told.” Press release, GA /SHC /3954, 19 October. http://www.un.org/News/Press/ docs/2009/gashc3954.doc.htm. – 2010. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Report on the Ninth Session. Economic and Social Council, Official Records, Supp. no. 23, E /2010/43-E /C .19/2010/15, 16–30 April. – 2012. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, “Nineteenth and Twentieth Periodic Reports of Canada (Continued).” 2 March. Summary record of 1242nd meeting on 23 February 2012. UN doc. CERD /C /SR .2142. Weitzner, Viviane. 2009. “Bucking the Wild West – Making Free, Prior and Informed Consent Work.” Speech to the Prospector and Developer’s Association of Canada Annual Convention, 3 March.

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9 Compassionate Landscapes: Caring for the Great Community of Persons SuSAN M. PreSToN

A gifted teacher influences his or her students on many levels; truly meaningful lessons are not so much related to analysis, methods, and theories as they are to the humanity with which the world is conceived and reflected to the student. Over the years it became very clear to me that one of my father’s greatest gifts to his students and colleagues (including his own children) is the way that he approaches each situation with genuine thoughtfulness, humility, and generosity of spirit. Intellectual exploration is thus moulded into a practice of revealing stories of human dignity. Even when addressing times of compelling hardship or conflict, he sees spaces of hope and compassion – whether among the communities of the Eastern Crees, among Quakers, within the peace movement, or when responding to personal requests from any of us for counsel. Perhaps, just as in the transmission of oral tradition from one generation to the next, my father has integrated these values from his own teachers through a lifetime – his grandfather and father, his Cree mentor John Blackned, and others. One of John’s great gifts to his own community, to my father, and through him, to me was the humanity he conveyed in telling the stories of Cree experience that he learned from his grandmother at the outset of the twentieth century and from his own lifetime of observation. My childhood was blessed with the experience of cultural diversity and especially with the magic of oral narrative as a unique view into a rich lifeworld of relationships between humans, animals, spirits, and the earth. It was another blessing when, for my master’s thesis, I decided to explore that same magical world by undertaking a grounded interpretation of John’s (and others’) stories from a different perspective than that held by my father in his analysis. My thesis focused on Crees’ representation and meaning of

“landscape” from a time before the advent of hydroelectric projects and the emergence of an organized political “national” identity. The concept of “landscape” originated in the context of European perceptions of the outdoor environment, but since the early 1970s, scholars in the social sciences have shifted away from notions of picturesque scenery in their use of the term and have adopted understandings that emphasize the complex relationships between humans and the environment. A pioneer in this field was geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1979, 89–102), who proposed that landscape is a construct of the cultural mind achieved through a combination of biophysical, spatial, emotional, and subjective elements. Sociologists Thomas Greider and Lorraine Garkovich (1994, 1) later defined landscape as “the symbolic environment created by human acts of conferring meaning to nature and the environment, of giving the environment definition and form from a particular angle of vision and through a special filter of values and beliefs. Every landscape is a symbolic environment. These landscapes reflect our self-definitions that are grounded in culture.” Anthropologists Eric Hirsch and Michael O’Hanlon (1995) expanded on this notion of landscape as an emergent “cultural process” in their edited volume containing ethnographic analyses of different cultural landscapes.1 In my research (as in this chapter) “landscape” is thus understood to refer to the physical environment, including all life within it, interpreted through human filters of meaning that are grounded in experience. I returned to Cree narratives of landscape a few years later for my postdoctoral research but with a focus on their expression in the context of more recent natural resource developments. In the course of both studies, I had the extraordinary fortune to engage in wonderfully rich analytical discussions with my father, creating an inspiring space of reflection and shared learning. From his earliest discussions with John Blackned in the 1960s, Dad has always been very interested in understanding the Cree concept of community, or beykodeno (peyakutenuu). Although approached from a different perspective, my own interest in human-environment relationships led me to the same place: for Crees historically, the landscape can be described as a great community of persons (R.J. Preston 1997), wherein all of the actors – humans, animals, spirits, and the earth – are consciously engaged in a complex set of reciprocal relations.2 This worldview is well documented in oral tradition recorded by the earliest non-Aboriginal geographers and ethnographers to work in the region, including Robert Bell (1897), Alanson Skinner (1911), and Frank Speck (1915). It was more fully documented by ethnographers, including my father (R.J. Preston 1975, 1978, 1982) and Adrian Tanner (1979), just prior to the period of modernization and development and was further elaborated

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upon by Colin Scott (1996), Harvey Feit (2001), and Paul Nadasdy (2007). Reciprocity and recognition of personhood especially among nonhumans are grounded in an ethic from which compassion emerges. To me, one of the most compelling manifestations of this sense of community found in the hundreds of Cree narratives that inform my understanding – which is necessarily that of an outsider – is the pairing of a sense of tragic loss of home, security, and the relationships that sustain persons and communities due to violent destruction by an outside force with a sense of compassion for the nonhuman persons who suffer these losses. Here I hope to convey the eloquence and depth of meaning that are expressed through so many voices. I draw on documentation ranging from oral tradition and life histories recorded between the 1890s and 1960s, through hunting leaders’ statements in the 1970s and 1980s, to transcripts from interviews of residents in 1994 reflecting on the then-proposed Great Whale River hydro project. There is a practical purpose in my effort as well. I want to raise awareness of the failures of contemporary “consultative” mechanisms in environmental assessment and in related formal venues for deciding on development directions. Although the views and values of individual residents are sometimes officially expressed, processes for interpreting and recognizing what has been said are often deficient. The emphasis has tended to be on identifying quantifiable, scientific, geospatial, manageable factors that may or may not be taken into account when developing policy and plans. Expressions of emotion are typically considered too subjective and irrelevant for professional decision making, so they are either ignored (at worst) or only sympathetically heard (at best). Rarely are they acted upon constructively. Turning criticism to optimism, I hope that this account will contribute to an acceptance of the legitimacy of compassion as a basis for decision making by analysts, civil servants, and politicians. In Cree oral tradition recorded by the early twentieth century, normative relations between human and nonhuman persons were characterized by an ethic of cooperation understood as necessary to the maintenance of social equilibrium throughout the lifeworld. Many stories are cautionary tales of what can go wrong when these values are disregarded. This ethic is depicted in oral accounts of histories and life stories as well as legends and myths through two interrelated themes of particular importance to our understanding of meaning. First, the ethic is expressed through interspecies relations that are often characterized in familial terms of spouses, children, and grandparents and that are normally supportive. Second, it is revealed through the capacity for multispecies perception in which a person (human or other) is able to experience the world through the mind of other species-persons, a practice

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that is often but not exclusively depicted through transformations, which can be symbolic, implied, or literal. A powerful psychological intimacy between humans (i.e., Crees, or Eeyouch/Eenouch) and the others who collectively comprise the land – or landscape – was thus thoroughly embedded in the larger traditional narrative of cultural identity (S.M. Preston 1999, 2000, 2011). Broad continuity and persistence of traditional knowledge and practices into the 1960s have been independently documented (R.J. Preston 1975; Tanner 1979), especially among adults who had not been subject to state-sponsored residential school education. At that time, the landscapes beyond the small trading post villages remained undeveloped through most of the Cree territory. Mid-century heralded the beginning of profound changes in the lifeways of most Crees, with the introduction of many challenges to traditional or longstanding ways of relating to the landscape. A primary challenge was posed by the active imposition of the colonial state in Cree lands and lives on an unprecedented scale; the vehicle for the new governmentality was Quebec’s ambition for hydroelectric development, announced in 1971. The plan was to build colossal power plants by damming major rivers, transforming the entire Cree landscape in phases. The first phase was the La Grande River project in the 1970s. Later phases have proceeded in modified form into the twenty-first century. Throughout the past forty years, Crees have been expressing their feelings about the impacts of these developments in various documented forms and through both research and public venues. Interviews with tallymen (nituuhuu uchimaauch), or customary hunting-ground leaders, conducted by Harvey Feit in the 1970s, for example, provide brief but powerful insights into these feelings, as illustrated below. Once mechanisms were established in Canadian environmental law and in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA ) (Canada 1975)3 entitling Crees to have a voice in major developments on their traditional lands, a more substantive documentation of feelings in the context of development was enabled. An excellent example can be found in the environmental assessment interviews completed by Marie Roué, Douglas Nakashima, Colin Scott, and Kreg Ettenger that were commissioned by the Grand Council of the Crees (1994a, 1994b) in response to Quebec’s 1989 announcement of its intent to develop the Great Whale River hydro complex.4 Destroying the Land In the post-1971 statements made by Crees about the known or anticipated impacts of Hydro-Québec’s massive projects, there is an increasingly prevalent and consistent use of the phrase “destroy the land” and variations of it.

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Given that the La Grande River project permanently submerged 13,500 square kilometres of actively inhabited customary family hunting grounds, that the Great Whale complex was to submerge 3,300 square kilometres, and that the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert complex would submerge a further 8,200 square kilometres, the meaning of this phrase seems self-evident. The modern era had only just reached James Bay, and these lands were vital to the yearly activities of Crees and to the associated reproduction of Cree culture in the 1970s, and they remain so today. The Government of Quebec reported that in 1999–2000, between 12 and 32 per cent of adults were living on the land for one-third or more of the year, depending on their village of association (Quebec 2003). The meaning in these expressions is a deeply personal and, in many cases, spiritual one whose power may lie at least partly in historically rooted ways of conceiving of an alienation not only from the land but also from a fundamental notion of cosmic order. If this is so, then it is a referent for a profoundly disturbing condition akin to chaos. I believe that this interpretation is supported by the evidence of oral tradition, combined with an understanding of traditional East Cree cosmology. This premodern evidence is considered below in the context of statements about the impacts of hydro development. First however, it is important to acknowledge some of the challenges in making these analytical and historical connections based on what people say, first in contemporary narratives and then in traditional narratives. Challenges of interpretation: Contemporary narratives Among the numerous challenges that can apply to interpretation of such narratives are modes of resistance, essentialisms, culture change, and moralizing rhetoric. Resistance

Public statements by Crees about these development initiatives are produced in the context of an entire socio-cultural mobilization against an outside, colonizing force. Many are thus collectively constructed, discursive strategies of resistance. In this context, Harvey Feit (2001) has examined Crees’ use, since the early 1970s, of the metaphor of the garden as a conceptual bridge. Through this metaphor, some Crees have likened hunting to gardening, thereby providing a shared frame of reference with an audience primarily of European origin for discussing claims of land ownership. The garden here refers especially to the “white man’s” cultivation of vegetable plots, familiar to Crees

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from the demarcated “properties” managed by trading company managers and priests at trading post settlements within the traditional subsistence landscape. It also alludes to the biblical “garden” and thus calls upon the morality of Christian ethics and asserts Cree rights within those conceptual constructs. It is further used as a counternarrative to Quebec premier Robert Bourassa’s use of the metaphors of “wilderness, European settlement, and nation” (Feit 2001, 428) in his promotion of the hydro development. Essentialisms

Within the four-decade timeframe of these development initiatives, Cree resistance has increasingly connected with international and global interests and discourses of Indigenous rights and Indigenous peoples’ relations with the environment. Some of the broader discourses have been distinctly essentializing and have romanticized both Indigenous peoples and nature with the intent of variously elevating Indigenous peoples culturally and spiritually, distinguishing them rhetorically from non-Indigenous peoples through their bonds with the earth, or gaining sympathy and support from those nonIndigenous people who idealize such a primeval state of being, especially in contrast to the environmental destruction wrought by industrial development (Milton 1996). Many of these concepts would have filtered back to the Crees in the eastern subarctic through mass media, which arrived in earnest only in the early 1970s. Culture Change

There are also questions regarding the contemporary relevance of historical cosmology, and it is central to my interpretation that these questions are at least partly answered in the statements made by many Crees. Related questions about the extent of culture change and continuity arise and can be addressed; they point to the issue of diversity within Cree culture in terms of age, gender, religion, bush versus town life, hunting versus employment economics, and so on. When considering the relevance of the traditional relational cosmology to the Crees, it is important to remember that there was general consistency until the advent of residential schooling and intensified Christian influences in the 1940s and 1950s. This means that most people over about thirty years of age in 1974 would have lived at least their formative years in the traditional manner by subsistence hunting. According to a review of literature published by Hydro-Québec (Hayeur 2001), about one-third of the population lived in one of eight villages year-round in 1971. A 2006 report

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from the Cree Regional Authority indicated a gradual decline in the percentage of Crees participating in the Income Security Program, which recognizes the economic value of traditional bush activities.5 The report notes a gradual decline in overall participation in the program from 39 per cent of the Cree population in 1985 (3,710 beneficiaries) to 16 per cent in 2006 (2,247 beneficiaries). The total population rose during the same period from 9,336 to 14,709. The highest levels of participation in the program are among those aged sixtyseven plus and, importantly, those aged seventeen to twenty-six, indicating a resurgence of interest in traditional activities among the youth (CRA 2006). Christianity began to be influential in the late nineteenth century, and as has been documented in many cultures around the world, it took on a hybridized form that allowed for the continuity of some Indigenous beliefs. Evangelical forms of Christianity arrived in the mid-1970s; the pan-Indian movement, with a re-envisioned Native spirituality, began to attract attention in the 1980s, especially among youths (R.J. Preston 2010). Crees’ relationships with the land have indeed changed in terms of technology use, degree of isolation, frequency and duration of time engaged in traditional pursuits, and the spiritual or psychic intimacy of engagement. But change is not the same as extinction. Even in the 1980s the traditional values were strongly held. Relational cosmology in practice during that time is demonstrated in statements by Cree hunters from Chisasibi who participated in a 1984 task force to document their hunting knowledge and practice: [G]ame know all about the presence of hunters as well. The Cree say, “all creatures are watching you. They know everything you are doing. Animals are aware of your activities.” In the past, animals talked to people. In a sense, there is still communication between animals and hunters … The hunter tries to think what the bear is thinking. Their minds touch. The hunter and the bear have parallel knowledge. So in a sense, they communicate … A hunter always speaks as if the animals are in control of the hunt. The success of the hunt depends on the animals: the hunter is successful if the animal decides to make himself available. The hunters have no power over the game, animals have the last say as to whether they will be caught. Young people are taught early on to show respect to the animals. If a hunter is disrespectful he will kill nothing. For such a person, game would be scarce. Even if he sees game in the bush, something happens, something prevents him from getting the game. And this includes all animals, not just big game and fur animals, but also small game

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and fish. This is a fundamental belief of all hunters. (Cree Trappers Association of Chisasibi 1989, 21–8) An important point to discern here is that traditional hunting practice is not at all inconsistent with a genuine concern for the well-being of the animals, who are seen as persons with families and concerns of their own. To care deeply and personally about an animal as a person is part of the relational, reciprocal way of understanding interaction between all persons (human and otherwise). Reciprocity occurs when animals choose to give themselves to be killed for food and when humans show caring and respect in all interactions with them. These relations are understood to be mutually respectful, sustaining, and indeed loving (R.J. Preston 1975). Although corporeal death is involved, the interaction is not intended or understood as destructive. For many Crees, this perspective has persisted in some form to the present. Moralizing Rhetoric

Another challenge in interpreting contemporary narratives is the conscious use of environmental assessment hearings and other public venues as platforms for social moralizing in the form of admonishments against adopting the ways of “white men.” In a much subtler way, the demonstration of many expressions of concern for the well-being of animals, trees, and the land is also a teaching for any Crees who will read the statements presented at these forums. Understanding the intent of these expressions can be a challenge for younger generations who may not have had the opportunity to learn about these relations from their parents or grandparents. Having acknowledged these four challenges of narrative interpretation, it remains my position that genuine beliefs, feelings, and concerns can be – and are – articulated in public statements by individuals in the face of externally introduced threats. How they are expressed may be considered in the context of historical and possibly ancient ways of thinking about personhood, right relations, and right behaviour. Challenges of interpretation: oral tradition6 In addition to the challenges posed in interpreting contemporary narratives, numerous further challenges or considerations confront those who seek cultural understanding through the study of recorded oral tradition. These include authority of the narrator, cross-cultural conceptual and linguistic translation, and varied renderings of stories by the same or different narra-

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tors. Each of these considerations is a factor in assessing the cultural “truth” of a body of narrative material and therefore its relevance as a reflection of ways of knowing and experiencing the lifeworld. East Cree oral tradition focuses on the interactions between persons in the context of a traditional subsistence-hunting life. From a large sample of oral tradition, the researcher can attempt to reveal meanings beyond the literal content; rather than in the details of the interactions depicted, meaning can be found in the way experience is understood and described. Authority

An important issue to consider here is the depth of a storyteller’s knowledge, memory, skill, and attention to detail. John Blackned was one of the most highly regarded Cree storytellers and, as noted above, shared his knowledge with my father through the 1960s and early 1970s.7 Transcripts from those recordings include almost 200 detailed histories and legends. The collection was a primary source for my earlier analysis of the symbolic representation of landscape and its meaning in Cree oral tradition (S.M. Preston 1999, 2000). Translation

The ability of one language to represent ideas and meanings originally conveyed in another is a more complex challenge. Realistically, we must expect some meaning to fall through the cracks and gaps when crossing cultural conceptual frameworks.8 Large collections can provide the critical mass needed to identify underlying patterns of meaning, supported by extensive study of a culture in an attempt to achieve a contextual apprehension, which can then be used (with great care) to fill in many of the conceptual gaps left by translated words.9 Some of the stories are literal representations of activities; those stories that do not seem literal to me, I think of as metaphoric from the position of my ability to comprehend. Although I am perfectly comfortable with the genuine existence of the documented types of interrelations between human, animal, and spirit-persons, and with the understood abilities of various persons, I am still limited in my capacity to fully comprehend meaning because I am not of that culture, with its experience of reality.10 So my interpretation is necessarily from the position of an interpreter between cultures. I can do my best to interpret in the context of the knowledge that I am able to gain of the culture, so the meanings I interpret reflect my knowledge rather than an assumed position of authority or a claim that my interpretation is fully representative of that culture.

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Variability

Another consideration is variation between renderings of the same story when told by the same narrator on different occasions or by different narrators. Such variation does not necessarily threaten the integrity of the inherent meaning in the story. Rather, it points to the importance of not reifying the specific details of any one version but instead looking to interpretation as a way to reveal broader patterns of meaning. This observation is supported by the remarks of my mother, Sarah Jane Preston (1986, 253), in her study of continuity and truth in Cree oral tradition: “continuity, and therefore truth, lies not in a particular version of a story, nor in the credibility of events, but in the meaning of behaviour as it is illustrated by a story.” Her analysis demonstrates that meaning is conveyed not by the events themselves but by the nature of the behaviour or action that accompanies the events. The meaning is thus not on the surface but is expressed more as an underlying symbolic motif that in some cases may be recognized by outsiders only after exposure to multiple variations. Further, she notes that the real power of narrative tradition is in the narrator’s “ability to evoke a shared imagery,” one that reinforces the cultural ways of comprehending and acting in the world (S.J. Preston 1988, 158). This continuity is maintained even with individual adjustments to the details because, as my father analogized, “traditions are like icebergs; we only see the tip, unless we delve deeper. We can reinvent the appearance of the tip fairly easily, but all that other stuff is still attached, underneath” (R.J. Preston 1999b). “Destroying the Land” in oral tradition One thing that I found very striking about the contents of the over 200 stories in the collection of East Cree narratives is that the specific phrase “destroying the land” occurs in only one context, the epic story of Mamiteo (Maamiteu). In this narrative the cannibal is stated to be “destroying the land” because he is eating the “Indians” (sic). Mamiteo is an atoosh (atuush), a type of being whose actions are clearly articulated in oral tradition as alarmingly outside the realm of normal, acceptable practices (R.J. Preston 1975, 1980). They are the “Other” in the extreme – for they threaten the continuance of the known way of life. They represent the irrational and dangerous, are only partly predictable, and are made more powerful than normal humans by their deviance. They are outcasts – former humans who, through the act of cannibalism, became monstrous. They are most often depicted as loners rather than as part of a normal relational group. However, Mamiteo is extraordinary because he has corralled

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many human captives whom he forces to eat as he does, thus creating a band of cannibals who hunt humans (Crees). The threat of their collective impact in the narrative is that they will transform the earth by replacing the ordered, relational dynamic with destruction and chaos: Mamiteo had destroyed a lot of Indians as he was eating them for food … The early Indians believed (said) that Mamiteo would destroy all the earth. When Mamiteo runs into a wigwam, all of the men jump on him but Mamiteo only throws them off. He was able to pick up a man by the leg and bang him on the ground … There were a lot of Indians (prisoners) who took after him, eating other Indians. [Sentence repeated in original narration for emphasis.] I am not sure of the number of people who ate like him; but there were a lot. (Blackned 1965) Eventually, a hunter with exceptional skills and a very supportive relationship with a spirit-helper becomes the ultimate hero of the story. He is the only man who is able to kill Mamiteo, and even then he needs supernatural assistance. He asks his Mistabeo (mistaapeu, spirit-helper), “How would you try to kill him? Would you help me because he will soon destroy all our land?” (Blackned 1965). “Destroying the land” in the story of Mamiteo, when understood in a much larger context of Cree cosmology and narrative, is a profoundly disturbing idea. “Land” is to be understood as the comprehensive lifeworld, including all of its persons. To “destroy” the land is to bring about a state of chaos and the end of existence as it is known. Atoosh stories have been understood as part of the tepachimun (tipaachimuwin), or history of actual events, category of oral tradition among the Crees, some including not-too-distant ancestors of known people who witnessed these creatures. The danger perceived as genuine is thus a caution and a moral lesson about right relationships and right behaviour among persons. Hydro Development: “Everything will Be Destroyed” For at least some Crees, employing the same imagery in the context of imminent, vast environmental destruction may have been intended to express not only the physiographic alteration of the landscape but also a deeper risk to social and even cosmological order. In the case of hydro development, the Quebec government has been seen to be destroying the land in more than one way. The most obvious is by

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drowning it under water. A second, much deeper meaning parallels the meaning in the story of Mamiteo: to destroy the land is to destroy the persons who comprise it. The destruction wrought by hydro development thus includes all of the trees and plants, animals, and Crees. Places of memory, places intimately tied to the reproduction of culture, places of living and dying – homes and graves – would be destroyed for Crees and animals alike. Such an act is consistently expressed as unconscionable, immoral, irrational, incomprehensibly disrespectful, and unjust. It is as though Hydro-Québec is being – even if unintentionally – equated with Mamiteo; in his/its overwhelmingly aberrant behaviour, he/it upsets the balance of life in the world and threatens its very existence. In 1974 Cree hunters convened for two days of intensive meetings in Mistissini to learn about and discuss the first hydro project, on which work had begun in 1973. Afterward, the hunters completed a survey organized on their behalf by Harvey Feit, in which many provided additional comments about their feelings. Although most of these comments are very brief, they include powerful expressions of compassion for the land and animals, as well as, by extension, a sense of what might be called relational anxiety tied to the anticipation of their utter destruction. I use the concept of relational anxiety to describe expressions of duress over threats to the continuation of the relational foundations of living with the animals and other persons comprising the landscape. To destroy the land is to destroy these foundations and thus the Cree culture. The following excerpts from five hunters illustrate the point: If the land should be flooded many animals and their source of food will be destroyed, if all this happens to come to pass of what different source of food will the animals survive from? And if the source of food for the animals is destroyed then also will the source of food for the Indians will also be destroyed. I know a lot of animals who are destroyed by water at the moment, because of too much water. What will happen to them if the water is even raised higher than they are now? For the animals that live on land they’ll be always drifting to areas that are unknown to them, then they too will just die or the animals that will be destroyed by too much water. For the hunters of the territories that will have their land destroyed by waters … what will they do? A tree has the same basic need for living as a human being – the tree will then look like a young poor child begging for food to live on.

