About this Book

This volume is the product of a mutually enriching collaboration between Indigenous leaders, other social activists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines. It explores what is happening today to Indigenous peoples as they are inevitably enmeshed in the remorseless expansion of the modern economy and development, subject to the pressures of the marketplace and government. It is particularly timely, given the growing criticism of free-market capitalism, and of development.

The volume assembles a rich diversity of statements, case studies of specific struggles and situations, and wider thematic explorations. All start from the fact that Indigenous peoples are actors, not victims. The accounts come primarily from North America, and particularly the Cree, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Chippewa–Ojibwe peoples who straddle the US/Canadian border. There are also studies of Indigenous peoples from South America, and even from the former Soviet Union.

The intellectual focus is on the complex relationships that develop between Indigenous peoples, civil society and the environment in the context of market- and state-mandated development. The volume shows how the boundaries between Indigenous peoples’ organizations, civil society, the state, markets, development and the environment are ambiguous and constantly changing. It is this fact that lies at the heart of the political possibility of local agency, but also, ironically, of the possibility of undermining it.

The volume seeks to capture these complex, power-laden, often contradictory features of Indigenous agency and relationships. It shows how peoples do not just resist or react to the pressures of market and state, but also sustain ‘life projects’ of their own which embody local history and incorporate visions and strategies for enhancing their social and economic ways of living and their relationships to state and markets.

The Editors

Mario Blaser is an Argentinian–Canadian anthropologist who has worked and collaborated on a variety of endeavours undertaken by the Yshiro people since 1991. His scholarly work focuses on exploring the epistemological and political possibilities of non-modern ways of knowing.

Harvey A. Feit is Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario. He was an adviser to the Grand Council of the Crees during their 1972–78 treaty process. His research is on how Cree epistemology shapes conservation practices and how these inform political relationships.

Glenn McRae is an applied anthropologist who has worked extensively throughout the United States, India, South Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America as an environmental consultant. He has a Ph.D. from the Union Institute and University, and teaches at the University of Vermont.

In the Way of Development

Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization

EDITED BY MARIO BLASER,
HARVEY A. FEIT AND GLENN McRAE

ZED BOOKS
London & New York

in association with

International Development Research Centre
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Contents

Acknowledgements

We have benefited from the contributions of many colleagues and participants, to whom we owe much for the development of this project. Jasmin Habib of Wilfred Laurier University has been an extraordinary and generous colleague, who has shaped the conceptualization and implementation of this project throughout. Peter Harries-Jones also provided advice and critical insights throughout all phases of publication, and helped to make this a better book. Many Haudenosaunee people from the Six Nations helped to host the meetings that led to this volume and contributed to the participants’ understandings of Indigenous teachings. The late Chief Longboat played a central role in the development of this project. He co-organized the meetings at McMaster University and on the Six Nations lands. He gave a keynote lecture, provided an overview and synthesis of the results of the meetings, and encouraged the development of this volume. Clan Mother Gloria Thomas, Tom Deer, Dawn Martin-Hill, Bev Jacobs and Linda Staats all helped to host and shape the meetings. An extraordinary group of high school students from the Six Nations also attended and entered into discussions eloquently and memorably. Pehuenche Lonko Antolin Curriao from Chile and Alberto Santa Cruz from Paraguay brought Indigenous perspectives from South America, along with Bruno Barras and Aldisson Anguita Mariqueo, who have each contributed to this volume.

In the final stages of editing, the chapter manuscripts were read critically and discussed in depth by the graduate students in our seminar at McMaster in the fall of 2002, and they offered us stimulating and often challenging advice: Alisa Kincaid, Jennifer Levy, Jennifer Mallory, Linda Scarangella, Jennifer Selby and Ben Stride-Darnley. We also benefited from the comments and advice of upper-year undergraduate seminar readers in Anthropology 4AE3.

We have been aided throughout by the exceptional work and continuing advice of numerous professionals, assistants and volunteers. William Coleman of McMaster, Jasmin Habib and Colin Scott served as rapporteurs at the meetings. Others who helped with the meetings were: Kathleen Buddle-Crowe, Patricia Austin, Theresa McCarthy, Saul Rich, Beth Finnis, Beth Barber and the McMaster First Nations Student Association. During our contributors’ meeting and conference our Spanish-speaking contributors had the benefit of three days of continuous translation thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Professors John Browning, Nibaldo Galleguillos and George Sorger, and especially Ping-Mei Law, of McMaster and their students. The chapters submitted in Spanish, by Bruno Barras and Aldisson Anguita Mariqueo, were translated into English by Mario Blaser. At the editing stage we have been aided by the professional advice and services of Kenneth Blackwell, Caroline Kinsley, Amanda White and Candida Hadley. We have also benefited from the fine map-making skills of Glenn Garner. It has been a pleasure to work with the editors and production team at Zed Books, Lucy Morton and Robin Gable at Illuminati, and staff at IDRC.

