Property as Sharing: A Reflection on the Nature of Land Ownership among the Cree of Eeyou Istchee after the “Paix des Braves”

Abstract

Since the “Paix des Braves,” a renewed land claim agreement signed in 2002, the Cree of Eeyou Istchee (James Bay, Quebec) are facing a new wave of change. While that agreement allowed for the damming of the Eastmain and Rupert rivers, it ensured a greater integration of the Crees in the economic boom resulting from resource exploitation. Central to this new partnership, the Cree family hunting territories have been invested with a new set of meanings and practices in which the tallymen have become entrepreneurs. Reflecting back on the debated question of the very nature of this land tenure, this article describes the complex entanglements resulting from the attempts to further develop and privatise Cree lands. In doing so, it demonstrates that these property relations have also been reinvented by the Cree land users to fit their own territorial model, in which stewardship and sharing remain essential.