Waswanipi Cree Management of Land and Wildlife: Cree Cultural Ecology Revisited
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It is a common assumption that game animal hunters exercise little control over the resources on which they depend or the environments in which they live, unlike agriculturalists and pastoralists. But many biological and ethnographic studies show that it is possible to anticipate the consequences of hunting or harvesting practices on animal populations of some species in a territory. It is therefore possible for hunters to control some of the critical parameters of the harvested animal populations on their hunting territories through their choice of hunting strategies and their decisions. Hunters can exercise some control over the distribution and reproduction of the animal populations which they harvest, and they in this sense manage their resources. This paper indicates how one group of sub-arctic hunters, the Waswanipi Cree, utilize the animal resources available to them on their hunting territories. The paper summarizes parts of a more detailed doctoral thesis study. It demonstrates that the Cree hunting leaders on their territories are managing their resources in accordance with culturally distinct ethno-ecological system of knowledge, some of which I formulate as hunting recipes and strategies. They use techniques such as rotational harvesting of lands, hunting mainly at highly efficient seasons, using alternative animals for subsistence when they want to limit harvests of the most efficiently hunted game, and monitoring visible indicators of the reproductive conditions of the most intensively hunted animals to decide whether and when to limit harvests of that animal (indicators that are often also recognized and used by wildlife biologists or managers). In a 1986 Postscript the original data from 1968-70 are supplemented by new research from 1978-82 indicating how both Cree hunting effort has significantly increased and how commercial logging has increasingly disrupted game populations. These new data, plus additional government game surveys, confirm that Waswanipi harvests of the most intensively hunted species varied modestly, were not in long-term decline, and continued to be harvested within sustainable yields, a finding compatible with hunter conservation. Among other issues the Postscript explores the possibility that hunters seek to hunt in ways that moderate the variability of game populations, thus stressing again that hunters intentionally modify their environments, an issue not adequately considered in the literature. In the Afterword of 1973 I indicate that the Cree people of the region must effectively shape the decisions about regional development. Their agreement should be obtained before their lands are affected by industrial resource developments.
