The Protection of Hunting and the Role of Local Governments in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreements.

Abstract

During the negotiation of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA) the protection of the Cree and Inuit hunting economies, lands and societies was viewed as an objective requiring the simultaneous accomplishment of several tasks, most importantly: a) the definition and recognition of rights of Indigenous hunters; b) the specification of the relative standing of those rights vis-a-vis other rights to the wildlife resources and the land; c) the establishment of wildlife management procedures and administrations to coordinate the various groups with rights and roles in the management of the wildlife and land resources; d) the means to protect the wildlife resources from the impacts of industrial developments and competing users; and e) means to assure that Indigenous hunters have the cash resources and access to the services and equipment essential to the maintenance of the subsistence economy. It was the combined pursuit of each that was essential, because land, the hunting economy and societies could be undermined by the failure of any one of these components. Each of these types of problems was also a felt need in the Cree or Inuit communities at the time of the negotiation, so that there was a general consensus to pursue them all, rather than to only address one or two that were seen as crises at the moment. I review the components of the JBNQA that respond to these needs in this report.