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If they do flood the area and if it should reach and win my ground then I shall be in bitter sorrow for my animals. The land brought us up, helped us live through all these years … If the land is destroyed, so will the Indians be destroyed and what we kept for a long time, our culture of hunting and living with nature. (Feit 1974) It should be noted that these statements predated most Crees’ awareness of the eventual popularity of “New Age” and other essentializing representations of harmonious relations between Indigenous peoples and the earth. It is my view that these can be understood at face value, not as strategic or rhetorical. They are expressions of genuine caring for the animals, the trees, and their own lifeway grounded in relationships with these other persons. Indeed, statements of compassion for the animals and land were often made by Cree elders. Even though the influences of Christianity have been especially strong since the 1960s, with traditional cosmology being frowned upon and abandoned by many people, a sense of shared experience with the animals and land has endured. Its credibility is reinforced by the way it is expressed; concern for the well-being of nonhuman persons, especially animals but also trees, is a personal kind of empathy that requires placing oneself in the other’s position and feeling how the other must feel, not just in passing but deeply. To carry the association between Mamiteo and Hydro-Québec further, one could say that Hydro-Québec was – like the atoosh – gorging himself/itself on the land. When Hydro-Québec announced in 1989 its intentions to develop the Great Whale River project, Crees had over a decade of experience with the flooding of the land and all of the problems that accompanied it. As part of the environmental assessment, the Grand Council of the Crees (1994a, 1994b) contracted interviews with nearly 160 residents of Chisasibi, Whapmagoostui, Wemindji, and Eastmain during 1994. Their comments are thus informed by direct observation or by second-hand knowledge of observation by friends or family. From within the over fifteen hundred pages of typed transcripts, the nature of the destruction emerges. It encompassed more than just the impacts of flooding for the dams; it included what might be considered collateral damage through, for example, the impact of access roads that would accompany hydro development. In the 1970s and 1980s, the road to Chisasibi for the La Grande River project brought increased access to alcohol and drugs, resulting in numerous accidental deaths and suicides. This is yet another way that the development was described as destroying the land. It physically scarred the

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earth, it changed the ecosystem, and it brought social destruction in its wake. Further, some people explained that their culture had always been transmitted in the experience of being on the land, not in the villages. Oral tradition, environmental knowledge, life skills, and values remained actively connected to the land in the mid-1990s. If the land was destroyed, the opportunity would be lost to reproduce culture and identity in forms embedded in traditional hunting and gathering life or at least its locations. In their reports to the Grand Council of the Crees (1994a, 1994b), the interviewers identified a breadth of themes collectively depicting the sustained importance of traditional lifeways in connection with the land and animals, as well as with other humans. There may have been some participants in these interviews for whom a position of compassion was recently adopted, either for strategic purposes or as a result of contemporary spiritual movements like pan-Indianism. However, I am persuaded that among some of the elder Crees especially, this perception was based not only on a lifetime of relations with the animals and the land but also on the knowledge and beliefs that were learned from their parents and grandparents, as well as from their own experience. One such interview participant demonstrated his compassion in great detail. This man was fifty-nine years old, and for thirty-four pages of typed transcripts, he eloquently described the habitats, behaviours, and preferences of species after species of animal. With an almost Homeric poetry, he closed each description by saying how the home and food of that animal would be destroyed, so the tension continued to build as he went on. His expression was based on the knowledge of a person engaged in a set of finely tuned relations with many different animals, birds, fish, plants, and the land itself. Compassion was validated by expertise: All this I am telling about the habits and habitats of the porcupine … all that will be lost once the flooding has happened. These things will not be visible and would have been lost to the flood. The porcupine will be perplexed as to where to get its food. It could also happen that the trees that are good for it to eat will not be accessible to it. All I have mentioned so far, I know will all be lost once the flooding takes place. If the aukaans’ [animals’/creatures’]11 habitat is destroyed, it will be made homeless and impoverished when his food will be destroyed along with everything else. I know the young-rearing habits and behaviors of the animals that I am familiar with that live in this area. I know the areas where they like to live best. I presume that these animals view their homes like we view

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our houses where they feel safe and secure. I presume they are very happy where they are in their dens once they had built them where they wanted because it is warm and safe. We can deduce this from our own experiences as people [Eeyouch/Eenouch] when we have warm and secure dwellings, we are happy to be there. The animal is the same way. Imagine how poor they will be if all their homes are destroyed. (GCC 1994a, 471–505) To say “everything will be destroyed” is thus not an exaggeration. Its literal meaning is clear. But it is my conclusion that the meaning runs deeper than an exclamation that all of the land will be submerged and the life on it displaced or killed. It is not just “everything that you see” or “everything of biophysical nature.” It is all of the relationships between animals, between animals and Crees, between animals and their homes. We have a tendency to abstract these relations by referring to habitats and species, but from a relational perspective these are persons with families and homes who have preferences and feelings. Compassion in these statements is not a romantic sentiment, and it is not paternalistic. It can be subtle and even confusing unless it is considered in the context of a relational cosmology held by a subsistence-hunting culture. These excerpts from three interviews in Whapmagoostui exemplify the concerns expressed by many people in this environmental assessment process: Some of the caribou are such a pitiful sight to see for they are so skinny, when they get here. This is what we know, so much is destroyed already, right through this land, where the caribou drowned. There is so much water on this side too, where the dam was built on the Chisasibi River and if ever the dam is built on the Whapmagoostui River, where will these caribou go, where will they find things to eat? There won’t be any creature that isn’t affected by the project. They all will be affected. That is what the people know and therefore, they oppose the proposed project. All the fur-bearing animals will be affected and destroyed too. Everything will be destroyed. That is why we don’t want the project to go ahead. We are thinking about the future generations that will still come. We don’t want to lose the use of the land. This is why we think we will be so devastated when this land is destroyed … If they do this again, there will be so much that will be lost. This is what concerns the Cree. (GCC 1994a)

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Since the 1970s, Crees have used contemporary Christian forms of shared imagery to assert the immorality of destroying the land, with reference both to biblical floods and fires. One Mistissini hunter explained that during a forest fire everything is burned and all of the animals leave, but within a few years the vegetation returns. He said that the Cree word for this recovery is “a very strong word … it puts everything together, like the growth of the land itself, the trees and the animals. It’s just almost like a growth of a garden.” He juxtaposed this with the destruction caused by hydro reservoirs, when the land is “lost forever” (Feit 1974). A description of this same observation also appeared in the Grand Council’s 1994 interviews (GCC 1994a, 1994b). In contrast to these uses of shared imagery in the construction and use of strategic discourses, some Crees’ opposition to destruction of the land is voiced from a distinctly Cree, or at least hunter-gatherer, experience. It calls upon listeners and readers to experience compassion for the land and animals, as well as for the hunters, future generations, and ancestors. Here the relational aspect of sharing the land with other creatures is most evident, and the realism or pragmatism of subsistence life is not romanticized. People spoke of how pitiful the trees and animals would be when they could not find food or when the animals had lost their homes and could not find their young. Many spoke about the importance of respecting the animals and the appalling ways that white hunters often left partial carcasses to rot. Similarly, animals who would be killed in the flood were grieved, as were the trees, described sorrowfully as being drowned. They anticipated how the various animals would feel emotionally. The survival of aspects of traditional cosmology to the present is fragmented and inconsistent due to the profound influences of Christianity, Canadian schooling systems, and Western technology since the mid-twentieth century. The practice of conjuring and the belief in spirit-helpers and in the ability of hunters to communicate on a psychic level with animals have been largely displaced by God and Jesus. However, fundamental expectations of respectful behaviour toward animals and the land appear to remain widespread, most strongly among the people who continue to live much of the year out on the land. Western science increasingly endorses adaptive and ecosystems approaches that recognize the interrelations – if only in functional terms – between biodiversity, soils, hydrologic systems, and all other components of the environment. A “great community” is now envisioned, but the missing and perhaps most crucial aspect is a perspective of living within this community as one of many kinds of persons. The relational perspective engenders an ethic of

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care within this community. It need not rely fully on the maintenance of an ancient cosmology, but the logic of subsistence – of living with and depending directly upon the community – necessitates a form of engagement that may yet be experienced as kinship. It is grounded in an intimate knowing about the lives and ways of the animals, plants, waters, and land. Ongoing viability of such a system relies on the maintenance of right relationships, which can be thought of in moral terms, including compassion, or in strictly utilitarian terms of sustainable management of resources. Destroying the land, the life, and the culture is irrational and dangerous from either perspective. I suggest that there is a connection between the conception that “everything will be destroyed” in the context of late-twentieth-century hydroelectric development and that of pre-twentieth-century oral tradition. Rather than being a sort of literary allusion to oral tradition, as the references to gardens and fire are indeed allusions to biblical imagery, it might be grounded in much deeper ways of understanding the world and the place of (Cree) people within it. All of this matters for what it suggests about the nature of change and continuity among the Crees specifically, as well as for how it reinforces my own longstanding concerns about official responses to emotional expression in formal land use processes when institutional arrangements (i.e., policy and legislation) allow for or require public participation in advance of major changes to the functional relationships between people and land at the community level or on a larger scale. At the time of the first announcement of hydro development intentions in 1971, the Quebec government’s position was that the Crees were no longer living a “traditional” lifeway since they had been assimilated into contemporary Canadian society. This was shown to be incorrect not just because about half of the Crees were still making their living hunting full-time but also because for many Crees there remained some continuity in terms of understanding the social relations within which hunting occurred – relations between humans, animals, and the land. The effective translation of environmental assessment documentation into policy and institutional practice is not just a matter of incorporating mitigative measures to reduce the numbers of animals destroyed or acres of habitat drowned. I believe there has to be a way of acknowledging and responding to the relations between Crees – or any other people in similar development contexts – and the landscape that is integral to their identity. Compassion is the thread that weaves this tale together. Learned by each of us from our teachers if we are lucky, it becomes a deliberative tool for

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engaging with the world, and we learn to recognize it in the expressions of others. To my father and his teachers, I am gratefully indebted for this vision of heart and mind. Now in his eighties, Dad continues to inspire through his wise integration of intellect and compassion, whether collaborating on a history of the Moose River Basin, helping to bridge understanding by teaching hydro workers about traditional knowledge, or persuading local politicians to create urban spaces for reflection on peace. This humanity is what transforms mere observation and analysis into a depth of understanding that gives form and meaning to our experience of life in the world. In the end, regulatory processes determining land and resource uses are not simply technocratic exercises in economic efficiency, as much as they may be portrayed in that light; they are also about how we will all live. For society to live well, these processes must be redesigned to actively respect and attend to deeply held meanings and values that are grounded in experience, ethics, and compassion for the great community of persons.

Acknowledgments The research reflected in this chapter was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by a Northern Scientific Training Program grant from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. The author also gratefully acknowledges McMaster University’s Department of Anthropology and the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, where the postdoctoral work was completed. Further thanks are extended to Harvey Feit, Will Coleman, and Dick Preston for their wise mentorship and generosity; Brian Craik for permission to use excerpts from Grand Council reports; the anonymous reviewers of the chapter; and John S. Long for his dedication to seeing this work through to publication.

NoTeS

1 Several other collections have been published (e.g., Feld and Basso 1996; Krupnik, Mason, and Horton 2004; and von Droste, Plachter, and Rossler 1995). 2 Although I am not aware of an East Cree, or Eeyou, term that is comparable to the anthropological definition of “landscape” described above, ashkii eshi wiinaahta-

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3

4

5

6 7

8 9

10 11

momakahk is a Swampy Cree phrase referring to the way that the earth is dressed, or clothed, and may be thought of as a spiritual conception of the Western notion of “ecosystem” (Fulford 1998). The JBNQA is the treaty between the Crees and the Governments of Quebec and Canada, arrived at through negotiation as a result initially of Quebec’s development plans for the Crees’ unceded territory. It was finalized in 1985, with numerous subagreements attached in subsequent years (GCC n.d.). Extensive documentation was produced as part of the environmental impact assessment for the Eastmain 1A –Rupert River Diversion project in 2003 and 2006, but it does not form part of the current discussion. The Income Security Program was established in the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement “to provide an income guarantee and benefits and other incentives for Cree people who wish to pursue harvesting activities as a way of life” (Canada 1975, s.30.1.1), as well as to “ensure that hunting, fishing and trapping shall constitute a viable way of life for the Cree people, and that individual Crees who elect to pursue such a way of life shall be guaranteed a measure of economic security consistent with conditions prevailing from time to time” (s.30.1.8). Some text in this section originally appeared in S.M. Preston (1999). These recordings have been digitized. The CD -ROM series (R.J. Preston 1999a) and the balance of the recordings are housed with the Cree School Board and other organizations. Beyond the obvious pragmatic concerns, this is also an ethical question (Barnes and Duncan 1992, 7; Duncan 1993, 43–7, 54). Vansina (1984, 104) states, “study of the oral traditions of a culture cannot be carried out unless a thorough knowledge of the culture and of the language has previously been acquired.” Since very few non-Cree people have fluency in the Cree language, and fewer in the dialect and conceptual structures of East Cree, scholars normally rely on Cree translators to make the material accessible. Further, Vansina argues that the scholar can attempt to compensate for the inherent limitations of oral tradition by using additional reputable sources of knowledge. A critique of ethnographic gap-filling is offered by Keesing (1995, 202). He cautions that the process of “rendering the implicit explicit” provides opportunity for significant error in interpretation across cultures. But of course this is one of the long-term criticisms of ethnography as a whole (see Aunger 1995; and the invited critiques by his peers following that article). Vansina (1984, 106) indicates that this is also a temporal issue; experience varies over time as well as across cultures. The speaker was from Whapmagoostui, where this term, now spelled auhkaan (plural -ich), can refer to any animal; in this context the speaker meant wild animals. In southern East Cree, auhkaan means “domesticated animal, pet,” whereas awesiis is used for “wild animal”; in northern East Cree, awaasis is seldom used (MacKenzie 2015).

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reFereNCeS

Aunger, Robert. 1995. “On Ethnography: Storytelling or Science?” Current Anthropology 36, no. 1: 97–130. Barnes, Trevor J., and James S. Duncan. 1992. “Introduction: Writing Worlds.” In Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape, ed. Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan, 1–17. London: Routledge. Bell, Robert. 1897. “The History of the Che-che-puy-ew-tis: A Legend of the Northern Crees.” Journal of American Folklore 10, no. 36: 1–8. Blackned, John. 1965. “Mamiteo.” Cree atiukan (legend) told to Richard J. Preston. Simultaneous translation by Anderson Jolly, transcript by Gerti Diamond. In fieldnotes of Richard J. Preston. Canada. 1975. The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. http://www.gcc.ca/pdf/ LEG000000006.pdf. Cree Trappers Association of Chisasibi. 1989. Cree Trappers Speak. Chisasibi, QC : James Bay Cree Cultural Education Centre. Duncan, James. 1993. “Sites of Representation: Place, Time and the Discourse of the Other.” In Place, Culture, Representation, ed. James Duncan and David Ley, 39–56. London: Routledge. Feit, Harvey A. 1974. “[Mistassini] Land Use and Occupancy Questionnaire” [“Mistassini Tallymen’s Comments on Changes to the Land”]. Unpublished manuscript from research directed by Harvey A. Feit for the Grand Council of the Crees and the Mistissini Cree First Nation. Archived at Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute, Oujé-bougoumou, Quebec, 2014. – 2001. “Hunting, Nature, and Metaphor: Political and Discursive Strategies in James Bay Cree Resistance and Autonomy.” In Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community, ed. John A. Grim, 411–52. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Feld, Steven, and Keith Basso, eds. 1996. Senses of Place. Santa Fe, NM : School of American Research Press. Fulford, George. 1998. Personal communication with Fikret Berkes and Richard J. Preston. Grand Council of the Crees (GCC ). N.d. “About the Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee).” http://www.gcc.ca/gcc/whogcc.php. – 1994a. Great Whale Environmental Assessment: Chisasibi and Whapmagoostui. Researched and prepared by Douglas Nakashima and Marie Roué. – 1994b. Great Whale Environmental Assessment: Wemindji and Eastmain. Researched and prepared by Colin Scott and Kreg Ettenger. Greider, Thomas, and Lorraine Garkovich. 1994. “Landscapes: The Social Construction of Nature and the Environment.” Rural Sociology 59, no. 1: 1–24. Hayeur, Gaëtan. 2001. Summary of Knowledge Acquired in Northern Environments from 1970 to 2000. Montreal: Hydro-Québec. Hirsch, Eric, and Michael O’Hanlon, eds. 1995. The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford: Clarendon.

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Keesing, Roger M. 1995. “Conventional Metaphors and Anthropological Metaphysics: The Problematic of Cultural Translation.” Journal of Anthropological Research 41, no. 2: 201–17. Krupnik, Igor, Rachel Mason, and Tonia Horton, eds. 2004. Northern Ethnographic Landscapes: Perspectives for Circumpolar Nations. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution and National Park Service. MacKenzie, Marguerite. 2015. Personal communication with Susan M. Preston. Milton, Kay. 1996. Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse. London: Routledge. Nadasdy, Paul. 2007. “The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and HumanAnimal Sociality.” American Ethnologist 34, no. 1: 25–43. Preston, Richard J. 1975. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. – 1978. “La relation sacrée entre les Cris et les oies.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 8, no. 2: 147–52. – 1980. “The Witigo: Algonquian Knowledge and Whiteman Knowledge.” In Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence, ed. M. Halpin and M. Ames, 111–31. Vancouver: UBC Press. – 1982. “Towards a General Statement on the Eastern Cree Structure of Knowledge.” In Papers of the Thirteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 299–306. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1997. “Getting to Know the Great Community of Persons.” In Papers of the TwentyEighth Algonquian Conference, ed. David Pentland, 274–82. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. – comp. 1999a. Eastern James Bay Cree Oral Tradition Series. Vols 1–26. CD -ROM . In the collection of the Cree School Board. – 1999b. “Reflections on Culture, History, and Authenticity.” In Theorizing the Americanist Tradition, ed. R. Darnell and L.P. Valentine, 150–62. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. – 2010. “Twentieth-Century Transformations of East Cree Spirituality and Autonomy.” In Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy, ed. Mario Blaser, Ravi de Costa, Deborah McGregor, and William D. Colemen, 195–217. Vancouver: UBC Press. Preston, Sarah Jane. 1986. “The Old Man’s Stories: Lies or Truths?” In Papers of the Seventeenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 253–61. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1988. “Variation in James Bay Cree Narrative Themes.” In Papers of the Nineteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 157–64. Ottawa: Carleton University. Preston, Susan M. 1999. “Meaning and Representation: Landscape in the Oral Tradition of the Eastern James Bay Cree.” MA thesis, University of Guelph. – 2000. “Exploring the Eastern Cree Landscape: Oral Tradition as Cognitive Map.” In Papers of the Thirty-First Algonquian Conference, ed. John D. Nichols, 310–32. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba.

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– 2011. “Lifeworlds and Property: Epistemological Challenges to Cree Concepts of Land in the Twentieth Century.” In Property, Territory, Globalization: Struggles over Autonomy, ed. John Weaver and William Coleman, 56–79. Vancouver: UBC Press. Quebec. 2003. Secretariat of Indian Affairs for Quebec, “Technical Sheet 9 – Cree Communities.” Scott, Colin. 1996. “Science for the West, Myth for the Rest? The Case of James Bay Cree Knowledge Construction.” In Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge, ed. Laura Nader, 69–86. New York: Routledge. Skinner, Alanson. 1911. “Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Salteaux.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 9, no. 1: 1–177. Speck, Frank G. 1915. “Some Naskapi Myths from Little Whale River.” Journal of American Folklore 28, no. 107: 70–7. Tanner, Adrian. 1979. Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters. St John’s, NL : Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1979. “Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Mind’s Eye.” In The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, ed. D.W. Meinig and J.B. Jackson, 89–102. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vansina, Jan. 1984. “Oral Tradition and Historical Methodology.” In Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, ed. D.K. Dunaway and W.K. Baum, 102–25. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History. von Droste, Bernd, Harald Plachter, and Mechtild Rossler, eds. 1995. Cultural Landscapes of Universal Value: Components of a Universal Strategy. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag. Whiteman, Gail. 1999. “Managing Outside: An Ethnographic Study of a Cree Tallyman of Eastern James Bay.” P hD diss., Queen’s University.

