James Bay Cree

The territory of the James Bay Cree includes the coast and drainage systems of Hudson Bay and James Bay from Lac Guillaume-Delisle to Rupert’s Bay. Today, they number approximately 12,000 people; their pre-contact population is unknown. Neighbours to the Innu, Central Algonquians, and Inuit, they reside in ten settlements in Quebec on the east side of James Bay, many of which were formerly trading posts, including Waskaganish (Rupert House); Wemindji (Paint Hills, Old Factory); Eastmain; Wahpmagoostui (Great Whale River); Chisasibi (Fort George); and inland communities at Nemaska, Mistassini, Waswanipi, and Oujé-Bougoumou.

Linguistically, there are significant dialectical differences between the James Bay Cree and the Moose and Swampy Cree located on the western side of James Bay in Ontario, and there is also little historical evidence of close kinship ties between the two groups. However, in the 1950s some James Bay Cree emigrated to the Moose Factory area, where they established a community on lands belonging to the Anglican Church and are now known as the Mocreebec First Nation. Competition over trapping and hunting areas with the Moose Cree has contributed to intense hostility between the groups. Today, the Mocreebec, with 400 people, comprise the majority of a community residing between Moose Factory and Moosonee. In 1993 James Bay Cree communities ranged in size from over 300 at Nemaska to over 3,000 at Mistassini (which includes Oujé-Bougoumou). With the exception of some elders, most Cree are bilingual, speaking their own language and either English or French. The Cree language is the language spoken in the home and in important community discussions.

Parts of the James Bay region were inhabited 5,000 years ago, and archaeological evidence indicates that the proto-Cree maintained regular contact with southern peoples. Of the four groups or nations identified by the Jesuits in the 1640s, the Lake Nipigon Cree (or Alimibegouek), Nisibourounik, and Pitchibourenik resided in the East Main and Rupert River drainage basin. Since these Cree groups had trading relations with the Nipissing, they were part of a pre-contact native trade network that included the Huron and Ottawa of the Georgian Bay-French River area and that indirectly led to the introduction of European goods into Cree communities.

The James Bay region was occupied by two distinct regional groups linked together by kinship and economics: the coasters, or Wiinibeyk Iiyuu (“salt water person”), and those who lived inland, or Nuuchcimiihc Iiyuu (“inland person”). Historically, there were marked differences in community organization between the two. Coasters depended to a larger degree on maritime sea mammals and later developed close relationships to fur traders; caribou was more important to the Inland Cree, who retained their independence from the fur trade until the establishment of inland fur-trade posts in the nineteenth century.

The HBC established posts at Eastmain House and Rupert House (Charles Fort) in 1668. Thereafter, many Cree became “home guards” by providing fur traders with food and supplies, especially geese, snowshoes, and canoes. They also became more dependent on fur-trade goods and Cree women often intermarried with fur traders. The Inland Cree were traditionally organized in small-scale winter hunting groups that exploited diversified resources, including woodland caribou, beaver, ptarmigan, fish, and hare. In contrast to the Home Guard Cree, the Inland Cree did not undergo dramatic changes in their economic or social organization as a result of the fur trade. For much of the eighteenth century, Inland Cree seldom visited the fur-trade posts located on James Bay, and, when they did, they traded for goods that could be easily transported.

Religious beliefs were spiritually connected to hunting, specifically to relations with animal spirits. Imbedded in Cree culture was respect for animal spirits and fear of the cannibalistic windigo, which was culturally expressed by conjuring and religious feasts. Although seventeenth-century Jesuit missions were influential among some Mistassini at the Chicoutimi mission, Anglican missionaries, who arrived at Fort George in 1852, were often successful in instilling the idea of a Christian God by linking it to the notion of a powerful spirit known as Manitou. Native catechists interpreted Manitou as a “master of all spirits,” the conceptual equivalent of the Cree concept of a “master” of animal spirits.

Christianity was effective at Great Whale River in 1857 after missionaries introduced the syllabic system, which became an important vehicle in the transmission of Christian theology. Although the syllabic system was principally restricted to church-related reading materials, and rarely used in everyday communication, it has recently become a means of informal communication. Since the 1970s the Cree have joined Anglican, Pentecostal, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic churches, where they have been instructed mainly in English. Conversions to Christianity – and mostly to Anglicanism – are ongoing.

Missionaries and governments brought great changes to Cree communities. The last quarter of the nineteenth century was especially turbulent, since the Cree were then exposed to whooping-cough epidemics, government agents, and prospectors. The opening of Abitibi in the 1920s and the decline in fur trading in the 1940s forced the closing of posts, a development that compelled larger numbers of Cree hunting bands to assemble at the few remaining posts.

The post–World War II period saw a dramatic transformation in Cree social-economic organization. Decreasing fur prices altered the function of the posts, which now became centres for schools, medical aid, family-allowance cheques, and subsidized housing. This further increased the number of Cree living near the posts. The villages, however, lacked a Cree identity and indeed until recently were either named after a post or operated under a federally administered band name.

