Gifts of the Land: Hunting Territories, Guaranteed Incomes and the Construction of Social Relations in James Bay Cree Society

Abstract

In response to successive debates over the transformations created in Algonquian societies by the long trade in furs as commodities, I contextualize the trade in relation to some of the internal dynamics and processes of social reproduction, as well as transformation, within James Bay Cree society. Such processes are intimately linked to and shaped by the meanings, values and practices of everyday social and land relationships. Impacts of changes in the access to cash and commodities, were profoundly shaped by daily community practice of reciprocity as a social value in processes of distribution, consumption, production, social group formation, and access to lands.