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10 Are you Crying because the way is Hard? Linking Cree and Quaker Concerns in Dick’s Life Journey riChArD T. McCuTCheoN AND riChArD J. PreSToN

The newspaper clip in the Hamilton Spectator had a typically quiet picture of Dick Preston holding a plaque. As chair of the local chapter of the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative (CDPI ) and an active participant in the local Culture of Peace network (“a grassroots group aimed at reducing violence and building peaceful relationships within the community”), Dick had just been awarded the Hamilton Mundialization Committee’s 2011 World Citizenship Award for his “lifelong commitment to world citizenship, peace, and understanding” (Pecoskie 2011). I was reminded in seeing the picture of something that I had known about Dick over many years of close association, with overlapping points of contact in various circles: there is more to Dick – and always has been – than meets the eye. Although his work with Cree communities over the years has been well noted and highly regarded, it is perhaps less well appreciated that his life has woven together multiple strands that mutually reinforce each other, including minimally his early experience of being a US Marine in Korea, his work with Cree elders, his involvement with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and a longstanding interest in issues of war and peace, all of which have been present for decades. What follows is an edited and greatly shortened version of an engaging and far-reaching conversation about Cree narrative, the seeds of a peace mythology, and how Dick’s Quaker inclinations have influenced his work.1 Necessarily, this is about Richard Preston’s voice; it is his story and his stories. I came to this conversation as a former doctoral student of Dr Preston, as a fellow anthropologist concerned with issues of reducing violence, building peace,

and resolving conflict, and as a fellow Quaker. What is difficult to convey, of course, are the smiles and chuckles, the winks and nods that were part of these conversations, as they often have been during our over two and a half decades of friendship. My hope is that moving this conversation from private space to public domain will not only honour Dick’s life but also go further by prompting us to interrogate how our own intertwined life paths lead to a fuller sense of the anthropological enterprise of a holistic humanistic understanding of the Other. rTM : Many people who read this will know you for your work on Cree narrative [Preston 1975, 2002]. I want to talk briefly about that work as a way to frame later parts of our conversation. It is for me a way to start where people are at, to lead forward possibly to a richer place of discovery. rJP :

Let me say first that I was not led in any conscious sense to the Cree work. As a graduate student with a wife and three children and no fellowship, I spotted a notice on a board that I could get a hundred dollars a week plus expenses for being part of a fieldwork training program. At that point, I didn’t know where James Bay was. I signed up for the training and I had to prepare a research proposal for a group of people that I knew nothing about, which is not the best way to do it. I thought, okay, this is 1963, they’ve had 295 years of fur trade mercantile capitalism, so they must be socially disorganized – that’s what I put in my proposal. When I wound up taking my family to James Bay that summer, I couldn’t find the social disorganization. That was okay, though, because as a part of the training, I was paired up with a [Cree] fellow my own age who was fluent in English. He had spent five years in the Hamilton sanatorium when he had TB as a teenager. He was a friend, he was an interpreter, and he was my manager – you could say – in Cree etiquette. Towards the end of the first summer, he took me to see an old man to talk about the old days, freighting up the river for the Hudson’s Bay Company and so on. We got on pretty well. Then my friend decided that he would go ahead and take me to the old man who was really the authority. That person was John Blackned. Except for proving myself to be a good listener, the decision to take me to John Blackned was something I had no hand in. So I went to see John who was at that time sixty-seven, a monolingual Cree, and a repository of traditional knowledge. He told me a story about a man getting into trouble while hunting bear that I found just grabbed me. I remember that I ran out of tape in the middle of the story. I didn’t panic, but I pleaded with John to wait while I went for another tape, and I ran back in soft sand and got a tape and ran back with sweat running down my face. John laughed at that but he

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was pleased because he knew that I wanted to have the rest of the story. That was a turning point because I continued recording while I was there for the rest of that summer and I asked the professor in charge, John Honigmann, if instead of going on the next year to the community he selected for the group for that year, I could go back to the same community. That was a good choice, maybe one of the better choices I’ve made. I went back for a total of seven consecutive summers. Basically at that time people were not too interested in old stories, but John was, and he was feeling his age. He wanted a scribe, I wanted a teacher, and so it worked out. I collected a lot of stories from John, which opened up a whole new area for me. Absorbing all those stories and beginning to feel the way they interpenetrated each other and informed each other and formed a mythology hit me all of a sudden one day when I was listening to John and thinking, “oh yeah that makes sense.” And then having this feeling afterwards, silently saying, “and it really does make sense.” At that point I had my first experience of Cree culture. I didn’t seize it up as a whole because it was just my first experience, but it told me I was onto something. So I kept going back. That got me going on a path. I wrote my dissertation using some of those stories, which eventually became my book on Cree narrative. Those early experiences really set the tone for my approach to what I’ve done subsequently, which has been much more varied than collecting stories, but I always come back to the stories. They’re the bases for orientating me to other things that had to do with Crees. So that’s how it got going. rTM : I’ve had a longstanding interest in your life history – we’ve known each other since 1987. The reason that you came to Winnipeg was a meeting of the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative being held in the context of a large conference put on by the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA ), at which you gave a paper on the necessity of peace mythologies. As I listen to your story about meeting John Blackned and your initial experience of and insights into Cree culture, I become curious about how those things link together, meaning the CDPI /PJSA paper and your work on Cree narratives. How did that transition happen, or is it even fair to talk about a transition or bridge? rJP :

I’m not fully aware of how that transition happened, although I’m open and interested in the question (so the third reason for coming here was that you’d mentioned you were interested in doing this, and I’m interested in where it leads). I want to take a liberty and go back to me as a beginning graduate student [in 1961] and an essay I read by my intellectual hero, Edward Sapir. Sapir was a humanist, an anthropologist, a linguist, a psychiatrist, a poet, a

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composer, and a literary critic too – the only generally acknowledged genius that anthropology’s ever had. In my early graduate training I read an essay of his, under pressure, of course. Thanksgiving break came soon after that reading, and I had a weekend which I spent rereading the whole essay. There’s a passage in that essay which spoke to me very strongly: Now fantasied universes of self-contained meaning are the very finest and noblest substitutes we can ever devise for that precise and loving insight into the nooks and crannies of the real that must be forever denied us. But we must not reverse the arrow of experience and claim for experience’s imaginative condensations the primacy in an appeal to our loyalty, which properly belongs to our perceptions of men and women as the ultimate units of value in our day-to-day view of the world. If we do not thus value the nuclei of consciousness from which all science, all art, all history, all culture, have flowed as symbolic by-products in the humble but intensely urgent business of establishing meaningful relationships between actual human beings, we commit personal suicide. [Sapir 1939, 581] I read that with some feeling because that really is more than inspiring, it spoke to my condition. rTM :

In what way did it “speak to your condition,” using that familiar Quaker phrase? rJP :

First, I had to think a lot about what in the world he was packing into just a few sentences. “Fantasied universes of self-contained meaning.” Well, that’s how we process our experience. We try to make sense out of it. We’re not sitting there with our finger on reality. We’re experiencing, we’re looking, we’re listening, tasting, touching. What Sapir is saying is that’s not giving a direct contact with ultimate reality, but it’s the best we can do and it’s very good. Having done that, what we then have to do is set as our primary point of value the people from whom we get these experiences, actual men and women going about the humble but intensely urgent business of getting a living. In other words, not into some theoretical realm or intellectual selfindulgence or whatever you want to call it. I thought then, “Right, that’s the kind of head I want to develop.” John Blackned was a major agent in that process. I found somebody whose own imaginative condensations struck me as wonderful and having a reality I hadn’t received before.

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rTM : When I started to work with you, one of the very first things you did was to sit down with me on a bench with a copy of Sapir’s collected essays. You went through and ticked off about a half-dozen essays in that collection, and that was one of them. I actually quoted that same passage in my own dissertation [McCutcheon 2009]. You have linked here a passage from Sapir that talks about reversing the arrow and our talking about your move from Cree narratives to let’s call them peace narratives for now. I’m very interested that you’ve used Sapir as a bridge. How do you think Sapir is the beginning point for understanding the transition we’ve started to talk about, because clearly it’s the first thing you thought of? rJP : Sapir is fundamental to this because in his opinion what we intellectuals

are about is not constructing theories, not simply recording; it is being an optimistic humanist in a world full of troubles. He wrote this in the interwar period and was very fearful of the rise of Hitler and so on. He was especially conscious of the need for a humanistic social science that could help us to understand and ameliorate – understand before ameliorate so that we do it right – what we call the human condition. So it follows that I hadn’t changed the direction of the arrow of experience in going from Cree myth to a peace mythology. It’s just a little further along the trajectory. Although I could do so, I don’t plan to give up on Cree myth. I’m not sure I’ll be able to say things that are much better than what I’ve said already. I think I’ve hit pretty close to my limit, but who knows? What I want to do now, however, is to use what I’ve learned through Cree myth and about the power of myth and mythology in the service of this other purpose, which is violence reduction and peace building, or whatever phrasing we want, I happen to like that particular phrasing. I think my work with Cree myth is something I can bring to the peace enterprise that is out of my own experience and out of a fairly well-honed work with mythology. A significant transition started in my Quaker Meeting when I began to attend meetings of the Peace and Social Action Committee. I don’t know how many years ago, twenty-five at least. I don’t think we did terribly well back then. We were concerned people but I don’t think it led to much until our elder in that group, Hannah Newcombe, was frustrated that we just hopped from one catastrophe to another with a few minutes for each. She said, “Just choose one,” and suggested that we choose the Department of Peace Initiative.

rTM : To draw a bit more on Sapir, in both cases it seems to me that it’s fundamental that the arrow of inquiry be focused clearly on people living their

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lives, etcetera. Do you see that connection between the Cree and Quaker experiences, or am I going in a wrong direction? rJP :

No, not at all. John was elderly by that time and was asking, “Who will inherit my legacy?” I don’t know if that’s the exact way he thought about it, but I’m quite clear that he wanted someone to accurately record what he had to say. I was there. I felt a very strong personal bond to John, stronger perhaps than he felt for me, although I’m not sure about that. He was reticent and that’s okay, but we were friends over a long period of time. There’s another part to this story, though. At the time, in 1971, I thought, “We have a multibillion dollar hydro project basically dropped on the Crees by the Province of Quebec. And these are good people. What can I say?” I didn’t have really strategic data about the so-called impact of development at the time, and I felt badly about that. Over the years I encouraged students to pursue these questions, some of whom ended up working for the Crees (some of them are still working for the Crees, twenty-nine years later). That made me feel better, but more germane I think is that I had this strong sense that I had happened onto not just an interesting group of people who had something to teach me, but “these are good people.” I wanted to keep the arrow of experience pointing towards people of value and not in some more academically strategic direction.

rTM : There’s a couple of different streams of thought going through my mind as I listen to you talk – I would like your help to get clear. When you’re working with the Cree, you’re actually talking to people about a variety of issues they’re facing in a particular local context. Now, when you’ve moved to doing more explicit peace work – and we have to explore that more, later – are you using the same guiding principle? You’re not actually going to people and talking about their peace narratives and so on, or are you? It seems like you’re doing something slightly different? rJP :

No, I think it’s the same. I was part of that group of Quakers. I admired them and one of those Quakers took me along to a meeting of another group of people, the Culture of Peace Hamilton folks. Here was another group of really admirable people doing their volunteer stuff. They were so pleased to see young blood, I was only seventy-five then, and I felt like I would be letting them down if I didn’t keep coming. I really did. I had that feeling. They were so glad to see another person to help – these are small groups. In this case, five people. I made six. So, to build on the Sapir quote, it was still people going about their daily lives. Not getting a living in this case, but trying to live in a worthwhile way, still a particular group of local people. And it is still attached

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to some larger issue. It’s not a hydro project, it’s other kinds of problems that are the large-scale things. We’re all only partly aware of what’s going on with a Culture of Peace idea, just as the Crees were only partly aware of what the hydro project meant to them, and are still discovering what it means. I don’t know that things have changed so much or are that different. rTM :

I would like to clarify one more part of your story. You’ve mentioned Quakers several times already, so clearly this is a part of the picture. How long have you been with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)? rJP :

I started attending a Quaker Meeting regularly when I came to Canada in 1971, but I got hooked when I was still teaching in Pennsylvania. One of my daughters took a fancy to a young Quaker guy, and that led to my first wife, Sarah, going to the local meeting. I went along with her to a potluck and on the wall was a poster that said, “Quakers believe that there is that of God in every man. We do not know this to be true, but we have found that when we act as if it were true, our trust is justified.” I said to myself, “That’s just right. We do not know this to be true.” It’s so common for churches to tell you that they have certain knowledge, where they don’t – to tell you more than they’re sure they see. This one was very honest and not in any way limiting. Friends [what Quakers call each other in their community] could go and try to speak to “that of God” in people and sometimes find something to speak to and sometimes find themselves unable to do that. Nonetheless, they tried and sometimes it went well.

rTM : I would like to connect a few experiences now. In 1963 you met John Blackned. I’m seeing a convergence here fairly early on in terms of your beginning Quaker discovery in 1969 and your discovery of Cree stories, for example. They were within a decade of each other … rJP :

Closer than that, actually. Seven consecutive summers, starting in 1963, takes us to 1969. I had never thought of that.

rTM : It’s an interesting coming together. I recall you talking about how you served with the US Marines as well. That must have been before these experiences? rJP : Yes, I was in the Marines in Korea in the winter of 1951–52 and had an ex-

perience of Korean people, which was similarly very important. There was one key experience that stayed with me. We were located in Pusan [now Busan], in

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the southern tip of Korea, and one night I was sergeant of the guard. The sergeant of the guard’s tent was near the main gate and I heard the sentry at the main gate speaking with a Korean woman. That was against regulation since there was a fair amount of soliciting going on in those days. After a while, I thought, you know the officer of the day is going to come down and find that I’m sitting here and this sentry is talking with a Korean woman. So I went out to see what this was all about and to see if I could put a stop to it. It happens they were conversing in English – she spoke English very well. She also was a very nice-looking person and had a baby on her back. She explained that she had been living with an American army doctor in Seoul, which was quite a distance north, and that on short notice he had been transferred to Pusan and left. She, with her baby and her mother, had walked [some 450 kilometres] from Seoul to Pusan through an area that was full of young men with guns – and not much discipline – in hopes of finding this man. My thought then (and still my thought now) was that he had taken a mistress, he was transferred back to the States, and he had a family back home in the USA . She told me the name of the outfit that he’d been transferred to and it didn’t sound quite right. I said to her, “Well I have a directory in the tent over there, I can check that.” So I turned around and walked back to the tent; she walked right past the sentry and followed me into the tent. When I looked in the directory, the outfit was not listed. I thought, “Oh boy, she’s going to get hysterical.” Well, she didn’t. I think she figured there was a strong chance that she had been led on but also that she wanted to do what she could. Instead of getting hysterical, she said, “Do you mind if I feed the baby before I go?” Of course, I said I didn’t mind. So here I was with this vision of a Madonna and child in the sergeant of the guard’s tent and suddenly it hit me: suppose the officer of the day comes. Then I was so ashamed; I’m worried about my skin. And what will she do? Because Korea was not a unified country. She would not have relatives, she would not have security. I felt quite ashamed of myself. She burped the baby, and in order to put the baby in a shawl on her back again, she asked me to position the baby on her back. I was a little awkward – physically and psychologically – and she laughed good-naturedly at my clumsiness. I see that laugh, as really, “Here we are again, ordinary people.” I had such a feeling of sympathy – I don’t think I can say empathy, I didn’t understand that much – and even more than that, admiration. How can somebody have that kind of composure, even more so, courage, to say, “Okay, it didn’t work out, I may look elsewhere, I may not, I may have to walk back to Seoul with my mother, if we can make it.” Goodness knows what happened to her. rTM :

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As I listened to you tell the story, the word “resilience” came to mind.

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rJP :

Oh yeah. And I’d have to say those are qualities that I find in Crees and peaceniks, too. Maybe not to the same extent always, in the latter, but it made a deep impression – to which I add Edward Sapir, then John Blackned, then Ray Cunnington in our Hamilton Quaker Meeting. Ray took me off to the Culture of Peace Hamilton group; he just turned ninety last month, and he’s still plugging away for a better future.

rTM : It’s interesting to look at the progression, although I’m not much of a literalist for these things in terms of chronologically moving from one year to the next and so on, because I think we need both synchronic and asynchronic modes. Still, what’s interesting here is that we go from Korea to Crees to Quakers in rather short order – all of them overlap during about a decade of your early life. I find that there’s something in that confluence. What I’m exploring in my mind is the question, “Are these the catalyzing events that have come to fruition in a much more explicit focus on violence reduction and peace initiatives later on in your life?” rJP :

I think you’re quite right to be cautious about a straight-line causal analysis. I think the recognition that I had of another person, a Korean woman (I know a few other Koreans a little bit), the recognition of personal qualities that I found more than admirable – well, what popped into my head as you were speaking was, “Quakers believe that there is that of God in every person.” I think these were key experiences and I think they had a cumulative effect. There were a lot of other things going on, of course. I got out of the Marines, I got married, and I had children. All those things and more also happened. I think having children is fairly fundamental.

rTM : Yes, clearly these are a handful of key experiences, which I think are important to reflect on, knowing that if any of us is asked to reflect on our life, we are going to pick out some key experiences. I’m reminded of the travails and pitfalls related to methodology in life history! But let’s come back to the woman’s laugh, which you mentioned in our break had prompted a further thought. rJP : I love the idea that I would be set on my direction by a laugh. It appeals

to me in the same way that the Trickster figure appeals to me and a taciturn God does not appeal to me. It just seems that there’s a whole lot more love and hope in a laugh. I had that feeling about the Cree people and groups I worked with. Sure, they have problems, but I think hope is a big factor. Not a hope about having it the way you want it, but rather, hope in the sense of knowing

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what life can be and then working towards it. I think that laugh surprised me and maybe that made it all the more memorable. I would even be willing to say that it was a spiritual experience. It is meaningful because it reaches so deeply and that the capacity of this person (I don’t want to over-exaggerate this) well, I think it was a compassionate laugh. A cynic might say, “Well, really she just knew American GI s were suckers for a laughing woman,” or something like that. I don’t think that is the case here. When she was about to go out of the tent, I impulsively grabbed whatever money I had in my pocket and handed it to her – she refused it. I insisted and so she took it, but she didn’t really want to. Maybe she had money, I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t think she was doing what she did to manipulate me. I’m convinced it was a genuine laugh. If I were to build an imaginative statement of my career on the basis of anything, it seems that a compassionate laugh is as good a choice as I can find. rTM : I am familiar with your interest in the Trickster figure, and now our conversation about the laugh links to the Trickster in my mind. rJP :

Absolutely. In the mid-80s when Sarah and I were at Pendle Hill – a Quaker study center [in Pennsylvania] – we were asked to write our own creation stories. The creation story I wrote was kind of a Trickster story, where a Trickster’s laugh is what gets the world started. That’s an oblique assertion, but it means something to me. If a person wants to personalize the Creator, I’d like to see the Creator laughing at Trickster.

rTM : There’s something delightful about the idea of a laugh starting things. There is hope in laughter. rJP :

Yeah, it’s in the right direction. Laughter has hope, absolutely. It’s the same with the peace movement. There’s hope there. You can sit around as we did at our Quaker peace meeting and feel bad about ten or twelve things over the course of an evening, or you can get together with people that are trying to do some small thing in a constructive way who laugh well together. That is one of the things that keeps me going back.

rTM : You just introduced the idea of shared laughter, which takes us from an individual moment of laughter to community laughter. rJP :

You could say that. It’s not a communal “ha ha.” It’s just the feeling of good-naturedness, good will, and hopefulness. The last time I was in Waska-

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ganish, which was five years ago, John and Gerti Murdoch took us out to a place where some of the old people have built small cabins. It’s quiet outside of town. Josephine Diamond was there, too – Josephine has got to be older than I am by some. When we stopped to speak to her, she came up to me and she hugged me and she kissed me on both cheeks. I was astonished. I commented later to John and Gerti that it had taken me by surprise. John said, “Well, she doesn’t do that to everybody.” Well, for Crees that’s just extraordinarily demonstrative. But that act carried with it the same kind of sense of hope, compassion, and deep friendship we have been talking about. rTM : This conversation about laughter, community, and friendships prompts

an interesting memory from a conversation you and I had about fifteen years ago. I asked if you thought there were any universal cultural phenomena. You suggested that friendship might be one of them. rJP :

Nice. I don’t remember that conversation, but I like the possibility of friendship as a cultural universal.

rTM :

Two concepts that you have used frequently are narrative and idiom of experience. You have at times linked these to the idea of peace, as in a peace narrative or, more broadly, a peace mythology. Before we turn to how you understand peace, perhaps we could take a moment to clarify what you mean by a “narrative” and how it links to an “idiom of experience”? rJP :