Government interventions accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s through attempts to “open the north” by building railways, roads, mining operations, and pulp and paper mills. Although this economic activity created French-speaking frontier towns such as Chibougamau and Chapais, the Cree at first did not benefit to any significant degree. After the HBC post at Mistassini closed, the Cree sought wage labour but were handicapped by their lack of French. As wage labour gradually became more accessible, it replaced hunting and trapping as the economic basis of Cree communities.

Although educational instruction, primarily in English, was offered from the 1920s under Oblate missions at Fort George, it was not until the 1960s that significant numbers of Cree children attended school, usually outside the community. Some Cree kept their children out of school to educate them in bush skills; others sent their children to school only after being threatened by government with the loss of their social assistance. For decades, schooling was not adapted to Cree culture. Recently, however, a Cree school board has been established to administer Cree schools and the curriculum has been adapted to incorporate Cree values.

A major turning-point in Cree history occurred in 1971, when the government of Quebec announced, without consultation with the Cree, that it planned to construct an enormous hydro-electric project on James Bay that would divert several major rivers in the Hudson Bay drainage area and require the construction of several dams, hydro transmission-line corridors, roads, and airstrips. An ancillary benefit of the project, the government claimed, was that it would open larger areas to mining. The Cree, then numbering only about 6,000 people, reacted within a year by filing an application for a court injunction to halt work on the project. In November 1973 Judge Albert Malouf granted the injunction, noting that Cree and Inuit land rights in the area had not been extinguished. The Quebec Court of Appeal overturned this decision a week later, and the case reached the Supreme Court in December 1973. With the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the appeal, pressure on the Quebec and Canadian governments to reach a settlement with the natives became intense, and on 15 November 1974 an agreement in principle was reached. The Cree – who by now had organized themselves politically with the creation of the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) – ratified the agreement one month later; the Inuit followed suit in February 1976.

The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, which has the status of a treaty, was the first modern land-claims agreement that recognized aboriginal rights. In exchange for opening almost all of northern Quebec to economic development, the federal and provincial governments agreed to upgrade local services to national standards and to pay monetary compensation of $150 million ($15,000 per capita). As well, the agreement recognized Cree and Inuit rights to maintain their traditional culture. About 3,500 square kilometres of land, located in and around their communities, were allocated to Cree for their exclusive use; over another category of land, amounting to 40,000 square kilometres, they were to have exclusive hunting, fishing, and trapping rights; and on a third category of land, the Cree could hunt according to a quota system in all areas except those already developed or in the course of development. Finally, the agreement extended a large degree of native self-government. Twenty-one municipalities were created (thirteen Inuit, eight Cree). The governments of these municipalities were to have control over health, education, and other local matters. To coordinate local administration, umbrella bodies such as the Cree Regional Authority, the Cree Board of Health and Social Services, the Cree School Board, and the Cree Construction Corporation were subsequently established. In addition, an Income Security Program, administered by the Cree Trappers Association, gave the Cree the power to manage wildlife and assured a guaranteed income to hunters and their families.

Over the last couple of decades, changing political relations with non-Cree have created new models of leadership which place a premium on bicultural education and which in some cases have led to new definitions of status and prestige. Economically, Cree hunters have been able to recover some of their former status in the community because of the Income Security Program. At the same time, the construction of permanent roads has improved access to hunting territories, enabling hunters to hunt from a central point rather than establishing several base camps. Hunting has also become mechanized through snowmobiles, which have made it possible for the Cree to maintain longer traplines. The Cree also outfit and train non-Cree sports hunters, and are employed in large industrial companies and in small local services. Cree handicraft production has become important business: the Cree market local craft productions, including high-quality embroidered work, moccasins, snowshoes, and hunting decoys.

In the midst of the unprecedented changes introduced by technology, the Cree have been able to sustain a viable hunting economy based upon moose, beaver, fish, and geese while also managing their own language classes and cooperative stores. Since the James Bay Agreement of 1975, the Cree have moved from a society based on small villages to one that is more regional in scope and well organized politically. Today, as in the past, decisions are reached by consensus in a process coordinated by elders. The band council is the main body responsible for dealing with governments external to the Cree community.

Recently, the James Bay Cree have been active participants in the debate over Quebec secession. Concerned about their future in a sovereign Quebec, the Cree have repeatedly insisted that they have the inherent right to self-determination and accordingly their status in Canada – specifically, their relationship to the two levels of government, federal and provincial – cannot be changed without their consent. On 24 October 1995, six days before a Quebec referendum on seccession organized by the Parti Québécois government, and following an intensive consultative process undertaken by a special commission established for the purpose, the Cree held a referendum which asked the question, “Do you consent as a people that the Government of Quebec separate the James Bay Crees and Cree traditional territory from Canada, in the event of a Yes vote in the Quebec referendum”? The results of the Cree referendum were unequivocal: 96.3 percent of those who voted answered No.