The editors also wish to acknowledge the financial support of: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for research grants and a research conference grant to Harvey Feit; the International Development Research Council of Canada (IDRC), the Grand Council of the Cree (Eeyou Astchee) and the United Nations University for helping to fund travel for non-academic Indigenous participants; Environment Canada; and the McMaster University programmes in Indigenous Studies, Peace Studies and Engineering and Society, the Institute on Environment and Health, and especially the Department of Anthropology for administrative and assistantship support as well as financial contributions. Critical funding from the International Network on Water, Environment and Health (INWEH) of the United Nations University made it possible to complete the manuscript preparations.

To the Memory of

Haudenosaunee Chief Harvey Longboat,
1936-2001

1

Indigenous Peoples and Development Processes:
New Terrains of Struggle

MARIO BLASER, HARVEY A. FEIT
AND GLENN MCRAE

In the last three decades Indigenous peoples’ struggles to keep control of their lives and lands have moved from being of concern only to themselves, and some specialists and specialized bureaucracies, to being issues of wide public awareness and debate in many sectors of society. Indigenous peoples’ struggles are now carried on within complex transnational networks and alliances that traverse the boundaries between the state, markets and civil society, including the environmentalist and human rights movements. International forums such as the United Nations have become important sites in these networks, but major transnational organizations like the UN and the World Bank must themselves now have policies in place and access to expertise on Indigenous peoples in order to carry out many of their projects. Nearly every time the constitution of a nation-state is rewritten today, a major debate develops about how to include some form of recognition of Indigenous rights. Transnational corporations have to grapple with laws, norms and regulations that complicate their operations when these affect Indigenous peoples. These examples are but a few indications of the dramatically transformed terrains in which Indigenous peoples carry on their lives and their struggles today. Much has changed. But much has not changed.

This book provides the reader with a diverse series of analyses, strategic assessments, examples and reflections on Indigenous peoples’ agency and struggles in the face of development projects carried out on these changing terrains. Many of the changes in the arenas in which Indigenous peoples carry on their struggles have been reshaped in these last decades by the initiatives of Indigenous peoples themselves. But much of the terrain has also been dramatically reshaped by others, through the changing roles of the nation-state and of NGOs, the growing importance of transnational corporations and global flows of capital, the expansion of media networks, and the

rise of the environmentalist and human rights movements. These changes have altered Indigenous peoples’ strategies of struggle to survive and to retain the autonomy they still exercise. We argue, however, that Indigenous peoples’ agency and their alliances with wider movements themselves can have, and sometimes have had, transformative effects on the emergence of alternative structures of governance¹ that are not rooted in globalizing development.

The chapters in this book present diverse insights into these developments. The editors have invited chapters from Indigenous leaders and Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists and scholars in the conviction that emerging issues can be best explored and understood by working through a set of differing perspectives and literary forms. The forms range from declarations, to histories, comparative analyses, theoretical explorations and analytical case studies, to practitioners’ handbooks.

The ‘mix’ of authors is also an important feature of the book because their perspectives and experiences are rarely brought together. Rather they tend to be seen either as mutually exclusive (even antagonistic), or as representing diverse ‘levels’ on a scale of knowledge. We reject models that put local/ traditional knowledge and global/scientific knowledge on opposing extremes of a scale of accuracy and, therefore, authority. It is within a framework of openness to dialogue and emerging understandings that we seek to explore the themes of this book.

The theme of Indigenous peoples’ agency in the context of the changing terrains in which development processes take place is explored in many of the chapters of this book as a counterpoint between ‘life projects’ and ‘development projects’. The two introductory chapters serve the parallel aims of providing the contexts for the chapters that follow, and contributing to an emerging conceptual framework for understanding and acting in these new terrains. This introduction contextualizes the changes in the terrains of Indigenous action over recent decades, and provides a preview of each chapter in the volume. The other introductory chapter, by Mario Blaser, sets out the idea and practice of Indigenous life projects as a key to understanding and rethinking Indigenous agency in the midst of these changing contexts. It explores how Indigenous projects are linked to those terrains but also how Indigenous life projects differ from the dominant and more common ideas and practices of development and development projects. That chapter also provides an account of the structure of the volume in terms of its thematic sections.