Narrative is a three-syllable word for story. I would have been happy to give my book a title with Cree “stories” in it, but it doesn’t sound quite as saleable. And the idea of life lived like a story, which shows up in the literature, reminds me of John Keats [1900, 29], who said that a life, if it’s of any worth, is not like a story, it is a story. What that means is that life is not just a sequence of events; it is rich with meaning. I would go further and say those meanings in life cohere; they cohere in terms of past/future, but they also cohere in terms of being packaged as an aesthetic whole. It is like a painting, or a poem, or a piece of music, that you don’t just know a part of at one time; you know the whole thing or you don’t really know it at all. I think that’s equally true of a mythology, whether it’s a peace mythology, a Cree mythology, or a mythology from the Abrahamic religious traditions. I think that being able to experience it as a whole is what makes something spiritual. Building on the idea of narrative, I’ve understood the word “idiom” to refer to a distinctive cluster of meanings. An idiomatic expression is something that is distinctive to a particular time, place, and group. It expresses something about the

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characteristics of the group. It identifies or identifies with the group. So an idiom of experience opens the scope of reference of the word “idiom” from a word or phrase to a whole life experience or to a whole culture. It takes in the cumulative experience and the cumulative meanings of those experiences. As I describe an idiom of experience, I want to hang on to the meanings end of it. When I published Cree Narrative [Preston 1975, 2002], it was deliberately subtitled Expressing the Personal Meaning of Events. The notion of “personal meanings” is crucial to me. rTM : Let’s turn explicitly now to the idea of peace. What does the modifier “peace” mean when you say “peace narrative”? rJP : Peace is what Simon Mach, the Nuer man who spoke at the Department

of Peace Initiative’s Annual General Meeting, said: “Peace is not simply the absence of war. Peace is the love of a husband and wife. Peace is the love of parents for children. Peace is the love we have for each other.” There’s the whole peace story right there, loaded with meaning. Being spoken by a man who had lost his family, who was trying to put his life back together, who found a wife and a couple of children whom he loves, and who is a community organizer because he’s trying to contribute to living peacefully – that is really eloquent. It doesn’t have to be a long story. The Boy Who Was Never Born Naturally is a long [Cree] story, but what Simon said was short, packed, and heartfelt.

rTM : Did you have a conscious awareness sometime in the past couple of decades that you were moving from a more clear focus on Cree stories or narratives to developing a more explicit peace-focused inquiry? rJP :

No, I can’t say I had a conscious awareness. Like most things in my life, it just seemed to happen – I didn’t set out to do it that way. But once I’m into it, it appeals to me to use what I’ve got to offer. In this case, here we were, a few Quakers, sitting around in a group wanting to do something. Well, what can each of us bring to it? Well, experiences with Cree culture, having been a Marine, coming to Quakers early on – that is what I can bring to it. Other people bring other things to it. We need them all. Even the off-the-wall things can turn out to be really useful contributions. So, although it wasn’t a conscious awareness, I would say I take a turn and then gather my experiences in a way that informs what I’m doing in the present. When I went on the Peace and Social Action Committee at the Hamilton meeting, it was without a whole lot of sense of what I would or could bring to it. It’s kind of like a re-

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lated experience you may recall, when Tamara Fleming got us started on the weekly vigil during the Iraq War. I hadn’t really thought about a vigil, but then she said, “Well, I don’t know if anybody else wants to do this, but I feel I really need to hold this vigil.” I thought, “Yeah, Dick, you really ought to do this too.” So we would go hold the vigil. Rex Barger would come, pushing Helen Paulin in a wheelchair, and there we Quakers are again – look at these meaningful people who can barely move and yet they are coming out faithfully to cheerfully get together, to be friends, and to hope that some of what we are saying is noticed by people going by … and it is. We weren’t there with grief on our faces, and we weren’t there looking foolish either. It’s also a friendship thing, an action in solidarity with Tamara, but in solidarity with each other, too. rTM : You and I heard anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, author of A Different Kind of War Story [1997], speak this past weekend at the PJSA conference. She was telling a story about a fourteen-year-old girl in a war zone. How did you react to that fourteen-year-old girl? rJP :

The story was about kids who hooked for medicines and they shared the medicines with each other, and they looked out for each other, and they helped each other. When Nordstrom started the story, I winced. It’s an awful thought. Here is a fourteen-year-old, which means she’s old enough so that you can take what you want and she won’t fight back. I wondered what Nordstrom could do with it that would not make it seem hopeless and helpless. I could see her struggling emotionally telling the story, at one point stepping back, fighting back tears, while at other moments there were bursts of laughter.

rTM : In the end Nordstrom’s story was a very hopeful message because it was

about community, about very young people in a dangerous, hard situation looking after each other. I think the reason I raised her story is that I’ve sometimes felt on the outside when I’ve been around First Nations people – [here is] a community that is trying to look after each other, sometimes in very difficult circumstances. I think that is the connection I was making just now. I know from my own experience of living in Iraq, where I did get a bit on the inside of some of those communities so I knew that what they were doing internal to their communities – I was allowed inside just enough that I could see they were working together, sharing, reinforcing, encouraging, creating hope in ways most outsiders would not see, and I don’t think have seen to this day. I saw it in some families, for example, when we’d go in their homes and they were talking and sharing about how to get along with the most practical parts of their lives. That they were intentionally using these occasions to creatively

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address what could be seen as a very hopeless situation was clear to me. And the key was in the interactions and relationships amongst these people, where there were both tears and laughter. rJP :

I find that helpful. I went on a little tour some years ago [Preston 1979]. The Quebec Crees had taken over and had their own school board. They had tried experiments with housing children whose parents were going to the bush for the winter. They were having a lot of trouble – some pretty serious abuse problems and so on. So we made a run out to Saskatchewan in the winter and went to several residential schools that were being operated by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians (FSI ). They’d taken over from the Oblates – we went to four I believe. Three of the four I would not have a child of mine there if I could possibly help it. The fourth one, on the contrary, when I walked in, there was a different feeling and I thought to myself with no good basis, “This would be a good place for a child to live and grow up.” Two Cree men who had grown up in that school, while under the Oblates, were operating it: they had graduated, gone out, married, started a family, started a cattle spread. Then the FSI took over and invited them to come back and run the school. It was a happy place. They kept one of the Oblates on because he seemed to be really good at teaching religion. They said maybe some day it would be an all-Native staff, but right now they were just going for people who seemed to have the right qualifications. What were the right qualifications? Well, said David Seeseequasis, “There’s no magic formula for this. You’ve got to love the kids. You’ve got to laugh with the kids. You’ve got to cry with the kids. If you don’t love the kids, then you should be in a different line of work.” He wasn’t harsh, but if people there couldn’t do it, then they would help them to find a different line of work. They wouldn’t keep them on. The kids in that school were happy kids. After we were all through, we were making a little film and I talked to a couple of the guys who were getting ready to graduate. One of them was big and a little bit scarred-up and the other one was a little cooler, with shades and kind of good looking. I said, “So after you’ve been in the outside world for a while, would you consider coming back here to work?” They thought about it for a minute and both of them said, “Yeah.” And I thought, “Okay, it hasn’t been a bad experience.” Almost all of those kids came from catastrophe families. They were put in there by Children’s Aid. It was a Duck Lake school and I guess the Duck Lake community was not doing well at that time. There was a lot of child neglect and abuse and so on, but not at the Duck Lake school and that made quite an impression on me. I thought, when you think of the elite English schools and Swiss schools, some of the world’s best and worst schools are residential schools. What makes the difference? I think the difference is

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you’ve got to laugh with the kids, you’ve got to cry with the kids, you’ve got to love kids. It’s that human, humane part of the story again. rTM : Do you ever use the word humanist to describe yourself? rJP :

Yes, I don’t mind that description. Humanist gets used different ways too. It can be a kind of anti-religious humanism, which doesn’t interest me much. Humanist to me just means that in your order of priorities, humans come first. I’ll eat cows or caribou. I don’t mind doing that. It comes back to the children. My wife Betty and I went to Belize with our children Dan and Heather and their daughter little Claire. We were babysitting part of the time while Dan and Heather went off scuba diving. Claire was getting tired and cranky and she’d been moved around a bit, I guess, so just on a hunch I said, “Let’s just go for a walk outside,” and I took her hand (she was two years old at that point) and we walked down to the ocean. There were some reclining chairs and I sat down in one with her on my lap and I started playing “this little piggy.” She seemed calm enough and we “little piggy-ed” through quite a few runs of toes until I realized she had fallen asleep. I very gently, slowly, leaned back in the chair until I was lying down on my back and she was lying on my stomach. That was heaven. When she woke up about an hour later, she opened her eyes, looked at me, and gave me a little smile. Then she climbed off and went about playing in the sand. I have a picture that Betty took of Claire lying on my stomach, and I really cherish that. That’s humanism very close to home.

rTM : Have you ever, in all your conversations with Cree, talked explicitly about peace issues? rJP : I don’t think so. rTM : Does that imply there is no direct overlap? rJP : Well, here’s where I get into trouble, because now as I think about saying

I’ve not talked explicitly about peace issues, I realize that I have to know what I mean by the word “peace.”

rTM : Exactly. rJP :

So, yes, the answer is, of course I have. Gerti was one of the first Crees to become a justice of the peace. They had a teenager in the community that

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was forming his own gang in a rather cruel way. Gerti was in the school one day and she saw this kid wearing his jacket when it was very hot. She asked him, “Why don’t you take your jacket off?” He didn’t want to, but she stuck with him. Finally he took the jacket off, which revealed that he had a festering wound on his forearm. The gang leader had taken a piece of rusty barbed wire and hurt him with it. Gerti found out the whole story and called in the district judge. When the district judge came, Gerti said, “I’d really appreciate it if you did not treat this as a case of some poor Native kid who didn’t have opportunities and is deprived.” She brought the school class to the trial for them to learn something, and that’s peacemaking. So yes, as I think about it, I’ve talked a lot about peace with Cree people, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was about violence reduction and peace building, which they can talk about from experience. The word “peace” never entered into it. Gerti just told me what she did and I thought, “That’s good. You did really well. I’m proud of you.” rTM : It reminds me of my reading of Jean Briggs’s [1994] work on the Inuit and questions of anger. I find that she doesn’t talk about peace quite so explicitly, but I find an awful lot of the stuff that she did was talking about it out of grounded experience. rJP : Yes, do not increase anger; find ways to work with it, understand it. rTM : A great many of those who work in the area of peace dwell on the idea of community as a significant element of it. rJP :

I sometimes worry that words like “community,” or like “peace,” or like “violence” are so vague that they don’t really say much – they just fill a space in a sentence. The paper that I just gave suggests that most of us, most of the time, when we’re talking about peace don’t really know what we’re talking about. When we’re talking about violence, we don’t really know what we’re talking about. I mention, for instance, that we don’t really want to eliminate all kinds of violence. Consider your diet. We eat life. All people in life eat life in order to live … A carrot doesn’t feel as much as a cow when you kill it. My point is that that kind of violence is habitual, necessary, and okay, even delicious on occasion. We need to be more specific about what we’re talking about. You did this when you criticized Johan Galtung’s idea of structural violence in your dissertation – as I recall, because it was such a big, vague notion, structure being like these other terms.

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rTM : In short, you’ve identified a significant part of my problem with the phrase. In the end I’m not sure the phrase “structural violence,” per se, really helps. “Structure” adds an adjective to another word that is already vague in itself – “violence,” as you’ve just said, is itself a notoriously difficult word to try and define and conceptualize. Let’s return to your paper, though, because talking about Gerti and making peace in a Cree community leads us to your idea of building a peace mythology. rJP :

The paper is about why we need a mythology of peace, which grew out of a peace think-tank that we started up in Hamilton in 2009, one of Ray Cunnington’s inspirations. I had volunteered to do the first presentation, and it was on the idea of a mythology of peace. The gist of it is that peoples everywhere have mythologies that they use to guide their lives. Sometimes those mythologies are not even in people’s awareness, other times they are. So, for instance, years ago a secular – or a Quaker – university professor teaching an anthropology course on mythology is asked, “What’s our mythology?” Because we usually use the word “myth” to refer to a lie of some kind, or to at least a misconception, I didn’t have an answer. I was watching a television program with Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell [PBS 1988], and Moyers put the same question to Campbell, who gave a genial smile and said (and here I paraphrase), “Well, of course we have a mythology. Look at Star Wars, as an example. This is an expression of a mythological premise or principle of the triumph of good over evil.” I thought, “Okay, we do have a mythology.” rTM : And consider how many of us have seen that film … rJP :

Indeed. And look at how many of us remember the film, went to the subsequent episodes, and then it’s Star Trek, you get Trekkies and so on. It strikes a resonant chord, for good reason, because it relates to a good deal of what we have had and our knowledge of our past, however full or empty that may be. And of course mythology is something that I already was familiar with from having got into Cree mythology or Cree mythology having got into me. That’s why I thought I would take it on for a topic for the peace group. What we need is an explicit, self-consciously constructed mythology of peace because the mythology that we have – of the triumph of good over evil – doesn’t work. It has entertained millions in movies. It has killed millions in wars. The triumph of good over evil, the “axis of evil,” or whatever you want to look for in terms of the rhetoric that stirs us and keeps us engaged in terrible violence. There’s an urgent need to do better. What Michael Nagler said

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in his PJSA talk called “Moral Evolution” about how slavery is now obsolete and that is a part of our mythology. Slavery is something of the past. It was a terrible thing to do. At the time it may have had its rationale or its defenders, it did indeed, but we now don’t accept that behaviour. War is obsolete and it is threatening our children’s lives and our grandchildren’s lives and so let’s get a good replacement for the triumph of good over evil. To start, let’s have a look at what the triumph of good over evil looks like. It has a fairly stereotypical plot. You have good people who are not violent. You have bad people who not only are violent, but who really would like to inflict violence on the good people, for whatever reason. It can be revenge, it can be greed, it can be the imposition of their political ideology, or empire, it can be any number of things. The bad guys go to war with the good guys. And the good guys, being basically peaceful people, are taken by surprise – Pearl Harbor. So then they have to rally their resources and, often times in these narratives, it’s just when the bad guys are about to win that the good guys, astonishingly, rise up and with overwhelming force wipe out the bad guys. rTM : Now that is a narrative we have heard a lot. rJP :

I am reminded of Percy Shelley’s 1818 poem called “Ozymandias” about the shattered visage standing in the desert: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” And of course a long time ago, those works were obliterated. So it doesn’t work; so what does work? Well, what’s got traction? The Holy Grail, the Holy Bible, the Vedas, we’ve got scriptures from major traditions which have huge traction. Nobody can say that the Qur’an does not have traction. It’s got us scared to death right now. So let’s get a peace mythology with traction. Now, just how we do that I’m not sure, but I’m convinced that there is the raw materials out there and that we can do as Lévi-Strauss’s bricoleur did. You take little bits of stories from here and there and you put them together in a way that is not just imaginative but aesthetically powerful and you create a myth. And if you create enough myths, you have a mythology, and the mythology is not just an assortment of myths, it is an aesthetically whole package of myths where they inform each other, which is what gives them traction. Okay, so you can start with the Garden of Eden or the creation of the world and you can move through the Abrahamic inheritance, you can move into the new contract and the covenant and to the Sermon on the Mount and then, I suppose, then you want to move into church history. Anyway, it becomes a very large and rhetorically powerful mythology. People are disabused now of “churchy” mythologies. It doesn’t mean we have to reject it all, but it means we have to

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frame that morality in a way that is not hierarchical or in other ways, challenging our willingness to feel a passionate allegiance. Who’s going to do that? Well somebody has to do it. I am not a myth-spinner, but I have worked with myth, and I put this paper together. I think I can be one of the people to do some cobbling together [Preston 2012]. The triumph of good over evil doesn’t work because the triumph doesn’t last. Even though we think at the time that, terrible as it may be, it may be that it will last – the war to end all wars, Hiroshima, Dresden, any number of other atrocities. rTM : Vietnam, Iraq … rJP :

Vietnam, Iraq, and so on. This work is something that I think I might be able to do because of my experience with Cree mythology and because of a fairly broad, eclectic intellectual interest in it. I would like to explore what resources I have or can find and try to do something with it, because I think it’s something worthwhile that I can do and that others can use too. This is at a point in my life when I feel like it’s important for me to see what I’m going to do in the next year and I have that goal to spur me on, because I think that my mental acuity is going to last in proportion to the extent to which I challenge it and use it. I think I have some ability to work with myths and there’s a very particular reason for that.

rTM : You are referring here I think to a Cree story. rJP :

Yes, I had written a paper on the translation of Native American literatures using the Cree story The Boy Who Was Never Born Naturally for a book [Preston 2011]. The story was one that I’ve told to my kids as a bedtime story, I’ve told it to elementary school classes at various ages. I told it to the Department of Anthropology here at the University of Winnipeg on Monday, in fact. It was engaging there, too. On the surface, it tells of a younger brother who has married a series of animals and found them all wanting. Well, the point is I told it to a Canadian Storyteller’s Association meeting, and a guy in the back row said afterwards in the comments, “From the first line, I had the feeling we were going into a Shakespearean tragedy.” I had never thought of it like that – I just thought it was an opening line. He had seen a lot more in it, and so I thought about it and concluded, “He’s right.” It is a profound tragedy and I hadn’t seen the tragedy. So I wrote a chapter, which wound up being one of my longer chapters, about this story. And the process of writing it was to go by steps without really directing myself, of seeing more and more deeply into the

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story, as if my intuition was leading the way, but I was not seeing where it was going until we got there. Right at the end of that paper I say, “This is a story about marriage” but, more than that, it is a story about the consequences of breaking the boundaries of what is allowable in the world, and what happens when you break those boundaries [442]. Instead of being a somewhat entertaining, long story about a younger brother who has married animals, it winds up being a story about somebody who becomes completely lost. A human being living under the water: wrong. A human being who looks like a big beaver: wrong. A human being, or beaver-being, who is not a part of a human community or a beaver community: wrong. And so one who is solitary, perhaps for eternity, we don’t know, he’s very powerful, but he’s lost. Being lost in the sense that nobody really knows what happened to you is a calamity. And for Crees, or for other hunting cultures, it’s also a calamity for the people that aren’t lost. They don’t know what’s happened to him. They don’t know if he’s gone insane, and if so, is he going to come back and wreak havoc when, because he knows where you are, what your habits are, you’re vulnerable? Being lost is serious. If a person does take off into the bush, you have to find them, and we have stories about that. Well this one is lost beyond redemption. It may be that nobody will even ever see him, this beaver-boy. And so what it does is to reach right to the bottom of the way the world is, and say, “You don’t want to go there. You want to back up. You want to, as a human being, marry another human being. And basically live as a human being should. You want to be yourself …” I can translate that to a morality of peace. rTM : How do you do that? rJP :

By not breaking the rules. It doesn’t mean that you have to be rulebound, but it means that there are some things you must not do. Thou shall not kill, thou shall not … I don’t know where exactly I’m going with this, but what was instrumental in the paper was the process of getting to the final insight and realizing that I had not done this consciously. I had followed the story down. And the story has taken me all the way to this end and then I had realized, “Yes it is.” Is it the end of Hamlet that says, “The rest is silence”? It is a complete tragedy, it is a total ruin of the community, of the younger brother, the older brother, who caused his younger brother to become a cannibal and has become a part of the death of his own father by parasite. What a disaster – everything has gone wrong. And it’s gone wrong violently. However I got there, it was because of familiarity with the story, but also because for some reason my intuitions were able to follow it out. That’s something I have never

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done in my life. This is the most creative piece I have ever written. I would really like to be able to continue that kind of creative writing. And so here’s where I’m taking it: I want to try to do that with a myth of peace. I want to take peace stories and follow them into the depths of their implication, which doesn’t have to be ruin – it can be human community living well together. But to be able to let myself think and write creatively, I think is the way you get aesthetic form. rTM : Interestingly, Nordstrom says that creativity is the response of people in oppressed states, which allows them to survive. It’s in the last parts of A Different Kind of War Story [1997], and she talks about how in all of her experiences of people who have experienced war, one of the consistent responses that she has seen has been the rise of what she calls creativity. When you’re in situations of great harm, and when your life seems to be coming apart and things are not going well, as The Boy Who Was Never Born Naturally story talks about, then you have to use a great deal of creativity to get yourself out of that situation, to be able to survive and to be a part of the real world again. rJP :

So if I can immerse myself in the topic of peace, war, and violence, and somehow or other if I open myself to the possibility, maybe I can be creative there in a way that I don’t think I will otherwise be creative. I’m moving out of academics and I’m moving away from Cree narrative to some of the core things in the Cree stories. I’m moving out of the secure area that I’ve already written about for a long time into something that is new, and I’m doing it late in life. I think it’s letting go of what I know I could go on doing, but I would really rather try to be a little more ambitious.

rTM : That’s what I’m sensing in what you’re saying. Talk a little bit more, if you would, about that shift of going from what you are comfortable with and what you have been doing to allowing yourself to go into an area that is less familiar, although I’m not convinced yet that it hasn’t always been there. That’s what I’m exploring in my mind as I think about your life history, which is why we went back, for example, to some of your early years, what brought you into Cree studies, what brought you into Quakers. It seems to me there’s a thread already there. You once told me that I needed to look at the threads of my life, because they are often very long. Very few threads are very short. It’s very rare that something totally new actually comes up. Sometimes a death of a loved one might change, shift, or break a thread, so too could the birth of a child, but it seems to me that your work on this peace question is one of those

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threads. I’ve seen intuitively, and if my intuition leads me right, that Dick Preston has had this thread for a long time but that it is now coming out into a more flowered form. rJP : Yes, I think that’s it. Years ago when George Fulford was up in Peawanuk,

he and Louis Bird were talking about something. Louis said to George, “You really need to listen more to Dick Preston – he’s an elder, you know.” George reported that to me. Boy, was I flattered. At that time I thought, “That’s what I’ve always wanted to be – an elder.” Well, that was kind of a life stage. This question of peace mythology is kind of like that. I want to be a person who cultivates a wisdom about living well together and who shares it – a peace elder, in that sense. If I tried too deliberately to do that I’d just be an egotistical turkey, but I don’t think I’m going to do that. I think I can be fairly patient with myself if I don’t get too lazy, and I think I have enough confidence and enough experience of my ability to have ideas pop into my head that wind up fitting or being fitted or fitting me comfortably into some larger project. Now is the time to take the plunge. I cannot just keep my brain sharp by doing crossword puzzles, or by writing papers about Cree stories, but I can go a little farther than that – I would like to have that kind of goal.

rTM : It would be hubris to put oneself in a position of saying, “I’m going to write the universal peace mythology that every person is going to read someday.” That puts you in a category of a prophet. rJP : You’ve got to be a lunatic to do that. rTM :

It’s a different thing to say, however, “I have been following a variety of threads in my life. This thread has not been as well developed, because the conditions haven’t been ready for that to develop. Now is the time when that thread can be pulled out.” Does that resonate at all? rJP : Yes, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a natural evolution of my inner experi-

ence, but rather following the thread. That describes it as well as anything. It just seems like it makes sense. I was going to do a book on the history of community for the James Bay Crees, and I didn’t do it, but this is a similar goal. Community is the goal. Living well together is the goal.

rTM : Do you have a sense of what are the main contours of a peace mythology?

