Colonialism's Northern Cultures: Canadian Institutions and the James Bay Cree

This paper explores the contrasts and the similarities between different sets of ideas about Indians which have prevailed among governments and corporations active in the James Bay region of Quebec during the last four decades. The first instance is the closing of nearly all the fur trading posts by the Hudson's Bay Company and their conversion into merchandising stores when the James Bay region was opened to mining and forestry development in the 1950s and 1960s. Here the images of the Indian concerned the passing of the traditional Indian tied to the old ways, the honourable and trustworthy Indian, whose loss undermined fur trading. The second phase occurred a decade later when massive hydro-electric development was initiated in the region: government and corporate agents faced the Cree in the courtroom, over negotiating tables and through the media. The government's determination to develop the resources of the region without Cree participation was related to a different idea of the Indian: the Indian as the dependent of the Euro-Canadian. When Cree were acknowledged as active opponents of development in the region it was said that they were already acculturated and assimilated. A dying people with a dying culture. The third period (post-1985) is marked by the effective Cree opposition to the Great Whale hydro-electric development, and the period of the possibility of Quebec separation. The Cree are actively a threat to what Euro-Canadians want to do in the James Bay region. The focus on the Cree is that they are an already assimilated population, refusing to recognize itself as a part of the national identity because they are crassly interested in increasing their monetary compensation. The Cree are increasingly portrayed in each context as less deserving, more untrustworthy, and cunning Indians. All these are variations on a single theme - the inherent superiority of the European or Euro-Canadian morally and historically.