Our sense as editors is that many readers of this volume will come to it with familiarity with one or more of the areas of these changes. But because we think that there has been only limited overlap between the literatures and venues devoted to Indigenous issues and those focused on development, we assume that many readers will not be familiar with the

recent developments in all of the fields involved, and that most will not be familiar with the growing connections between them. This introduction was, therefore, conceived of as an overview of recent trends in, and the interconnections among, the areas of Indigenous rights, human rights, sustainable development, civil society and globalization. Our aim is not to review each area comprehensively, but to draw out how the changes in each of these areas impact and are impacted by Indigenous peoples. Indeed, we think that Indigenous peoples and issues have become key links among these terrains of knowledge and struggle.

Terrains of Subordination and Survival

Indigenous lives and life projects have never been pursued in a vacuum; they can only be pursued amidst other projects. If the relations between different projects were more or less symmetrical, the broad cultural values and the visions of both Indigenous peoples and developers would each find some point of mutual accommodation. As a few chapters in this volume show, when conditions of a relative balance of power occurred the treaties made between Indigenous peoples and newcomers have embodied the cultural underpinnings of both groups, as in the Two-Row Wampum discussed by Deborah McGregor and by Mary Arquette, Maxine Cole and the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment.

Yet once the newcomers secured their dominion over Indigenous peoples–by resettlement with the aid of depredations caused by the spread of disease, military conquest, or incremental dispossession–they refused to recognize the latter’s conceptions of right and the pursuit of their life projects, justifying this on the basis that Indigenous societies and cultures were primitive and undeveloped (Asch 2000). In this new situation of asymmetry, the colonizers have repeatedly imposed their cultural forms on relations with Indigenous peoples. Thus, under the ‘custody’ of the nation-states, Indigenous lands and resources, and even their children, have been susceptible to seizure either in the name of the greater good, for an abstract ‘all’, or for their own presumed benefit. These actions assume the colonizers’ conceptions of the correct relationships that must prevail among humans, as individuals and groups, and between human and non-human entities, or roughly what is called ‘nature’.

In the international system of sovereign states those Indigenous spokespersons who have again and again called attention to these abuses have gone mostly unheard (Wilmer 1993: 2–3). Further, even when abuses were attended to, the basic storyline of development was not doubted. As the International Labor Organization Convention 107 of 1957 expressed it:

Considering that there exist in various independent countries indigenous and other tribal and semi-tribal populations which are not yet integrated into the national community and whose social, economic or cultural situation hinders them from benefiting fully from the rights and advantages enjoyed by other elements of the population . . . [g]overnments shall have the primary responsibility for developing co-ordinated and systematic action for the protection of the populations concerned and their progressive integration into the life of their respective countries [although] recourse to force or coercion as a means of promoting the integration of these populations into the national community shall be excluded. (ILO 1957)

Thus Indigenous peoples continually find themselves subordinated within the nation-state and international system. This implies that, for the most part, their struggles to pursue their own life projects take place in a field dominated by Western ‘cultural underpinnings’, including the central idea of development (see Stavenhagen 1996; Tully 2000).

In contrast, the visions embodied by Indigenous life projects entail a relationship between equals and an end to the subordination of Indigenous peoples. Thus, attention to the field of power relations in which they operate is among the central considerations of life projects. This attention to relationships and power informs the strategies through which Indigenous organizations struggle to end the subordination of their life projects and to pursue their unhindered realization. Central to their strategies has been the mobilization of Indigenous peoples for recognition of their rights. When we speak of rights, we are speaking of more than legal issues. We are talking more broadly of the life projects that embody visions of the world and the future, and of the inherent right to pursue one’s own life.

As a consequence of the subordination of Indigenous peoples, their life projects have had to be furthered through the cracks left open, by unexpected events and the passage of time, in the oppressors’ own discourses and legal expressions of rights. By having to speak the ‘language’ of the dominant group, the broad cultural underpinnings of Indigenous peoples’ struggles have often been obscured, and their political significance has gone unaddressed by most analysts. This volume is part of a growing and diverse literature that seeks to reduce that omission.