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rJP :

I bounce around quite a lot on that question. It’s easy, as I think most people do, to start off with an image of the peaceful life. And I think that’s wrong. I think we have to start off with the tensions between the loving relations and the other relations – relations of greed or resentment or fear. I think you have to keep the whole picture in front of you. I think this was what you were getting at with your Sunderland P. Gardner lecture [McCutcheon 2010] and I think that’s essential. So I have to try to keep the balance and not just go for the “oh goody” part.

rTM : It’s very easy, isn’t it, to just go for the “goody” part? I’m not surprised at how well you understood what I was trying to say in that lecture. I have a deep concern that peace people have too quickly jumped into trying to help without having actually worked through both the “goody” part and the terrible, messy, not so pleasant parts of the equation, which in my way of thinking is the realm of violence. I’m after the holistic understanding of how violence and nonviolence are part of a whole human experience. I’m more interested in Georg Simmel’s [1955] continuum of experiences than I am in extremities and the pointing of a morally right finger. rJP : Oh yeah. rTM : What are key words or phrases that come to your mind when you think of a peace mythology? rJP : Well, the meaning of “holy,” that is holistic or all encompassing. It is not

a static balance, but a dynamic tension that is livable. A willingness to do the loving thing when you don’t feel like doing it is also part of a peace mythology. I got some advice somewhere that suggests when you come home and you’ve had a bad day and you don’t really feel that much like talking with your wife, do the loving thing, and then love will come. You don’t feel like doing the loving thing, but go ahead and do it, which is a bit like “that of God in every person” – if you try it, it might work. Also, don’t turn your back on the stuff that is hard or painful or dangerous or threatening because that’s not a solution. That’s the “ocean of darkness” that you talked about in your lecture. I don’t know how to go about that really, I’m inclined to lurch into yet another novel about being in the trenches of World War One and it’s becoming immersed in bleak stuff and that’s not the way to go about it. It’s to acknowledge, it’s to accept: suffering happens, bad things happen to good people. Good

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things happen to bad people. And life is not fair, those kinds of things. What you could sum up by saying, “That’s just the way it is.” You remember the movie Babe? The mother dog is trying to explain to Babe why it is that pigs get eaten, and she says, “Well, it’s just the way it is.” The peace mythology is about holiness, love, knowing what’s the way it is … knowing that it is our personal and collective responsibility to reduce violence and to build peace. It is about social action, in other words. The first three I’ve talked about are nice, but they’re rather contemplative. Holiness, love, knowing that that’s just the way it is are all things you can do without getting off your duff. Social action is essential – it is something that I came to relatively late, partly Tamara’s fault with that vigil. We went down to that vigil because I would have been embarrassed not to. Here is this beautiful young woman in our meeting saying that she feels that she’s got to do this, and if she’s the only one, that’s okay, she’s going to do it anyway. She didn’t say it in a threatening or a challenging way. Or the Korean woman who wanted to feed her baby before she left. You cannot not respond and be a responsible person. Having said that, if you try social action without knowing what you’re doing, you’re very likely to make things worse. So it is social action grounded in understanding, and the understanding in turn is grounded in social action. There’s a reciprocity that is important to the peace mythology. rTM : The very idea of a peace mythology, though, sounds like an enormous enterprise. To talk of a Cree mythology is to talk about a centuries-old tradition of storytelling – a wide variety of stories that at one level may contradict themselves, but in a larger whole provide a comprehensive view of the world to guide action. You are picking up on small parts of an explicit and conscious project to sow the seeds of a peace mythology. rJP :

Yes, of course I’m not going to construct a peace mythology. I’m going to do a little work along the way. It has crossed my mind to ask, what are the obstacles? Well, one of the obstacles is what a huge thing it is … I have very real limits on what I can do, but I can do something. I’m not always sure what form it will take, but it will involve stories, with the idea that I’ll be watching for connections or threads between stories so that they will begin to take a collective form. How do we get from Cree “stories” to a Cree “mythology”? I think it’s related to the psychological experience that I had of “getting it” with Cree stories. I would like to plug away on peace work in hopes of having that same “getting it” experience. I encourage other people to put a little time into it as well, other stories that contribute to a collectivity. In that sense, my project is not so ambitious. We have huge numbers of stories of people who

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have done things that are peace building, or violence reducing – it can be literature, media, personal experience, and it just seems as if, well – it’s a little like Google, you’ve got all this stuff out there and you plug something in and receive 221,000 hits in less than a second – but is there a theme here that we can focus down on? The answer, I think, is yes. What will that theme be? I’m not sure. Something that has struck me in the last few years has been the idea of new things in human history. Michael Ignatieff ’s Massey lectures, called The Rights Revolution [2007], show how the notion of universal human rights is something new in history. This peace work is looking at the entire world and saying, “I am my brother’s keeper.” I believe that, fervently. Why? Well, partly by looking into the eyes of an old Cree man who’s telling stories and recognizing a fellow human being in a not superficial way. Or by being laughed at by a Korean woman. We are all in this boat together. So the idea of universal human rights is one of them, the idea that the rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGO s) globally is something new in history, and of course many of those are oriented towards violence reduction and peace building. All of these are remarkable things. I had not fully realized that until I was redrafting a paper on peace mythology for the fourth time and I said, “Well, we can do this. Besides, we have examples, like the rise of NGO s globally as being something new in history,” and then I realized, “Wait a minute, we’re one of them.” In other words, we are a part of this movement already and it is possible. I hadn’t made that connection until exploring the idea of hope and peace. That’s a significant connection. It gets a person into it, instead of just contemplating the peace work from a distance. Although I don’t want to spend all of my time and energy on global things, I want to put some of my energy there, because these are remarkable and even radical things. Conceivably, they can make a huge difference. It starts with the old Cree who was born in the bush and doesn’t speak any English, except one day, in a very halting way to say, “My name is John.” Here’s a guy who has taught me so much and can just eke out his name in English – that gives me pause. It is a common human nature. In the end I want to balance the global and local, so I watch stories with actual people in actual situations: what they did, what they said, what they said about what they did, all local-level stories. I keep repeating Simon Mach’s story about peace is the love between husband and wife, and so on, because that’s a universal with a local point of reference, because he was talking about his own experience as a person. It speaks both ways. rTM : You once helped me to see that in my own work I was developing a “conceptual constellation.” I’ve used that ever since; my students say I talk a lot about conceptual constellations. I’m seeing in these stories a conceptual

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constellation that has about five parts. I see clearly the Cree narrative piece, a desire to work towards a peace mythology, a narrative rooted in the language of Quakers, a Sapirian theoretical piece that has guided your intellectual work, and finally a personal narrative that circles around family, marriage, your children – a personal narrative that consistently comes back into the picture, invigorating it, sometimes complicating it, and yet it’s always there. rJP : Oh, yes, it’s where I live. rTM : I think of it as the ground of your being. rJP : Yes it is. rTM : Let’s pick up the Quaker part of it briefly. Before I turned on the recorder after a coffee break, you were talking about how you would have to draw on the “ocean of darkness, ocean of light” metaphor that is very common to Quakers. rJP :

Let me start on a Quaker tangent. Earlier in our conversation I talked about feeling that I had acted creatively in writing the peace mythology paper. That, in turn, comes from feeling like something has happened in my aging process in that I don’t necessarily edit what I’m going to say nearly as much as I used to. Sometimes I’ll just open my mouth and see what comes out and I’ll think, “Wow that’s what I wanted to say.” That goes back to speaking in [the Quaker] Meeting.

rTM : A lot of people reading this will not know what you mean by that last sentence. rJP : That’s right, but I think that’s where I’ve learned this ability to let go and

let the intuition flow. Later on I applied it to a Cree story.

rTM : How do you understand “speaking in meeting”? Quakers would typically use the word “ministry.” rJP :

Ministry, as Quakers understand it, is not rehearsed, not premeditated, sometimes meditated a bit, but then you have to be very cautious because it could become a clever intellectual statement, not really ministry. Fairly often, speaking in meeting is in response to what somebody else has said, and so in that way it is more spontaneous. But it’s also a bit like the often quoted definition of a poem by Robert Frost that says a poem starts with a lump in

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the throat or a tug at the heart, and then, drawing on a relatively full mind, he says, you find words to express the lump or tug and to give it more depth. I think ministry can start that way, as just a rather undefined feeling, and then it can take a bit of form in words when you stand up and sometimes it comes out with the words you thought you were going to use and sometimes it doesn’t. Once in a while I’ll say something and I can’t remember what I said, which I’m told is supposed to be the mark of authentic ministry. I’m not sure that’s true. But, anyway, it’s an interesting idea. Speaking spontaneously and, hopefully, with some spiritual depth would be the gist of what I think I’ve learned from being in monthly meeting. rTM : At the root of speaking spontaneously, though, is a Quaker understanding that where those words come from is not the intellectual active mind. Is that a fair representation? rJP : If it’s intellectual, then I really could just wait and mention it during the

“afterward” period at the end of our silent worship. I don’t know that I have really reached this point yet, but I remember at a workshop someone saying that the first motion is God’s, and if we’re open and we can respond, that instead of praying to God, we are being prayed through, we become a conduit or a channel. Sarah, my first wife, used to talk about this – that when you speak in meeting, what we could call the inspiration or the source of the message is at least not consciously contrived by the speaker, but it comes – whether it’s inspiration or whether it’s intuition or whether it’s something else, I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s a lot of difference.

rTM : How do we link this to your interest in a peace mythology? Is the source

of a peace mythology buried in this unconscious? Is it revealed through a capacity for spontaneously accessing the unconscious through what I hear you describing? I suspect that when a Cree story is understood well enough, and when you hear it coming from an elder in the community, which I’ve heard a few times, I doubt that it’s premeditated, because a story becomes a part of a larger whole that the elder then speaks and it changes, as I understand it, it changes in subtle ways, depending on the audience and depending on the mood of the elder, I guess, I don’t understand it clearly. I’m overreaching my knowledge of these things. rJP :

The words are not necessarily his own. We’re very close to being on to something here. Yes, a lot of it is going to be unconsciously known. Yes, the intuition is a bridge to the unconscious, so you speak in response to something

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that you feel is intuitively right for this moment. And that’s what happened to me in writing that damn paper, where I would go on and then I would say, “Oh, and this is where the story is going.” And it goes down to greater depths of perception from there. That will be, I think, a way of characterizing doing peace mythology, when you’ve already got quite a corpus of stories, and you’re trying to find deeper meanings in them. I think we’ve started out at a pretty everyday descriptive level, “Oh here’s a nice story. Oh yeah this speaks to me.” And once we pack enough of those things in so that it’s being digested in your unconscious, we then look for things coming back up. Here is a parallel example. I had a very thick book by Richard Rhodes called The Making of the Atomic Bomb [1986] in which he talks about how these guys would work and work and then they would have a breakthrough moment, standing waiting for a traffic light to change or mowing the grass, or something mundane like that – and something would well up. This happened cumulatively in a fairly large number of people and if any of them had been off significantly, the project would not have worked. Which is a somewhat scary notion, that somehow there’s unconscious patterning at work here and if you were attuned to it well enough, then collectively you come up with something. This is related to how insight happens and, you know, Mozart is rumbling along in a carriage and he’s tired and one of his operas comes into it. I think a lot of it is just the laborious business of loading the hopper and looking for connections deliberately and then being open to the possibility that connections will occur not deliberately. rTM : Just before I turned on the recorder, I asked you if you had a Cree story that would capture a peace message. You fairly quickly said that the story about the first man to have a Mistabeo [mistaapeu, plural -ch] came to mind, or The Chou-a Story.

Yes, a Mistabeo is literally, mista (big, great) -naapeu (man). So it could be translated, and is sometimes translated, as giant, but it’s not about physical size, it’s what he is able to do. So we call them guardian spirits, or I call them an attending spirit, rather than a guardian spirit, because guardian is something that goes with more warlike groups.

rJP :

rTM : So this story is a story that encapsulates a peace message? rJP :

It is the Cree counterpart to Adam and Eve. It involves the first man to have a Mistabeo – a Mistabeo is a helping spirit – and he didn’t have just one, he had a lot of them. This man’s name was Chou-a – I don’t know why, I

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don’t think it has a meaning that we know. Chou-a had a wife and some small children. One fall, as they were travelling and hunting, Chou-a had a dream visit from one of his Mistabeos, who said, “This fall you’re going to have a hard time hunting and you’re going to become very hungry. And then you’re going to catch one beaver, and I don’t want you to feed that beaver to your children.” And so Chou-a went on with his life and sure enough as they got into the late fall, early winter, they started to starve. Finally, Chou-a killed a beaver, and so he told his wife, and he said, “So, what do you think I should do? Should I feed this to the children?” And his wife said, “Well, I guess they’ll be crying in the morning if they’re hungry.” So he fed the beaver to the children and the Mistabeo, predictably, but unbeknownst to Chou-a, became angry. They didn’t find more food. And so every day they would have to get up early, pack up their stuff, Chou-a would break trail and his wife would pull the toboggan, hunt further and further looking for food. Finally Chou-a’s weakness caused him to fall to his knees on the trail. And his wife had shortly before given birth, so she had the infant on the toboggan, she was pulling the toboggan, maybe she had a small child, too. She came up to where Chou-a had fallen and saw that he couldn’t walk anymore, and so she unlashed the toboggan enough to put Chou-a onto the toboggan with the children. Then she started out, breaking trail and pulling the toboggan. After they had gone for some time, she stopped and Chou-a could hear that she was crying, and he said to her, “Are you crying because the way is hard?” And she said, “No, I’m crying because I’ve come to the tracks of the caribou, and you’re not strong enough to go after them.” And so he asked his wife to uncover her breast and he suckled from his wife’s breast and then he stood up and he took his spear and he told her to put up the tent there and he would try to get the caribou and bring back food. So in his utter desperation, he started off after the caribou. He couldn’t go very fast, but he continued to go, and then he saw some snowshoe tracks coming in from the side, and he could tell from the space between each track that these were big, strong men coming in to kill the caribou. So he knew that, even if he could get to where the caribou were, these men would already have killed the caribou. So he made a decision. He turned and went back up their trail and, not too long, he got to a tent and it was not a tipi, it was made like a big conjuring tent, barrel shaped. Chou-a went inside the tent and sitting at the back of the tent he could see a Mistabeo, this was the head Mistabeo. And as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see that there was somebody lying next to the fire covered with ashes. The head Mistabeo said, “That’s the Mistabeo who told you not to feed your kids. When you went against what he said, he came and lay down and he hasn’t moved.” Then the other Mistabeos came in and they had already brought back the caribou, and then a woman

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came in wearing an iron dress and iron mitts, and she carried a porcupine. She singed the quills, skinned the porcupine, cooked it, put it on a wooden platter, covered it with caribou skin, and took it the head Mistabeo. He uncovered it and he ate the entire porcupine. Chou-a, who of course was terribly hungry, was watching this, thinking, “I guess he’s the only one who’s going to eat.” The man finished eating, put the bones back on the wooden platter, covered it up, passed it to the next Mistabeo, who uncovered it, and it had been renewed – the meat was back on. It went that way all the way around the tent, until it came to Chou-a. And Chou-a, realizing he was not a Mistabeo, and that he was just a visitor, maybe even a stranger, wondered if it would work for him. It did. And he was told, “You can’t eat just part of this. You have to finish it all,” which was difficult, but he did that, and then they said, “While you have been eating this, your wife has found some ptarmigan and your wife and children have eaten.” Then Chou-a made a decision, with no prompting. All he had was a little bit of tobacco, and so he got up and walked to the head Mistabeo and gave him the tobacco. And the head Mistabeo announced, “Chou-a has given me some tobacco.” The one that was lying still under the ashes sat up and said, “Is it true?” And then he got up and took his seat along with the others. Then the head Mistabeo told Chou-a, “You can bring your wife here if you want to, but if she comes in this tent, she may not look up because these men here don’t want a woman to look at them.” So Chou-a went and found, sure enough, his wife had had food. They had eaten ptarmigan and so they came to the Mistabeos’ tent and went in, sat right next to the door. His wife kept her head down. They had a fire that required no fuel. Mistabeos’ fire just always burns. And so they went to sleep, except for Chou-a’s wife. She waited until she thought everybody was asleep, then she raised her eyes to look around. And all she saw was men. And so she went to sleep. In the morning, Chou-a woke up. It was very cold. The fire was out, the tent covering was gone, the Mistabeos were gone. Chou-a woke up his wife and when she saw what happened, she told him. She said, “I guess it’s my fault. I looked at them.” So she said, “I guess we should go and try to find them now.” And Chou-a said, “No, they’re too hard to live with. We’ll just try to manage on our own.” That’s the end of the story. Unlike Adam, he chose family. rTM :

Although I could think of several ways, I’m curious to know how you link that to a peace message? rJP :

The love of a man and wife, the love of parents for children. And it’s all very well to offer him power, but not at that cost.

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rTM : The choice of family over power. rJP :

Well, if he wanted to have the help of Mistabeos in hunting, which was not inconsiderable in a land where periodic starvation was a fact of life, then he would have to neglect, seriously neglect, his wife and children, and he was not willing to do that.

rTM : It’s a rich story that always makes me think. rJP : “Are you crying because the way is hard?” That is so eloquent for a man

who can’t walk and he can’t feed his family, and the situation is so desperate, and when she stops, that’s probably it, but she says no.

rTM :

You’ve written about this story in Cree Narrative [Preston 1975, 2002].

rJP : But I don’t think that I’ve said all these things about it. It’s interesting that

Regina Flannery, my predecessor at Waskaganish by thirty years, collected versions of The Chou-a Story, and in all of them, in the end, he doesn’t forgive his wife. He doesn’t choose his wife over the Mistabeos. It has an indecisive ending. But in the one that John told me, it has a clearer ending. I don’t know why that is, but I imagine that John got it from his grandmother, because a lot of his stories he remembered as a boy listening to his grandmother, and being something of a miser he never lost them. So I don’t think that he just improvised. I think that that ending was quite intended and I was a little disappointed to find that the other versions didn’t have that kind of redemptive grace in it. She had gone against an instruction, he had gone against an instruction, with terrible consequences, but we never hear what happened to them afterwards.

rTM : It’s such a powerful story that it strikes me as the kind of story that would have spin-offs of later children. But there are no heroic journeys, there’s no establishing of a dynasty, nothing like that. rJP : No. There’s something rather Cree-like about that fact, actually. rTM : How do you see that? rJP :

There doesn’t have to be a resolution. A story just picks up, tells you some, and then stops. The people go on, but we don’t know, you don’t have

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to have a resolution at the end, although this one has a kind of a resolution. She is honest with her husband. And she is honest in an understated way when he asks her advice on feeding the children: “I guess they’ll be crying in the morning.” How would you feel as a father? She’s not telling him, “Feed the children.” She’s inviting him to consider how it will be. I want to give you a parallel short story. Gerti’s father, Malcolm Diamond, was chief for twelve years. There was a man in the community who was mentally ill who had an episode – smashed his wife’s sewing machine, terrorized several people, was regarded as a sorcerer, and then announced that he was going to kill himself. He walked down to the Rupert River and started to wade in. People called for Malcolm – they didn’t want to intervene because they were afraid of the man, and they didn’t know what to do. Malcolm came down and walked in beside him and said, “What will people in the other communities say when they hear what’s been happening at Rupert’s House?” He invited the man to answer it for himself. Then Malcolm turned around and came back out. It’s the same sort of thing. You don’t tell somebody what to do, but you invite them to think about what it’s going to look like outside of yourself. To look beyond yourself. rTM :

It was invitational. How does that translate into a contemporary peace message? rJP : Well, here we’ve got a person about to commit a violent act against him-

self and Malcolm does not interfere. He does intervene by asking the person to think beyond himself. Let me make a small step sideways to illustrate. There is a little book by an Israeli peacenik named Amos Oz called How to Cure a Fanatic [2010]. He suggests there are two steps to curing a fanatic. The first step is to try to enlarge his world – in other words, to inform him about the larger world around him. The second step is to help him to develop a sense of humour. If you can see the world and you can see a sense of humour in yourself, you won’t be a fanatic. I believe that’s true.

rTM : It also links to your early story about the Korean woman and her laugh and your own comment several times subsequently that comes back to the capacity for humour in dire straits. rJP :

Not only in dire straits, I would say. I’m not a very funny person – although I have my moments – but I think laughter is maybe the most fundamental human emotion. Laughter of the kind that goes with The Boy Who Was Never Born Naturally exposes people. It puts you off your guard and allows the story to plunge deeply without you resisting where it’s taking you.

