Eeyou Istchee Bodies of Water

Abstract

In the Eastern James Bay Cree Nation, a region known as Eeyou Istchee, water (neebee/Nîpîy) is a multiplicity of things and qualities: it is quantified as potentials in the reservoirs of HydroQuébec’s hydroelectric power generating system; it is also a mobile element in the hydrological cycle, the platform for colonial mobilities and the past trapping economy; as well as an Eenouch (Cree) symbolic force and a liquid that saturates the James Bay landscape. This paper proposes a somatechnics of waterbodies. It considers a regional situation in which nature is both technological and biophysical. Waters appear as a hydrocommons that saturates the biophysics, culture, and economies of the Eenouch. Both humans and non-humans are amenable to a somatechnical lens: both are bodies of water. Our paper explores the potential for extending somatechnics beyond organic bodies and what this reveals about all bodies as a category in cross-cultural perspective – their abilities to enter into spatiotemporal relations of kinship, agency, recalcitrance, affect, virtuality, and materiality.