From the 1960s onwards, and in connection with both the civil rights and decolonization struggles occurring around the world, subordinated groups, including Indigenous peoples, began to call more effective attention to the contradictions between the standards of human rights proclaimed by nation-states and international standards, and the actual way in which these were imposed on or ignored for Indigenous peoples (see Brysk 2000; Messer 1993; Niezen 2003; Wilmer 1993; Wright 1988). In the process they contributed to the erosion among nation-state authorities, and the public more generally, of

unselfconscious confidence in dominant Western values, including the ideas of development.

In order to provide a background picture of how these transformations took place, what new political terrains they have shaped, and how Indigenous peoples pursue their life projects in them, we will examine several areas on which key changes have occurred. In the next section of this chapter we provide a brief overview of the processes through which Indigenous rights emerged in the context of development and the connections of these processes with environmental issues. In the following section we focus on the contemporary political terrains that have been partly shaped by these processes and discuss Indigenous peoples’ organizational adaptations and strategies to pursue their life projects in the new terrains.

In reviewing the changes of recent decades we also set out to build some additional bridges between the domains of Indigenous rights as a specialization and critical development work, because these connections have often not been considered central to social analysis and action.

Indigenous Rights and Development

As indicated by the fragment from ILO Convention 107, the broader agenda of development included human rights to the extent that ‘integration’ of Indigenous peoples was supposedly aimed, in part, at extending to them some socio-economic human rights, or ‘second-generation rights’ (Messer 1993: 222). However, in pointing out that force had to be excluded as an instrument of integration, the convention underscored the contradiction between the goal of recognizing human rights and the way in which development was often being delivered.

When, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the international human rights network began to take shape, some organizations–like the Anti-Slavery Society, the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Survival International and Cultural Survival–focused specifically on the abuses committed against Indigenous peoples (see Martinez Cobo 1986; Wilmer 1993: 141). These organizations were at odds with dominant ideas in governmental circles because they asserted that respect for cultural differences was a viable alternative to integrationist development. Over time they developed active collaborations with ongoing efforts by Indigenous peoples to organize and make their voices heard in international arenas. For Indigenous peoples, this was a means to improve their situation in the national contexts where they lived (see Bodley 1988; Sanders 1977; Davis 1977; Wright 1988).

In the 1970s the proliferation of Indigenous advocacy and Indigenous organizations closely matched the internal expansion of many nation-states as they initiated grand schemes of development affecting resources and Indigenous peoples in ‘peripheral areas’, including, among others, agrarian reform, agricultural colonization, green revolution schemes, road building, dams, mining, and oil exploration and production (Sanders 1973; Wilmer 1993).

Indigenous peoples in Latin America, for example, responded to the developmentalist wave of the 1960s and 1970s by trying to stop it, or trying to direct some of its policies and programmes to their own benefit. The last strategy was used particularly in the context of agrarian reforms initiated by nation-states, and it involved the reshaping of previous relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations and movements in each national context. In the Andean regions of countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, as well as in Guatemala and Mexico, Indigenous peoples created unions, political parties or cooperatives that, until the 1980s, did not articulate their demands in terms of their Indigenous identity; rather they tended to identify themselves as peasant organizations (see Yashar 1998; Albó 1999). In contrast, the organizations that emerged to challenge the threats of encroachment and destruction posed by the expansion of the states and markets into areas that had remained mostly outside their reach adopted a more decidedly international stance, without disregarding national alliances but stressing their ethnic identity (Ramos 1998; Maybury Lewis 1999; Brysk 2000).

The early organizations emerged with the support of non-Indigenous institutions, particularly sectors of the Catholic Church influenced by liberation theology. As Indigenous organizations grew they developed connections with each other. They obtained leverage through the international human rights network, whose main strategy consisted of lobbying donor countries and multilateral organizations to make development aid conditional upon the recipient countries’ record of human rights (Sanders 1977: 25–6; Tomasevski 1993: 84–5; Keck and Sikkink 1998: 102–3). However, this support was not universal, and, in contrast to those organizations which specialized in Indigenous issues, the wider human rights network did not see development aimed at integrating Indigenous peoples into the national society as a human rights violation. Thus the ability of Indigenous organizations to call on human rights groups to further Indigenous life projects was limited (Brysk 1994, 1996). As long as a ‘developing’ state followed the model of the developed countries and avoided the most flagrant violations of human rights in executing its projects, its integrationist development agenda remained legitimate.