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Which is, in this case, to a terrible tragedy. The other thing is, I learned at the Nemaska consult, when our working group suddenly got serious, if it’s not good humoured, then there’s something radically wrong. When that happened there, I slipped out and got Albert Diamond,2 who was overseeing the whole thing. I said, “I think we’re stuck. If you could come …” He came over, sat down, and cracked a joke. Then he said, “Now where are we?” And so people started telling him and the good humour was back, his joke did it. If it’s not good-humoured, there’s something wrong. It means we’re getting oppositional. Good-humoured, good-natured, friendly intention all seem to be a package. I want to tell you another Malcolm Diamond story. There was a man – a World War Two veteran – from Moose Factory who had relatives in Waskaganish, and so he decided he would come and visit by canoe. He put his wife and children in the canoe and they came over. It’s a long trip from Moose Factory. It’s a tidal area and there’s one place where there’s a short-cut through a peninsula that takes off two or three hours from the trip, but you have to do it when the tide is high. He misjudged and the tide went out and he and his family were stranded and fed the mosquitoes all night. They came in the next day, obviously mosquito-eaten, obviously having been stranded, so he was very humiliated because he’d been a Moose Factory man, more urbane than sophisticated, a veteran and all that. So what does he do? Well, he went to his relatives and got some home brew and got a little drunk. Then he went into the Hudson’s Bay store and demanded a pack of cigarettes to be charged to his account at Moose Factory. This was unheard of, so the guy behind the counter, who was a pretty garrulous old Hudson’s Bay Cree, knew that this was a nogo. So he went in to see the boss. The boss, a Scot, had a short fuse and came out and grabbed the Moose Factory man by, as we say in the Marine Corps, the “stacking swivel”3 and hustled him out the front door. Well now Edward was in a real fix. Not only was he humiliated by his mistake getting there, but he’d just been unceremoniously hustled out of the Hudson’s Bay store for just trying to get a pack of cigarettes. So, at that time, they didn’t have phones going out, but they had local phones. Edward went to his relatives’ place to call the chief and complain. The Hudson’s Bay boss went back into the office and called the chief and complained. So here’s Malcolm Diamond in this ridiculous situation. What’s he going to do? Well, he picked up the man – his name was Edward – outside, walked him to the store, bought a pack of cigarettes with his own money, turned to Edward and handed them to him saying, “You are a guest here,” and walked out. What he said to Edward was, “Try acting like a guest.” He said to the manager, “Come on, you can do better.” That was the end of the situation. That’s peacemaking. That’s conflict resolution. And it was – try to think of yourself as a guest, instead of demanding credit in order

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to look good. And to the boss – you lost your temper, and didn’t need to. He didn’t say those things, but it would be hard to miss. rTM : Thank you for telling the story. It’s so relevant to my work these days in the area of conflict resolution. rJP :

You’re welcome. I enjoy telling those stories. I think they’re powerful stories. I think they have traction.

rTM : All of them have a lot of traction. I recalled the Mistabeo story as you were telling it, although I didn’t remember the details. Still, I remember that it’s a very powerful story. I hear it as an antidote to the Adam and Eve story, because there the woman gets piled on awfully bad. rJP : And it lasts forever. rTM : Yes, but in this one there’s a mutuality about the ending. rJP : Yes, they basically say, “No, we’re going to stick together.” rTM : “We’ll let them go off and we’ll do our thing.” rJP :

Yeah. And if the truth be known, they were kind of shabby, those Mistabeos.

rTM : Well, and you know there’s another part to that, too. It’s a little bit like a choice for humanism versus a choice for what could potentially become a fairly rigid, I’m not sure what to call it, I was going to say fundamentalism, but I don’t think it’s that strong. rJP : Yes, I understand what you mean, but it could be many things – perhaps

just higher authority.

rTM : These stories focus on the human beings getting on with their lives, as Sapir would say. rJP : True love is culture, it’s in the interactions of actual human beings. That’s

authentic, too. For some reason, the line that hits me the hardest is that “Are you crying because the way is hard?”

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rTM : I love that line, too, it seems so pregnant with meaning. rJP : It certainly is. Basically it says: are we not going to make it? But also he’s

asking her why she’s crying. He wants to know what she feels.

rTM : There’s a compassion in that, isn’t there? rJP :

Yes, there is. When Malcolm and Silda had their fiftieth wedding anniversary, Sarah and I were invited to come. I remember that Gerti made a big feast for them. Anyway, we were at Malcolm and Silda’s house for some reason and Malcolm quipped, “Well, fifty years, I’m going to get a divorce!” [laughing] It was entirely funny. We could not ever conceive of Malcolm and Silda getting a divorce.

rTM : That humour comes back, eh? rJP : Yeah, the humour comes back. rTM : We need to bring our conversation to a close soon. You have had a long

distinguished career and you advised a lot of people in their P hD work. I was thinking about that and I thought it would be interesting to notice that the last doctoral student that you had, in fact, was working on peace issues and not on Cree issues, which is what many of your students have done. rJP : Well, it wasn’t my choice, it was your choice. [laughing] But it was to my

benefit, because it gave me a chance, what each, not just each P hD student that I supervise, but with each student that I get to know at all well, I have had the opportunity of trying to understand their perspective to see how I can merge what I know or what I think – my opinions – with what they do. You were an opportunity in the Quaker sense of that word. While I by no means read all the books that you urged me to read, I did do some reading and I certainly did some thinking in the course of talking with you over the years, and that certainly has been a significant contribution to my toolkit. Trying to move from a little Quaker Peace and Social Action Committee that I thought wasn’t doing much to choosing one issue and trying to really develop it and finding that, indeed, it wasn’t that hard to develop, it just needed the initiative, in the sense that there was a small group of us who were in unity that this was what we wanted to do. You go and express this to other people and often you’re surprised at how readily they support it actively. So, yes, you are a part of my

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evolution as an intellectual and as a late-coming activist. I found that encouraging because I admire what you’ve done, and particularly the commitment to go and spend that time in Iraq, and in being able to incorporate your experiences there deeply. rTM : Those were life-changing experiences, for sure. rJP : So there’s a parallel between what I did in James Bay and a sense of those

experiences being a gift that we can work with. Certainly my time in James Bay was, pure and simple, a gift. And, you know, John Blackned certainly was generous with his time because he spent many, many hours talking to me when he might have preferred to do something else, when he might have had other things on his mind. At the same time, it was clearly very important to him that we were doing what we in fact were doing. I’d like to give you just a little example of that generosity. The story that I told for the Anthropology Department about The Boy Who Was Never Born Naturally was told to me by John very shortly after the death of my friend, interpreter, general manager, Willy Weistchee. I had holed up in the little cabin that I was renting and I wasn’t going out. John found another interpreter, because Willy had been my interpreter, came to the cabin, and he chose this story. The interpreter wasn’t very good in Cree and John realized this as we went on. I was terribly impressed with the story and so I sat there, feeling somewhat aggrieved, and typed it out, and then we got somebody else who was a very good interpreter – I believe it was Albert Diamond. I read each page to John and he would stand behind me with his finger on the page as I read out the English and Albert translated it. And then when we were finished with that page, I would take it off and start the next one, and again he would put his finger on the page. He was authenticating what I had and there weren’t too many corrections that had to be made (the initial wasn’t as bad an interpreter as we had feared). But when I checked it out with John and he invested himself so much, that told me that, yes, he is my mentor and I am his scribe and this is what we are doing because we both want to do this and we both value it. As a little follow-up anecdote, eight years later I was in Saskatoon at a workshop of mostly Native people, and Maria Campbell, the author of a book called Half-Breed [1973], was there and I related this story about John’s finger on the translation, and she said, “You’ve made me cry. I’ve had that experience with old men.” It is that feeling of confirmation that not only have you got it right, but you’re doing the right thing.

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rTM : Do you have any sense of how Cree people you’ve known over the years are responding to the work you’re doing with the CDPI and related peace work, for example, on peace mythologies? rJP : No, I think I may find out soon. rTM : How so? rJP : Well at the AGM [Annual General Meeting], after a couple of years of me suggesting that we form a relationship with First Nations people and not getting much in the way of enthusiasm, the CDPI took the initiative this time and it’s part of our mandate for this coming year. I’m hopeful we may get the Grand Council of the Crees, which is their political arm, to endorse a Department of Peace initiative. I’ll work through a former graduate student, Brian Craik, who is at their embassy in Ottawa and see what can happen. It would be very nice to bring those two things together. rTM : As we’ve been talking, I was thinking how fulfilling it might be to tie some of these threads together. rJP : I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes, you’re right. rTM :

I have heard several related threads in our conversation. It seems we have both a transition that has happened in the later part of your career, but we also have a continuous thread that traces back to a laugh by a Korean woman. I hold them in creative tension, because it seems to me that there’s a fruition of the laugh in your current activities. rJP :

That would be lovely. Literary. Artistic. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a nice idea. I was a very young man then and, in spite of the stereotype of a Marine Corps sergeant, I was an innocent, so that laugh had a profound effect on me. It wasn’t the kind of innocence that would have happened if she had a hysterical seizure; then there would have been a great upset and we would have had to hospitalize her or something similar. What I got, although I don’t know that she intended it that way, looks like a gift. It is echoed in the Quaker advice to “walk cheerfully over the world”; it is echoed in the ability of countless people to endure things without losing heart. I don’t really know how to put more words on that experience, but maybe that’s why I still put so much stock in that laugh.

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rTM : Thank you for so generously sharing your stories with me, Dick. Some of them I doubt will show up in a published transcript, but I thank you for all of them, because they are all a gift. I hope in sharing these stories, your own sense of hope will infect others, at least with a laugh or two. And I hope they lead us to reflect on how the different threads of our life come to fruition. rJP : It has been a pleasure.

Acknowledgments Thanks to Zoë Gross and Caitlin Eliasson for excellent and timely transcription work. And to Dick Preston and John S. Long for their feedback, encouragement, and support.

NoTeS

1 In October 2010 I was able to record about six and a half hours of conversation with Dr Richard Preston exploring different facets of his life. He had travelled to Winnipeg to deliver a paper at the Peace and Justice Studies Association conference and to participate in the Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative. While in Winnipeg, Dick stayed with me and my wife, Tamara Fleming, allowing me the opportunity to engage in conversation with him. 2 This was Malcolm and Silda Diamond’s son Albert (1951–2009) (see German 2009). 3 He was grabbed by the back of his shirt collar and by his belt, at the rear of his pants. Stacking swivels were special clips below the muzzle (near the “neck” or “throat”) that allowed military rifles to be joined tipi-style, butts to the ground, so the barrels stayed clean (see Anonymous n.d.).

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Anonymous. N.d. “List of United States Marine Corps Acronyms and Expressions.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Marine_Corps_acronyms_ and_expressions#S. Briggs, Jean L. 1994. “Why Don’t You Kill Your Baby Brother? The Dynamics of Peace in Canadian Inuit Camps.” In The Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence, ed. Leslie E. Sponsel and Thomas Gregor, 155–81. Boulder, CO : Lynne Rienner. Campbell, Maria. 1973. Half-Breed. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

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German, Amy. 2009. “Albert Diamond in Memoriam: The Cree Nation Mourns the Loss of Air Creebec President and Cree Leader Albert Diamond.” Nation, 25 September. http://www.nationnews.ca/albert-diamond-in-memoriam. Ignatieff, Michael. 2007. The Rights Revolution. Toronto: Anansi. Keats, John. 1900. The Complete Works of John Keats. Vol. 5, Letters 1819 and 1820. Ed. H. Buxton Forman. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Company. McCutcheon, Richard T. 2009. “The US/UK–Iraq War, 1991–2003: How a Process Model of Violence Illuminates War.” P hD diss., McMaster University. – 2010. “Working with Darkness, Waiting for Light: Friendly Reflections on Quakers and Violence.” Sunderland P. Gardner Lecture, presented at Canadian Yearly Meeting, the annual gathering of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Canada, Winnipeg, 18 August. Nordstrom, Carolyn. 1997. A Different Kind of War Story. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Oz, Amos. 2010. How to Cure a Fanatic. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Pecoskie, Teri. 2011. “Local Peace Activist Honoured.” Hamilton Spectator, 11 May. http://www.thespec.com/localprofile/article/530337–local-peace-activist-honoured. Preston, Richard J. 1975. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events. Ottawa: National Museum of Man. – 1979. “Training Guide for Cree Student Residence Staff.” Unpublished report for the Cree School Board. – 2002. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events. 2nd ed. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. – 2011. “A Life in Translation.” In Born in the Blood: On Native American Translation, ed. Brian Swann, 419–45. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. – 2012. “Cath Oberholtzer (1940–2012).” Ontario Archaeological Society Arch Notes 17, no. 6: 15. http://www.ontarioarchaeology.on.ca/publications/AN/anns17–6.pdf. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS ). 1988. “The Hero’s Adventure.” Episode 1 of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, 21 June. Joseph Campbell interviewed by Bill Moyers. http://billmoyers.com/content/ep–1-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-ofmyth-the-hero%E2%80%99s-adventure-audio. Rhodes, Richard. 1986. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster. Sapir, Edward. 1939. “Psychiatric and Cultural Pitfalls in the Business of Getting a Living.” Reprinted in Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality, ed. David G. Mandelbaum. 577–89. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Simmel, Georg. 1955. Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations. Trans. Kurt H. Wolff and Reinhard Bendix. Glencoe, IL : Free Press.

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Note on Terminology

Labels like “Cree” (and its variants) and “Indian” were historically applied by outsiders and are, increasingly, not how Indigenous peoples in Canada refer to themselves locally today. A general change in usage of these colonial ethnonyms has been taking place among Indigenous peoples across Canada and the world as part of decolonization and self-determination. Indigenous peoples are now replacing older, external labels with terms from their own languages; among many northern Algonquians, this process is still in flux, and so is spelling. In everyday use, in English, many Indigenous people still use the historical terms (Tanner 2014). Anishinaabe (plural –g): commonly applied today to peoples who have been

referred to as Ojibwa (Ojibway, now increasingly Ojibwe), Algonquin, Chippewa, Mississauga, Nipissing, Odawa, and Potawatomi. The mother tongue is Anishinaabemowin. The double-vowel spelling system is now widespread, although syllabics are still used in the far north of Ontario and Manitoba. Chapter 5 employs the double-vowel system attributed to Charles Fiero and further developed by John D. Nichols and Earl Nyholm (1995).

Cree: has its origins in the Anishinaabeg’s term for their neighbours (Pentland 1981, 227) but is today a very common self-designation in oral and written communications, in English, on both sides of James Bay (and farther west). Whereas “Anishinaabe” can sometimes replace “Ojibwe,” it is not so easy to apply a single alternative to “Cree,” even in the James Bay region (see East Cree; Eenou, Eeyou; Omushkego). east Cree: used in this book to include both the Eeyouch and Eenouch.

eenou, eeyou: In northern Quebec, “Eenou (Iinuu)” is the self-designation at Mistissini and Waswanipi, and “Eeyou (Iiyiyuu)” generally applies in other communities, the suffix –ch signifying the plural (Craik 2015; MacKenzie 2014). The Cree language in northern Quebec is iiyiyiuyimuwin, iiyiyuuayimuwin, or East Cree (with northern and southern dialects) – one in a continuum of Algonquian languages and dialects stretching from Labrador to the Rocky Mountains. From east to west, those include: Naskapi, Innu, Montagnais, Atikawekw, East Cree, Moose Cree, Swampy Cree, Michif, Woodland Cree, and Plains Cree. Linguists and Cree School Board personnel have made enormous progress in creating a standardized writing system for East Cree, whether with syllabics or a double-vowel Roman orthography (Junker et al. 2012). This is important work, and it is part of nationhood, but it has not been officially or consistently endorsed. In annual reports or on webpages, the Cree School Board, the Grand Council of the Crees, and the Cree Regional Authority still use syllabics to write in Cree. Aside from linguists and a few other scholars, the Roman orthography in common use today is “Eeyou,” “Eenou,” “Eeyou/ Eenou,” or often, “Cree.” In this book, chapter 1 uses “Eenou” and chapter 2 uses “Iinuu,” whereas other chapters more often use “Cree,” at each author’s discretion. omushkego: Across James Bay to the west, in northern Ontario, the equivalent self-designations are “Ililiw” or “Ininiw” (depending on dialect), with the suffix -ak (-uk in local usage) signalling the plural. In addition, the term “Omushkego” (plural -wak; in local usage “Mushkegowuk”) is now a common self-designation (Pentland 1981, 227), with differing views as to whether it was originally theirs or, like “Cree,” the neighbours’ reference to “people of the muskeg” (or Swampy Cree). The language is variously known locally as Ililiimowin, Ininiimowin, Omuskegowiimowin, or Cree, and to linguists it is Swampy Cree (or, historically at Moose Factory, Moose Cree). There are four orthographies in use today: syllabics (eastern and western versions, not standardized), ad hoc spellings, the double-vowel system, and a so-called standard orthography that uses macrons to indicate long vowels. rupert house, rupert’s house: Names changes can be confusing. Like the

Hudson’s Bay Company’s vast Rupert’s Land territory, this name pays tribute to Prince Rupert, cousin of King Charles II. The HBC initially named its first post Charles Fort, after the king. As we saw in the introduction to this volume, it was erected in 1668 near the mouth of a river that the HBC named Rupert, and after 1776 the post was renamed Rupert House. As noted earlier, signs

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in the community switched from the vernacular Rupert’s House to Rupert House/Fort Rupert in the early 1970s, and then this name was dropped in favour of its Cree designation, Waskaganish – a Cree term, equally rooted in the fur trade (see Waskaganish). Waskaganish (waaskaahiikanish): Although often glossed as “a little house,” this word means much more. Linguist Marguerite MacKenzie (2014) notes that waaskaa literally means “around the perimeter.” Brian Craik explained to Jennifer S.H. Brown (2007, 28–9) that the word could be understood this way: “waska [waaskaa] means ‘confined to a certain area,’ while higan [hiikan] signifies an instrument or means of doing something and -ish is a diminutive: hence, in sum, the term signifies a means of enclosing or confining a small space with walls.” Brown observes, “The Cree name, more descriptive and far less pretentious than the royal names invoked by the HBC , seems to grasp key features of the carpentered world of the English: their squared, enclosed, rigid structures, with parts walled off from one another and from outsiders. Compared to the round and flexible forms of Cree dwellings and their open interiors, such buildings were as novel to the local residents as were the timbered ships that brought their creators.”

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Brown, Jennifer S.H. 2007. “Rupert’s Land, Nituskeenan, Our Land: Cree and English Naming and Claiming around the Dirty Sea.” In New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada’s Native Pasts, ed. Ted Binnema and Susan Neylan, 18–40. Vancouver: UBC Press. Craik, Brian. 2015. Personal communication with John S. Long. Junker, Marie-Odile, Marguerite MacKenzie, Luci Bobbish-Salt, Alice Duff, Ruth Salt, Anna Blacksmith, Patricia Diamond, and Pearl Weistche, eds. 2012.  The Eastern James Bay Cree Dictionary on the Web: English-Cree and Cree-English, French-Cree and Cree-French (Northern and Southern dialects). http://dictionary.eastcree.org. MacKenzie, Marguerite. 2014. Personal communication with John S. Long. Nichols, John D., and Earl Nyholm. 1995. A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pentland, David H. 1981. “Synonymy [West Main Cree].” In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6, Subarctic, ed. June Helm, 227–30. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution. Tanner, Adrian. 2014. Personal communication with John S. Long.

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Selected Writings of richard Joseph Preston iii

This list does not include some thirty published book reviews and invited comments, as well as fifty unpublished papers and lectures. For a list of these and more information about the author, see his website at http://www.richardpreston.ca/home. Berkes, Fikret, Iain Davidson-Hunt, Nathan Deutsch, Catie Burlando, Andrew Miller, Charlie Peters, Paddy Peters, Richard J. Preston, Jim Robson, Matthew Strang, Lillian Trapper, Ronald Trosper, and John Turner. 2009. “Institutions for Algonquian Land Use: Change, Continuity, and Implications for Forest Management.” In Changing the Culture of Forestry in Canada: Building Effective Institutions for Aboriginal Engagement in Sustainable Forest Management, ed. Marc G. Stevenson and David C. Natcher, 35–52. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press. Berkes, Fikret, Peter J. George, and Richard J. Preston. 1991. “Co-Management: The Evolution of the Theory and Practice of Joint Administration of Living Resources.” Alternatives 18, no. 2: 12–18. – 1992. The Cree View of Land and Resources: Indigenous Ecological Knowledge. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 8. Hamilton: McMaster University. Berkes, Fikret, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, Alun Hughes, John Turner, and Bryan D. Cummins. 1994. “Wildlife Harvesting and Sustainable Regional Native Economy in the Hudson and James Bay Lowland, Ontario.” Arctic 47, no. 4: 350–60. Berkes, Fikret, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, John Turner, Alun Hughes, Bryan D. Cummins, and Allison Haugh. 1992. Wildlife Harvests in the Mushkegowuk Region, 1990. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 6. Hamilton: McMaster University. Berkes, Fikret, Alun Hughes, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, Bryan D. Cummins, and John Turner. 1995. “The Persistence of Aboriginal Land Use: Fish and Wildlife Harvest Areas in the Hudson and James Bay Lowland, Ontario.” Arctic 48, no. 1: 81–93. George, Peter J., Fikret Berkes, and Richard J. Preston. 1992. Indigenous Land Use and Harvesting among the Cree in Western James Bay. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 5. Hamilton: McMaster University.

