Les animaux comme partenaires de chasse

Chez les chasseurs cris de la région de la baie James, dans le nord du Québec, le monde de la pensée et celui des animaux interfèrent souvent, au gré des divers événements de la vie et des activités quotidiennes – chasse, relations sociales, luttes politiques. Tout comme les Ojibwa décrits par A. I. Hallowell, les Cris ne font pas de distinction radicale entre nature et société, ou entre humains et animaux, mais vivent dans un monde animé par différentes sortes de personnes. Si les animaux sont crédités d’une pensée aux yeux des chasseurs cris, ces derniers ne sauraient cependant avoir qu’un accès indirect et incomplet à cette pensée. La chasse crée des contacts avec le monde non humain. Ces expériences nouvelles sont en adéquation profonde avec les habitudes des Cris et confirment par là même la réalité de ce monde autre. Les grandes ruptures, dans ce cosmos social, sont le résultat d’actes asociaux tels que l’exploitation des animaux et des hommes perpétrée par des « cannibales de la forêt » ou des non-Cris. Au milieu de toutes les dégradations causées à leurs terres par l’industrie, les animaux incarnent idéalement – mais aussi très physiquement – le maintien de cette relation de réciprocité qui confirme aux Cris leur propre permanence.Animals as hunting partners: Reciprocity among the James Bay CreeFor the James Bay Cree hunters of northern Quebec, the animal world and the world of thought interact in circumstances ranging from hunting through social relations to politics. Like the Ojibwa described by A.I. Hallowell, the Cree do not radically separate society from nature, nor the human from the animal world. Cree hunters attribute thinking, but of an indirect, incomplete sort, to animals. Hunting creates contacts with the nonhuman world, an experience that fits into Cree conceptions and thus confirms this other world’s reality. Ruptures in this social cosmos result from the asocial acts committed by “forest cannibals” or non-Crees who exploit both animals and people. In the midst of all the ecological degradation wrought by industry, animals ideally and physically incarnate an ongoing reciprocity, which reassures the Cree about their own survival

Waswanipi realities and adaptations : resource management and cognitive structure

Each of the two "new" paradigms for ecological anthropology, ecosystems analysis and ethnoecology, explores only one pair of phenomena relevant to cultural ecology, environment and action, and environment and belief respectively. This study argues that ecological analysis is weakened by the exclusion of any one of those three orders of phenomena as objects of study. A detailed analysis of cognitive and behavioral data on the resource management of Waswanipi Cree hunters shows how religious beliefs incorporate both cultural logics and realistic models of environmental relationships; and, how action informed by those beliefs can effectively manage hunting, animal populations, human population distributions, and subsistence. Beliefs are formulated as recipes that apply to diverse situations so that actions informed by these are responsive to changing conditions. Decisions concerningalternative goals, situations and strategies are shown to be socially located with the men who are the "owners" of hunting territories.*Abstract only previously published in Dissertation Abstracts International, Vol. 40, No. 9, page 5100-A, 1980. UM

Mistassini hunters of the boreal forest : ecosystem dynamics and multiple subsistence patterns

Note:This thesis applies an ecosystem analysis in a hunting and gathering culture for the first time, namely the pre-contact Mistassini Indians of the sub-arctic boreal forest of Quebec. It shows how ecosystem analysis makes possible the resolution of long standing debates unresolved by previous Stewardian cultural ecological analyses; in particular, thedebates over the aboriginality of the family hunting territory system and over the primary aboriginal subsistence base. On the basis of an extensive review of current biological knowledge on the boreal forest ecosystem an attempt is made to reconstruct the pre-contact strategy of adaptation, with particular stress on tfeast or famine' as a mechanism for maintaining human population density equilibrium. In addition, a hypothesis is proposed as a possible guide for further research on the ecosystems of hunters and gatherers: that in hunting and gathering societies the socio-cultural subsystem will respond to the variability, both spatial and temporal, of the environmental subsystem