– 1995. “Aboriginal Harvesting in the Moose River Basin: a Historical and Contemporary Analysis.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 32, no. 1: 69–90. – 1996. “Envisioning Cultural, Ecological and Economic Sustainability: The Cree Communities of the Hudson and James Bay Lowland, Ontario.” Canadian Journal of Economics 29, special issue: S 356–60. George, Peter J., and Richard J. Preston. 1987. “‘Going in Between’: The Impact of European Technology on the Work Patterns of the West Main Cree of Northern Ontario.” Journal of Economic History 47, no. 2: 447–60. – 1992. “The TASO Research Program: Retrospect and Prospect.” Anthropologica 34, no. 1: 51–70. Head, George, Gerti Diamond Murdoch, John Blackned, Albert Diamond, and Richard J. Preston. 2005. “Louse and Wide Lake.” In Algonquian Spirit: Contemporary Translations of the Algonquian Literatures of North America, ed. Brian Swann, 215–29. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Honigmann, John J., and Richard J. Preston. 1964. “Recent Developments in Culture and Personality.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 354, no. 1: 153–62. Hughes, Alun, Fikret Berkes, Peter J. George, Richard J. Preston, John Turner, J. Chernishenko, and Bryan D. Cummins. 1993. Wildlife Harvest Areas in the Mushkegowuk Region, 1990. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 10. Hamilton: McMaster University. Long, John S., Richard J. Preston, and Cath Oberholtzer. 2006. “Manitou Concepts of the Eastern James Bay Cree.” In Papers of the Thirty-Seventh Algonquian Conference, ed. H.C. Wolfart, 451–92. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. Preston, Richard J. 1964. “Ritual Hangings: An Aboriginal ‘Survival’ in a Northern North American Trapping Community.” Man 64 (September–October): 142–4. – 1966. “Edward Sapir’s Anthropology: Style, Structure and Method.” American Anthropologist 68, no. 5: 1105–28. – 1967. “Going South to Get a Living.” Unpublished report to Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. – 1968a. “Facing New Tasks: Cree and Ojibwa Children’s Adaptation to Residential School.” Unpublished report to National Museum of Man. – 1968b. “Functional Politics in a Northern Canadian Community.” Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth International Congress of Americanists 3: 169–78. – 1968c. “When Leadership Fails: The Basis of a Community Crisis.” Northland 24, no. 3: 7–9. – 1969. “Eastern Cree Songs and Texts.” Unpublished report to National Museum of Man. – 1971. “Problèmes humains reliés au développement de la Baie James.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 1, nos 4–5: 58–68. – 1974. “The Means to Academic Success for Eastern Cree Students.” In Proceedings of the First Congress, Canadian Ethnology Society, ed. James Barkow, 87–96. Ottawa: National Museum of Man.

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– 1975a. “A Survey of Ethnographic Approaches to the Eastern Cree-MontagnaisNaskapi.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 12, no. 3: 267–77. – 1975b. “Belief in the Context of Rapid Change: An Eastern Cree Example.” In Symbols and Society: Essays on Belief Systems in Action, ed. Carole E. Hill, 117–29. Athens: University of Georgia Press. – 1975c. “Boreal Forest Algonquian Ethnographic Abstracts.” Unpublished annotated bibliography. McMaster University. – 1975d. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events. Ottawa: National Museum of Man. – 1975e. “Eastern Cree Community in Relation to Fur Trade Post in the 1830s: The Background of the ‘Posting’ Process.” In Proceedings of the Sixth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 324–35. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. – 1975f. “Problems in the Fort George Schools, with Recommendations.” Unpublished report to Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec. – 1975g. “Symbolic Aspects of Eastern Cree Goose Hunting.” In Proceedings of the Second Congress, Canadian Ethnology Society, ed. Jerome H. Barkow and James Freedman, 479–89. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. – 1976a. “C. Marius Barbeau and the History of Canadian Anthropology.” In The History of Canadian Anthropology, ed. James Freedman, 122–35. Hamilton: McMaster University. – 1976b. “Reticence and Self-Expression: A Study of Style in Social Relationships.” In Papers of the Seventh Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 450–94. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1977a. “Academic Success for Northern Indian Students.” Unpublished report to Ontario Department of Education. – 1977b. “The Wiitiko: Algonquian Knowledge and Whiteman Interest.” In Papers of the Eighth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 101–6. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1978a. “Ethnographic Reconstruction of the Witigo.” In Papers of the Ninth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 61–7. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1978b. “La relation sacrée entre les Cris et les oies.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 8, no. 2: 147–52. –, ed. 1978c. Selected Papers from the 1977 Congress, Canadian Ethnology Society, Halifax, N.S. Ottawa: National Museum of Man. – 1979a. “The Cree Way Project: An Experiment in Grass Roots Curriculum Development.” In Papers of the Tenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 92–101. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1979b. “The Development of Self-Control in the Eastern Cree Life Cycle.” In Childhood and Adolescence in Canada, ed. Karigoudar Ishwaran, 83–96. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. – 1979c. “Survey of Student Residences in Northern Saskatchewan.” Unpublished report to Cree School Board.

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– 1979d. “Training Guide for Cree Student Residence Staff.” Unpublished report to Cree School Board. – 1980a. “Eastern Cree Notions of Social Grouping.” In Papers of the Eleventh Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 40–8. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1980b. “Ol’ Wolverine’s Corner.” Algonquian Linguistics 5, no. 3: 31. – 1980c. “Ol’ Wolverine’s Corner.” Algonquian Linguistics 5, no. 4: 48. – 1980d. “Reflections on Sapir’s Anthropology in Canada.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 17, no. 4: 367–75. – 1980e. “The Witigo: Algonquian Knowledge and Whiteman Knowledge.” In Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence, ed. Marjorie M. Halpin and Michael M. Ames, 111–31. Vancouver: UBC Press. – 1981a. “East Main Cree.” In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6, Subarctic, ed. June Helm, 196–207. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institution. – 1981b. “Ol’ Wolverine’s Corner.” Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics 6, no. 3: 27. – 1981c. “Sapir’s Conception of Drift as a Cultural Process.” In Papers from the Sixth Annual Congress, Canadian Ethnology Society, 1979, ed. Marie-Françoise Guédon and D. Hatt, 213–19. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. – 1982a. “The Politics of Community Relocation: An Eastern Cree Example.” Culture 11, no. 3: 37–49. – 1982b. “Towards a General Statement on the Eastern Cree Structures of Knowledge.” In Papers of the Thirteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 299–306. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1983a. “Algonquian People and Energy Development in the Subarctic.” In Papers of the Fourteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 169–79. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1983b. Algonquian People and Energy Development in the Subarctic. TASO report, 1st series, no. 4. Hamilton: McMaster University. – 1983c. “Ol’ Wolverine’s Corner.” Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics 8, no. 3: 25–6. – 1983d. “The Social Structure of an Unorganized Society: Beyond Intentions and Peripheral Boasians.” In Consciousness and Inquiry: Ethnology and Canadian Realities, ed. Frank H. Manning, 286–305. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. – 1985a. “Barbeau, Charles Marius.” In The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James Harley Marsh, 141. Edmonton: Hurtig. – 1985b. “Boas, Franz.” In The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James Harley Marsh, 197. Edmonton: Hurtig. – 1985c. “Boundary Mediation and the Symbolic Representation of Opposed Orders.” Anthropology News (American Anthropological Association) 26, no. 1: 8. – 1985d. “Cree.” In The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James Harley Marsh, 438. Edmonton: Hurtig. – 1985e. Forum: The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, Ten Years After. TASO report, 1st series, no. 22. Hamilton: McMaster University. – 1985f. Recent Developments in Eastern Cree Leadership. TASO report, 1st series, no. 20. Hamilton: McMaster University.

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– 1985g. “Sapir, Edward.” In The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James Harley Marsh, 1633–4. Edmonton: Hurtig. – 1985h. “Transformations musicales et culturelles chez les Cris de l’est.” Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 15, no. 4: 19–28. – 1986a. “Reflections on Territoriality.” Introduction to Who Owns the Beaver? Northern Algonquian Land Tenure Reconsidered, ed. Toby Morantz. Special issue of Anthropologica n.s. 28, nos 1–2: 11–17. – 1986b. “Sapir’s Psychology of Culture Prospectus.” In New Perspectives in Language, Culture and Personality: Proceedings of the Edward Sapir Centenary Conference (Ottawa, 1–3 October 1984), ed. William Cowan, Michael K. Foster, and Konrad Koeme, 533–51. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. – 1986c. “Twentieth-Century Transformations of the West Coast Cree.” In Papers of the Seventeenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 239–51. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1987. “Catholicism at Attawapiskat: A Case of Culture Change.” In Papers of the Eighteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 271–86. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1988. “James Bay Syncretism: Persistence and Replacement.” In Papers of the Nineteenth Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 147–56. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1989a. “Introduction to TASO .” In TASO Retrospective: An Assessment for the First Phase of the TASO Research Program, 1982–1988. TASO report, 1st series, no. 31. Hamilton: McMaster University. – 1989b. “Sociocultural Research under TASO Auspices.” In TASO Retrospective: An Assessment for the First Phase of the TASO Research Program, 1982–1988. TASO report, 1st series, no. 31. Hamilton: McMaster University. – 1990. “The View from the Other Side of the Frontier: East Cree Historical Notions.” In Papers of the Twenty-First Algonquian Conference, ed. William Cowan, 313–28. Ottawa: Carleton University. – 1991a. “Charles Marius Barbeau.” In International Dictionary of Anthropologists, ed. Christopher Winters and Michele Calhoun, 141. New York: Garland. – 1991b. “Interference and Its Consequences: An East Cree Variant of Deviance?” Anthropologica 33, nos 1–2: 69–80. –, ed. 1992. Centres of Excellence: Their Potential for the Social Sciences and Humanities. Hamilton: McMaster University. – 1997. “Getting to Know the Great Community of Persons.” In Papers of the TwentyEighth Algonquian Conference, ed. David Pentland, 274–82. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. – 1998. “Cree Science and Technology: Land Skills Programme.” Unpublished course outlines for Chief Malcolm Diamond Memorial Education Centre. – 1999a. “Packing It In: Summarizing and Archiving This Algonquianist’s Ethnographic Career.” In Papers of the Thirtieth Algonquian Conference, ed. John D. Nichols, 301–9. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba.

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– 1999b. “Reflections on Culture, History, and Authenticity.” In Theorizing the Americanist Tradition, ed. Lisa Philips Valentine and Regna Darnell, 150–62. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. – 2000. “How Cultures Remember: Traditions of the James Bay Cree and of Canadian Quakers.” In Papers of the Thirty-First Algonquian Conference, ed. John D. Nichols, 301–9. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. – 2001a. “James Bay Cree Culture, Malnutrition, Infectious and Degenerative Diseases.” In Papers of the Thirty-Second Algonquian Conference, ed. John D. Nichols, 374–84. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. – 2001b. “The Rise of McAnthro: Or, Reflections on the History of the Department of Anthropology.” Anthropologica 43, no. 1: 105–9. – 2002. Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events. 2nd ed. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. – 2003a. “Crees and Algonquins at ‘The Front’: More on 20th-Century Transformations.” In Papers of the Thirty-Fourth Algonquian Conference, ed. John D. Nichols, 311–19. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. – 2003b. “Intervention, Best Practices: The Community Consult at Nemaska, 1977.” Statement presented on behalf of Canadian Friends Service Committee to United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Geneva, 21–25 July 2003. Under “Conferences,” under “Working Group on Indigenous Populations,” under “2003,” under “04b-Principal theme: ‘Indigenous peoples and globalization’ (Review of developments),” sixty-seventh PDF , at http://www.docip.org/OnlineDocumentation.32.0.html. – 2004a. “Cumulative Cultural Change in the Moose and Rupert River Basins: Local Cultural Sites Affected by Global Influences.” In Globalization and Community: Canadian Perspectives, ed. Jean-Luc Chodkiewicz and Raymond Weist, 87–98. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. – 2004b. “Henry Connolly’s Text and Work.” In Papers of the Rupert’s Land Colloquium 2004, comp. David Malaher, 341–9. Winnipeg: Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies. – 2006. “Regina Flannery’s Collection of James Bay Cree Oral Tradition.” In Papers of the Thirty-Seventh Algonquian Conference, ed. H.C. Wolfart, 405–15. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. – 2008a. “Reflections on Becoming an Applied Anthropologist.” Anthropologica 50, no. 2: 195–205. – 2008b. “Twentieth-Century Transformations of Native Identity, Citizenship, Power, and Authority.” In Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts, ed. William D. Coleman and Diana Brydon, 47–65. Vancouver: UBC Press. –, ed. 2009a. A Gentle Scrutiny of Human Nature: Essays in Honour of Richard Slobodin. Waterloo, ON : Wilfrid Laurier University Press. – 2009b. “An Alternative to the Manley Report.” In Afghanistan and Canada, ed. Lucia Kowaluk and Stephen Staples, 299–303. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

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– 2009c. “North American Amerindian Traditions.” In The World’s Religions: Continuities and Transformations, ed. Peter Clark and Peter Beyer, 405–17. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. – 2009d. “Richard Slobodin’s Ethnography and Human Nature.” In A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature, ed. Richard J. Preston, 11–19. Waterloo, ON : Wilfrid Laurier University Press. – 2010a. “James Bay Cree Respect Relations within the Great Community of Persons.” In Nonkilling Societies, ed. Joám Evans Pim, 271–95. Honolulu: Center for Global Nonkilling. – 2010b. “Les transformations de la communauté, de l’identité et de la spiritualité des Cris du Québec.” In Les Inuit et les Cris du Nord du Québec, ed. Jacques-Guy Petit, Yv Bonnier Viger, Pita Aatami, and Ashley Iserhoff, 385–99. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. – 2010c. “The Psychology of Culture and Ecology: Tools for Understanding and Assisting Crees.” In Hudson Bay Region Research, ed. Linda Chow and Kelly McKay, 185–7. Winnipeg: Aboriginal Issues Press, University of Manitoba. – 2010d. “Twentieth-Century Transformations of East Cree Spirituality and Autonomy.” In Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy: Insights for a Global Age, ed. Mario Blaser, Ravi de Costa, Deborah McGregor, and William D. Coleman, 195–217. Vancouver: UBC Press. – 2011. “A Life in Translation.” In Born in the Blood: On Native American Translation, ed. Brian Swann, 419–45. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. – 2012. “Cath Oberholtzer (1940–2012).” Ontario Archaeological Society Arch Notes 17, no. 6: 15. http://www.ontarioarchaeology.on.ca/publications/AN/anns17–6.pdf. – Forthcoming. “Cree Community, Identity, and Spirituality: Further Reflections on a Century of Transformations.” In Papers of the Forty-Second Algonquian Conference, ed. J. Randolph Valentine and Monica Macaulay. Albany: State University of New York Press. – Forthcoming. “Quebec Cree Art Embedded in Its Cultural Context.” In Papers of the Forty-Fourth Algonquian Conference, ed. J. Randolph Valentine and Monica Macaulay. Albany: State University of New York Press. Preston, Richard J., Fikret Berkes, and Peter J. George. 1995. “Perspectives on Sustainable Development in the Moose River Basin.” In Papers of the Twenty-Sixth Algonquian Conference, ed. David Pentland, 386–400. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. Preston, Richard J., and Harvey A. Feit. 2009. “Introduction: A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature.” In A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature, ed. Richard J. Preston, 1–10. Waterloo, ON : Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Preston, Richard J., and John S. Long. 1998. “Apportioning Responsibility for Cumulative Change: A Cree Community in Northeastern Ontario.” In Papers of the TwentyNinth Algonquian Conference, ed. David Pentland, 264–75. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. Preston, Richard J., Marguerite MacKenzie, and Brian Craik. 1976. “A Comprehensive Survey of the Educational Needs of the Communities Comprising the Grand

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Council of the Crees (of Quebec).” Unpublished report to the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec and the Quebec Ministry of Education. Preston, Richard J., and Sarah C. Preston. 1991. “Death and Grieving among Northern Forest Hunters: An East Cree Example.” In Coping with the Final Tragedy: Cultural Variation in Grieving and Dying, ed. David R. Counts and Dorothy Ayers Counts, 135–55. Amityville, NY : Baywood. Preston, Richard J., and Marc-Adélard Tremblay. 1985. “Anthopology.” In The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James Harley Marsh, 62–4. Edmonton: Hurtig. Schuurman, Lisa F., and Richard J. Preston. 1992. Culture-Historical Reconstruction of New Post. TASO report, 2nd series, no. 7. Hamilton: McMaster University.

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Contributors

FRSC, is professor emeritus at the University of Winnipeg, where she taught for twenty-eight years, held a Canada research chair in Aboriginal history, and served as director of the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies. She has published extensively on northern Aboriginal, mission, and fur trade history, with an emphasis on traders’ Native families and their Cree, Ojibwe, and Metis connections and communities. Jennifer now resides in Denver, Colorado, where she continues her scholarly work.

Jennifer S.h. Brown,

regna Darnell, FRSC , is distinguished university professor of anthropology and founding director of the First Nations Studies program at the University of Western Ontario. She has published widely in Algonquian language, culture, ethnohistory, and ecosystem health and in the history of anthropology. She is general editor of the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition. gerti Diamond (1945–2015) was born in her parents’ tent at Rupert House (now Waskaganish). Despite the hardship and pain caused by Indian residential schools, Gerti committed herself to her studies and became the first high school graduate in Waskaganish. She spent a long and very energetic career promoting education, much of it as a community education administrator, and also dedicated herself to the protection and promotion of the Cree language. With her husband, John Murdoch, she raised five children and helped to raise many more in the community. She served as a councillor for the Crees of the Waskaganish First Nation and was a member of the Board of Compensation of the Cree Nation government. Although she never accepted her many nominations for chief, she never hesitated to stand and speak for her people at local and regional general assemblies. At the time of her death, at age seventy,

she was a member and former chair of the Cree-Quebec Judicial Advisory Committee and coordinator of the Cree Justice Terminology Project. harvey A. Feit, FRSC , is professor emeritus, McMaster University. His current research examines co-governance practices, relationships, and mutual recognitions of Indigenous peoples and nation-states. He looks at how these interactions continue to develop, and are also denied, through everyday practices, land claims, resistance struggles, and economic benefits agreements, as well as through government and corporate strategies and operations. John S. Long is professor emeritus at Nipissing University in North Bay,

where he moved in 2000 after spending his formative adult years as an educator in Omushkego territory. His scholarly interests focus on the Omushkegowuk and neighbouring regions. He has published on the western James Bay Crees and Metis, missionary encounters, schooling and language policy, local control of education, impacts of hydroelectric development, and treaty making. He is the author of Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905 (2010). He lives in North Bay with his amazing fifteen-year-old son (and gaming aficionado), Weston.

Stan L. Louttit is environmental coordinator for Moose Cree First Nation on the Lower Mattagami River Project. Wemindji-born and raised in Moose Factory, he is also bass guitar player for the James Bay Cree rock band Midnight Shine. His 2005 master’s thesis at Carleton University examined Eeyou youths’ views of diabetes; he also co-created On the Path of the Elders, an interactive online role-playing game about the Mushkegowuk, Anishinaabeg, and Treaty No. 9. richard T. McCutcheon is academic dean and associate professor, sociology,

and community development, at Algoma University. His research interests focus on studying conflict and violence, peacemaking, and conflict transformation processes at micro, mezzo, and macro levels of analysis. He has an honour’s bachelor degree in religious studies from Brandon University, as well as a master’s degree in religious studies and a doctorate in anthropology from McMaster University.

Cath oberholtzer (1940–2012) was conjoint professor of anthropology

at Trent University, an authority on Cree material culture, an exceptional scholar, a fine person, and a dear friend to many.

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Laura Peers is professor in museum anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography and curator (Americas) at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. She is interested in material culture and its roles in Aboriginal and colonial histories. She is working on a book about material culture and its role as a mediator within the multicultural Red River Settlement. Jennifer Preston is the program coordinator for Indigenous rights with the Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers). She works on Indigenous peoples’ rights, with emphasis on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She was involved in the intensive lobbying efforts to ensure the successful adoption of the declaration at the United Nations in both Geneva and New York, and she works closely with Indigenous peoples and human rights organizations to implement it. Susan M. Preston’s research focuses on meanings and values in human-

environment relationships, particularly through interdisciplinary approaches that bridge the social sciences with environmental policy. Her postdoctoral research (McMaster University) focused on relations between Cree autonomy and environmental access, building on both her master’s research (University of Guelph) on Cree oral tradition and her doctoral research (University of Waterloo) on environmental values in relation to policy at multiple levels of governance.

Adrian Tanner is honorary research professor in anthropology, Memorial University. His research interests include Iinuu/Innu in Quebec, Ontario, and Labrador, with a focus on their adaptations in hunting, land tenure, land rights, land use, land management, and political development; northern Indigenous mental health, social pathologies, and Indigenous healing; fur trade history; and the impacts of northern industrial developments. He conducts research in Fiji on colonial history, land tenure, subsistence economics, and ceremonials. Tim Whiskeychan is a college-trained Eeyou artist with more than twentyfive years of experience in the field. He combines a deep cultural foundation with a natural talent and well-developed technical skills to create works in a wide variety of mediums and design concepts for large and small public projects. Many of his works have been “reproduced,” and his concepts include not only memorials and murals but also the design for the Royal Canadian Mint’s

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2015 silver five-dollar collector’s coin. His love and knowledge of Cree culture influence much of his work, but his interests also go beyond his cultural heritage to make him a well-rounded artist for our times. Cory Willmott is associate professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her work focuses on visual and material culture of the Great Lakes Algonquians and the peoples of West China in cross-cultural and historical perspective. Cory’s recent publications have dealt with topics ranging from nineteenth-century Anishinaabe regalia to an ethnography of contemporary Amerindian fashion designers to the role of gender in West China missionary collecting.

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index

aadizookaan(ag) narratives (Anishinaabe), 122, 132, 146–9 Aboriginal hunters, urbanization of, 74, 75, 76 academic choices of First Nations students, 184–6 Agabe-gijik’s vision quest, 150 Ahenakew, Freda, 192 Anaya, James, 208 Anderson, David, 97–8 animal-human relationships in East Cree thought, xxiii, 171–2, 178–9, 227–8 anthropology: Americanist tradition in, 187; early James Bay studies, 8–10 anthropology, applied: Preston’s methods of, 22–5, 47, 48–9, 181. See also ethnography, applied Apess, William, 189 Archibald, Peter, Sr, of Taykwa Tagamou Nation, 28 architecture, East Cree: cosmic and cultural aspects of, 83; in hunting camps, 76–82; organization of domestic space, xxvi, 71–2, 73, 74, 82–3; privacy, 85–7; standardized orientation of, 82–3 Askenootow (Charles Pratt), 185–6 Awashish, Isaiah, 172, 174 Awashish, Philip, 49, 50, 54–6, 64

Azzarello, Mary Ann, 24 Ban Ki-moon, 210 Barger, Rex, 255 Barnley, George, 31n6 Basso, Keith, 194 bawaaganag (dream visitors), Anishinaabe. See dream visitors (bawaaganag), Anishinaabe Bear, Mary, 18 beaver conservation, xxii, 32n9 Bell, Leland, 148 Bell, Robert, 222 Berens, William, 9, 191 Berkes, Fikret, 23 Bird, Louis, 191, 264 Black Elk (Oglala Sioux elder), 185–6 Blackned, Eddie, xxi Blackned, Harriet, xxi, 205 Blackned, John, xxi–xxii, xxviii, 8, 205, 221; The Chou-a Story, 270-3; and Mamiteo (cannibal), 231; on Mistabeo (mistaapeu, attending spirit), 31n4; relationship with Preston, 9, 12–14, 244–6, 278; and stories, 177–8; storytelling style of, 229 Blackned, Margaret, 99 Blackned, Mark, xxi

Blacksmith, Lily, 53 Blythe, Jennifer M., 23 Boas, Franz, xxviii, 190; and Americanist tradition, 187 Bohaker, Heidi, 133, 136 The Boy Who Was Never Born Naturally (Cree story), 261–2, 278; and laughter, 274 Brasser, Ted, 101 Bringhurst, Robert, 191–2 Brizinski, Peggy Martin, 23 Brooks, James, 189–90 Brown, Jennifer S.H., 191; memories of Preston, xvii Campbell, Maria, 278 Canada: and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 211, 212–15 Canadian Department of Peace Initiative, 278, 280n1 Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC ), 206–7 caps, conical cloth (Wabenaki), 101–3 Carlson, David, 189 Cartlidge, Harry, 52 Chambers, Red, 195 Charles Fort, 10, 31n5 Chebiabose, 136 Chou-a, The Story of, 270–4 Chum, Gerald, xxviii Church Missionary Society (CMS ), 31n6 Churchill, Ward, 197 Ciaccia, John, 17, 21 clothing, James Bay Cree, 97, 112–17; ceremonial, 100–1; robes and hides, 99–101; spiritual power of design and colour of, xxvi–xxvii, 99–100. See also hoods, beaded Cockran, William: on education for Native children, 111, 125n7 colours, sacred, Anishinaabe, 142–3

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Cook, Joseph, 119 Cook, William Hemmings, 119 Cooper, John M., 8 Cowboy, Malcolm, 31–2n7 Craik, Brian, 24, 33n19 Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events (Richard J. Preston), xxiii, 6–7, 18, 171, 254 Cree-Naskapi Act (1984), 29 Crees of James Bay: losing control of territory and traditional resources, 65–6; political organization of, 28–30 (see also Grand Council of the Crees); problems of rising non-Indigenous population, 51–4, 57 Cree Trappers Association (CTA ), 24 Cree Way Project, 18, 45; restructuring schools and curriculum, 18–20 Cruikshank, Julie, 193, 194 Cuciurean, Richard, 24, 33n21 Culturally Appropriate Economic Strategies in the Mushkegowuk Region, 22 cultural values: ignored in environmental assessments, 223 Culture of Peace, 248–9 culture(s): communication among diverse, xxviii Cummins, Bryan, 23 Cunnington, Ray, 251, 259 Cywink, Alex “Zeek,” 131, 155 Damas, David, 16 dance fan (Ruth Shawanda), 142 Darnell, Regna, xxviii, 18 de Launay, David, 25, 34n23 Diamond, Albert, 275, 278 Diamond, Billy, Chief, 15, 45; opposes James Bay Hydroelectric Project, 17 Diamond, Charlie, 13 Diamond, Gerti, 15, 18, 253, 257–8, 277; death of, xix; at Sarah Preston’s

memorial, 32n10; tribute to Dick Preston, xix Diamond, Malcolm, Chief, 7, 277; and conflict resolution, 5–6, 274, 275–6 Diamond, Silda, 277 dibaajimowin narratives, Anishinaabe, 132, 133, 143-4; and doodem, 135; and travellers’ messages, 138, 148; and visual emblems, 137-8 A Different Kind of War Story (Carolyn Nordstrom), 255, 263 doll clothes, James Bay Cree, 95–6 doodem(ag), 130–49, 153; in Anishinaabe art, 141 dream(s) and dreaming, Anishinaabe: xxvii, 135; John Tanner’s, 153–4; knowledge and power given in, 131, 142, 150, 152–3, 154–6 dream(s) and dreaming, East Cree: Chou-a’s, 271; songs revealed in, 172 dream visitors (bawaaganag), Anishinaabe, 135, 136, 149, 153–5, 157 Duck Lake School, 256–7 Duncan, Jeremiah Day, 148 the East Cree way of doing things, 50–1, 66–7, 67n1; wage employment, 49–51; work, 47–9, 57–60, 62–4 Eastman, Charles, 189 education, First Nations, 19, 184. See also school(s) Eeyou Istchee (Cree people’s land), 27, 29–30, 89, 207, 211 Eeyou Marine Region Agreement (GCC ), 29 elders, Cree: roles of, xxii, xxiii environmental assessments: failure to consider cultural values, 223 Erless, Alice, 99 Esau, Bobby, 18 Eshkibok-Trudeau, Marie: and Anishinaabe sacred colours, 142–3

ethnography, applied, 47–9; Preston’s projects in, 45. See also anthropology, applied Ettawageshik, Frank, 119 Ettenger, Kreg, 224 Federation of Saskatchewan Indians (FSI ), 256 Feit, Harvey A., 17, 223; work on Cree wage employment choices, xxv–xxvi First Nations students: postsecondary studies choices of, 184 fishing, commercial: the Cree way, 61–2 Flannery Herzfeld, Regina, 8–9, 273 Fleming, Tamara, 255, 266 Fletcher, Alice, 191 Fontaine, Phil (Manitoba grand chief), 23–4 Fort George high school: negotiations to establish Cree-controlled school boards, 19 Fredson, John, 190 Fulford, George, 24, 191, 264 Galtung, Johan, 258 Garkovich, Lorraine, 222 Geertz, Clifford, 197–8 George, Peter, 23 Gibson, Arthur A., Chief, 190 gift giving in Aboriginal societies, 112, 115–16, 121, 126n18, 153 Gilpin, Agnes (Mrs Redfern Louttit), xvii, 170 “Going South to Get a Living” (Richard J. Preston), 45–7 Goldenweiser, Alexander, 190 Gorst, Thomas, 97 Graham, Andrew, 97 Graham, Janice, 23 Grand Council of the Crees (GCC ) of Quebec, 17–18, 27, 29, 211, 224; opposes Great Whale River hydro

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project, 233–5; Preston’s recommendations concerning community schools, 19–20 Gray, Susan Elaine, 191 Greenland and Indigenous rights, 209 Greider, Thomas, 222 guardian spirits, Anishinaabe: acquisition of, 136–7, 150; and doodemag, 135–8; and gifts of power, 155; pictographic images of, 150 guardian spirits (attending spirits), East Cree, 270–4 Gull, Helen, 53–4 Gull, Samuel C., 53, 54 Gunn, Paula, 184

human-animal relationships in East Cree thought, xxiii, 171–2, 227–8 humanist(s) and humanism, 257 human rights, 267 human rights declarations: purposes of, 207 humour. See laughter Hunt, George, 190 hunting and treatment of animals. See human-animal relationships in East Cree thought hunting songs, xxviii, 178. See also Kawapit, John hydroelectric development, Quebec, 224, 231–5; Cree response to, 224–8

Hallowell, A. Irving, 9–10, 191; on Anishinaabe guardian spirits, 135 Harrison, Faye, 123 Hawken, Deborah, 33n19 Henry, Reg, 190 Hester, Clifford, 18 Highway, Tomson, 182, 195–8, 206 Hirsch, Eric, 222 Honigmann, John J., 10, 245 hoods, beaded, 97–100; Christian influence on meaning of, 116; descriptions of, 93–5, 98–101, 112–14; given to Bishop Mountain, 107–8, 110–11, 114, 117, 124n1; hide and fur origins of, 114; not worn at Red River, 116; pictographic records of, 100; social and sacred meanings of, 113–16, 123–4 Horden, John, 31n6 Hubbard, Anny (Anishinaabe artist), 141 Hudson’s Bay Company: and beaver conservation, xxii, 32; formation in 1670, 10–11 Hughboy, Walter, 33n19 Hughes, Kenneth James: on Cree names, 147

idiom of experience, 253–4 Ignatief, Michael, 267 Iinuu/Iiyuu (Eastern Cree), 71 Iserhoff, Samuel, Canon, 8 Isham, James, 97

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James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, 224, 239n3; and Creecontrolled school boards, 19 James Bay Hydroelectric Project, 32n15, 46; opposed by Crees, 17 Jemmican, Clara, 31–2n7 Jenness, Diamond: on doodemag, 134, 141; on the soul and the shadow, 136 Joffe, Paul, 207 John-Paul (grandson of Shawanasowe), 155 Johnson, Marilyn, 155, 156 Johnston, Basil: on Anishinaable guardian spirits, 135 Joiner, Lynn, 5 Jolly, Abraham (George’s son), 20, 31–2n7 Jolly, Allan (George’s son), 31–2n7 Jolly, Anderson, xxii, 8 Jolly, George (Isaiah’s son), 31–2n7

Jolly, Isaiah, 31–2n7 Jolly, Thomas (Isaiah’s son), 31–2n7 Kagageng’s vision quest, 150 Kawapit, Agnes, 169 Kawapit, David, xxviii Kawapit, John, xxviii, 169–70, 172–3; canoe-building songs of, 180n2; structural analysis of his hunting songs, 173–7 Kawapit, Suzanne, 169 Kerr, A.J. “Moose,” 10 Kierans, Thomas: plans to dam James Bay, 22–3 King, Thomas, 190; on the truth about stories, 184 Kleist, Kuupik, 209 Knight, Rolf, 8 Kohl, Johann, 138 Kokoko, Peter, 143 Korean houseboy (Kim Sung Kuhl), 27 Korean War, 6, 13, 24; Preston’s military service in, 243, 249–50, 266 Korean woman, 27, 249–50, 266, 267, 274, 279; laughter of, 251 Kuhl, Kim Sung, 27 Kupferer, Harriet J., 5, 16 LaFlesche, Francis, 191 Landes, Ruth, 16, 141 landscape and culture, 222, 223–5 La Rusic, Ignatius, 49; notes personalized employment, 62–4 laughter, 184, 251–3, 274, 279–80; and the Korean woman, 250, 251, 267 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 134 Logotheti, Rula, 23 Long, John (fur trader), 134 Long, John S.: memories of Preston, xvi–xvii Louttit, Alfred, 31n7 Louttit, Eva, 18, 172

Louttit, Redfern, Canon, xxvii, xxxin4, 170 Louttit, Stan L.: on hunting songs of John Kawapit, xvii–xviii MacDonald, Debbie, 130; dreaming colours, 142 Macduff, Alice Elizabeth (Preston’s mother), 34n25 Mach, Simon, 254 MacKenzie, Marguerite, 17, 19 Malout, Albert, Quebec Superior Court Justice: and Cree land rights in Quebec, 17 Mamiteo (a cannibal): “destroying the land,” 230–3; flooding by hydro projects as life destroying, 233–7 manidoo(g) (spirits), 135 Manitou Arts Foundation, 148–9 marriage practice and doodemag, Anishinaabe, 137–8 Matagami: commercial fishing at, 61–2 Matawa First Nation, 28 material culture: continuity and change of, 93 Matthews, Maureen, 191 Maya people of Belize: constitutional rights upheld, 210 Mayapo, John, 174, 176–7 McCutcheon, Richard T., 24; interview with Preston, xxix–xxx McLeod, Neal, 195 McMaster University projects: Kierans’s plan to dam James Bay, 22 Midewiwin: no evidence of among Eastern Cree, 8; sacred imagery of used in Anishinaabe art, 147–8; women admitted to, 152 Minde, Emma, 193 mines and mining: the Cree Way at Dore Lake, 60–1 Mistabeo (mistaapeu, attending spirit), 31n4, 231, 270–3, 276

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Moar, Daisy, 18 Momaday, N. Scott, 184, 189 Moose Cree First Nation, xvii, 22, 25 Moose Factory: history of, 170 Morantz, Toby, 17 Morrisseau, Norval (Anishinaabe artist), 147–8 Mountain, George J. (Anglican bishop), xxvii, 113–14, 119, 120, 121–4; visits Red River Settlement, 107, 112 Mountain, Mary Hume Thomson, 121–2 Muller, R. Andrew, 22 Murdoch, John, 253; and Cree Way Project, 18 mythology of Star Trek and Star Wars, 259. See also peace, mythology of Naamiwan (Anishinaabe medicine man), 155 Nadasdy, Paul, 223 Nagler, Michael, 259–60 Nahoway (Margaret, Mrs William Sinclair), 119, 120 Nakashima, Douglas, 224 Namagoose, Edward, 99 names and naming, 147–8; emblems as family names, 153; spiritual power and guardian spirits, 151 Nanabush/Nanabozho (Anishinaabe Trickster and culture hero), 136, 152, 196. See also Trickster narrative: explained by Preston, 253–4 narratives (Anishinaabe): categories of, 132–3; and cultural boundaries, 188–98 Nawajibigokwe (Anishinaabe woman at White Earth, Minnesota), 144–5 Nebenagoching of Sault Ste Marie, 138–40, 159n12–13 Ned, Annie, 193 Neeposh, Ella, 54 Newcombe, Hannah, 247

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New Post First Nation (Taykwa Tagamou Nation), xvii, 23, 25 Noble, Bill, 16 Noble, William Charles, 32n13 Nordstrom, Carolyn, 255–6, 263 Oberholtzer, Cath, 24; on Bishop Mountain’s Cree hood, 110–11; work on power of clothing design, xxvi–xxvii Odjig, Daphne, 148 O’Hanlon, Michael, 222 Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (OCF ), 149 Ontario Hydro, 25 Ontario Power Generation (OPG ), 25 origin stories, Anishinaabe, 133 Otter, Ronnie, 65 Ottereyes, Louis, 58 Oujé-Bougoumou (Cree community), 29 Owen, Charlie George, 155 Parker, Eli S., 189 Paulin, Helen, 255 peace: meaning of, 257, 258; mythology of, 253, 259, 264, 269–70; creating a new mythology of, 260–1 Peers, Laura, xxvii, 297 Pego, Steve, 148 Peguis, Chief, 121 Pelletier, Gaby, 102 People of the Moose River Basin project, 25 Pepabano, Lily, xxxn3 persons and personhood: and metamorphosis, 135 petroglyphs, Peterborough, 100 pictographs: Anishinaabe, 138; hoods and caps, 100; to identify personal property, 150; transformation and expanded use of, 153 Pomi, Renzo (Amnesty International), 207

power(s), spiritual, Anishinaabe, 155–6 Pratt, Charles, 185–6 Pratt, Mary Louise, 109 Preston, Alice (Dick and Sarah’s daughter), 5 Preston, Betty (Dick’s second wife), 26 Preston, Jennifer (Dick and Sarah’s daughter), 6, 205–7, 297; on Indigenous rights, xxviii–xxix Preston, Richard J. “Dick,” xvi–xvii; on animal-human relationship, 172; career path of, xxv, 15–16, 244–5; childhood of, 26–7, 34n25; and Cree concept of community, 222; Cree stories recorded by, xxii; and the Cree Way Project, 18–22; and family at Rupert(’s) House, 5, 6; Korean encounters of, 6; on learning another culture, 6; marriages of, 25–6; research ethics and methods of, 181–2. See also Quakers (Society of Friends), Preston family’s affiliation with Preston, Richard Joseph, Jr (Dick’s father), 34n24 Preston, Rick (Dick and Sarah’s son), 6 Preston, Sarah (Dick and Sarah’s daughter), 5 Preston, Sarah Capps (Dick’s first wife), xvi, 5, 23, 26, 31n1, 269; death of, 32n10 Preston, Susan M. (Dick and Sarah’s daughter), 5, 6, 297; on East Cree conception of landscape, xxix Provençale, Louis (Minnesota fur trader), 160n24 Quakers (Society of Friends), xxix–xxx; Culture of Peace, 247, 248, 251; and Indigenous rights, 206–7; influence on Preston’s work, 243–4; Preston family’s affiliation with, 26, 206, 216, 246–9, 252, 254–5, 263; “speaking in meeting,” 268–70

Radin, Paul, 194; on meaning of doodemag, 134 Rae, Bob, 28 reciprocity in economic exchanges among Anishinaabe, 153. See also gift giving in Aboriginal societies Red River Settlement, 109–11, 125n3. See also St Peter’s Indian Settlement Reid, Bill, 191–2 Rhodes, Richard, 270 Ridington, Robin, 191, 197 Ring of Fire (mineral deposit), 26–7 Rogers, Edward S., 9, 16, 32n13 Rogers, Jean H., 9 Roulette, Roger, 191 Rupert(’s) House, 7, 10–12; Preston family at, 5, 6 Ryan, Allan, 196 Saganash, Allan, Jr, 57, 59–60, 68n8 Samson, Marcel, 49 Sapir, Edward, 190, 245-7, 251, 258; influence on Preston, 6, 10, 13 Schenck, Theresa, 134 Schoolcraft, Henry, 134, 135, 138, 151 Schoolcraft, Jane, 153 school(s): establishing Cree-controlled school boards, 19; residential, 20–1, 256 Schuurman, Lisa, 23–4 Scott, Colin, 223, 224 sedentarization of hunting societies: consequences of, 87–8 Seeseeqyasis, David, 256 shaking tent, xxii Shawanasowe (medicine person from Birch Island, Ontario), 149, 155–6; meaning of his name, 160n27; doodem of, 161n28 Shawanda, Ruth, 141; dance fan colours and symbols, 142 Shingwauk of Garden River, 138; descent narrative of, 140–1

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Signey, Angela, 193 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 184, 189, 190 Sinclair, Catherine (Mrs Joseph Cook), 119, 120 Sinclair, William, 119 Skinner, Alanson B., 8, 31n4, 99–100, 222 Slobodin, Richard, 16; blacklisted for political views, 32n14 Smallboy, Ellen, 98–9 Smith, Carsten, 208–9 Smith, Kitty, 193 Smith, Shirleen, 193–4 Sneve, Virginia Driving Hawk, 188 Society of Friends. See Quakers (Society of Friends) soft law, 209 songs, hunting, 173–6; power of, xvii soul(s), 135–6 “speaking in meeting.” See Quakers (Society of Friends), “speaking in meeting” Speck, Frank G., 9, 100, 222 spirits, tutelary, Anishinaabe, 135 St Peter’s Indian Settlement, 109, 111–12, 125n2 Star Trek and Star Wars mythology, 259 stories, First Nations: contextualized by imagination, 181, 182–4 suicide, causes of, 83–5 Swanton, John, 192 Tanner, Adrian, 17, 49, 100–1, 222, 297; work on architecture and domestic space, xxvi Tanner, John: reads travellers’ message, 144; receives horse from doodem, 153–4 Tauli-Corpuz, Victoria, 210 Taykwa Tagamou Nation, xvii, 23, 25 Taylor, Drew Hayden, 184, 188–9 Technology Assessment in Subarctic Ontario (TASO ), 22–5, 46 Tedlock, Dennis, 194

306 i nD EX

Thomson, Commissary General William, 121 travellers’ messages, 143–6, 156–7 Trickster, 190, 195–6; in Dick’s creation story, 252; in popular literature, 206. See also Nanabush/Nanabozho (Anishinaabe Trickster and culture hero) Tuan, Yi-Fu, 222 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP ), 206, 207–12 violence: meaning of, 258–9 vision quests, 150–3 Vizenor, Gerald, 184, 197 Wabojeeg (White Fisher), 150 Wabose, Catherine: vision quest of, 150–3 wage employment among Crees: choosing employers the Cree way, 62–3; creating a Cree way of working, 49–51; creating new ways of working, 54–6, 57–60, 59–60; government responses to, 56–7; limits on “the Cree way,” 64–6; new patterns of trapping and salaried work, 58–9. See also mines and mining Warren, William: on doodemag, 136 Waskaganish (Cree community): history of, xxi Watkins, E.A., 97 Watt, Bill, 31n2 Watt, James, xxii, 32n9 Watt, Maud, xxii, 7 Webber, Alika, 101 Weistchee, Willy (Preston’s first interpreter), 7–8, 278 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, 31n6 Wheeler, Winona, 185–6

Whidden, Lynn, 171 Whiskeychan, Annie (nee Diamond), 7, 18 Whiskeychan, Tim, 298 Whitecalf, Sarah, 193 Whiteduck, Diana, 130, 131 Whitehead, Ruth Holmes, 102 Wiigobiin: pictograph of escape from smallpox, 144 Willmott, Cory, 24, 298; on clan identities, xxvii Wilson, Maggie (Emo, Ontario): stories told by, 154–5

Windigo/Wihtigo (cannibal spirit), 197 Wolfart, H.C., 192 women, Cree: in 1840 census, 125n5; limited information on activities of, 68n9; power of artist seamstresses, xxvii Woodbury, Hanni, 190 Woodlands School (style of art), 148, 149, 157 Ziibiwing Cultural Society, 148

inDEX

307