Through the 1980s Indigenous movements in Latin America actively participated in the wider processes of democratization that swept through

the region (see Diaz Polanco 1997;Van Cott 1994; Ramos 1998; Horst 1998; Warren 1998). Thus, the idea of respect for Indigenous peoples’ cultural differences began to expand, at least as rhetoric, into the policymaking of development donors, governments, international institutions and even markets (see Assies et al. 2000; Brysk 2000;Van Cott 2000). In the 1990s, several Latin American countries began state reforms. Although these reforms took shape in a wider context informed by neoliberal agendas such as the liberalization of trade, downsizing of the state, and decentralization of its operations, they opened the door for groups with specific interests to fight for inclusion in this process. This was the case with Indigenous rights, which were incorporated in a number of new national constitutions that emerged from these processes of state reform (see Yashar 1998;Van Cott 2000; Sieder 2002).

In North America the expansion of resource and social development projects in the 1960s and 1970s also gave impetus to rapid Indigenous mobilizations, led in some cases by Indigenous peoples in formerly remote or isolated areas who were now experiencing development projects on a new scale. In the post-Second World War boom years the growing affluence of significant sectors of North American societies led to a growing awareness of poverty, the failures of development and civil rights abuses for other sectors of the population and in some regions of the nation. The growing demands, and wider public awareness and support, for redressing these ‘inequalities’ focused on integrationist projects for economic development of black and urban poor communities and Indigenous urban and rural people. This wave of organizing and public support, and government efforts at co-optation, facilitated the emergence of new Indigenous organizations at regional and national levels in each country as governments needed and sought representatives with whom to consult on the development of policies and programmes for Indigenous peoples. This entire process was still envisaged within the framework of externally driven development projects. The new Indigenous organizations that survived from this period developed into more autonomous voices and actors, although for a long time some saw such development as the only avenue of escape from the history of colonial administration.

In the 1970s and 1980s breakthroughs in the national legal recognition of Indigenous rights transformed the arenas of action in the USA, Canada and Australia. Court cases brought by Indigenous peoples gained new recognition for Aboriginal rights based in part on legal anomalies and residues of the history of their recognition, and in part on challenging the courts to reread the provisions in earlier treaties both as binding documents and in the light of ideas of the period and testimonies about how they were presented, explained and negotiated with Indigenous signatories. In this light, legal provisions often affirmed and allocated access to resources, lands and aspects of self-government and sovereignty, and courts recognized that in new

ways (Asch 1997; Harring 2002). In the USA and Canada treaty recognition expanded, and emerged alongside the first legal recognitions in Canada and Australia that Indigenous rights still existed generally over the land where they had not been dealt with by treaty. Once these legal changes began, they were also given impetus by the massive capital now being mobilized for resource developments in isolated regions of the continent and the corporate and investor needs that there be legal clarity and assurances about rights to lands and resources to protect investments.

These developments dramatically shifted attention from socio-economic deprivation to legal rights and governance claims, which had the effect of making Indigenous issues into questions of national importance for the first time in a century or more in these countries. The legal changes decisively moved the focus to the problems of recognizing plurality (Asch 1984; Tully 1995). These processes were paralleled by opportunities for Indigenous action under legislation assuring public involvement in environmental decision-making and the recognition of religious rights and freedoms.

The subsequent three decades have seen a plethora of legal developments, and setbacks, and growing and challenging assertions from Indigenous peoples that recognition of their rights does not mean recognition defined solely by the structures of colonial and national law, but of their own systems of customary law, governance, tenure and resource uses, and ‘ways of life’ or life projects (Lyons and Mohawk 1992; Alfred 1999; Harring 2002). In recent years, the continuing resource developments on Indigenous lands despite recognitions of legal rights, the growing conservatism and declining sympathies of a public that itself feels less secure in its affluence under neoliberal changes, and the continuing gap between the living standards of Indigenous peoples and other North Americans have led to a new urgency and recognition by many Indigenous communities that they need to participate in some forms of development (RCAP 1996). The patterns of that participation have, as yet, not become clear (but see Russell (Chapter 8), Coon Come (Chapter 9), Craik (Chapter 10) and Scott (Chapter 7) in this volume for exploratory initiatives).

Indigenous claims have in general been increasingly expressed through international initiatives and alliances aimed at pressuring national governments; through the development of Indigenous rights forums and draft conventions; through environmental alliances; and through a burgeoning public recognition of Indigenous arts and media. The latter have become a successful sector of North American, European and Australian consumer culture, albeit with mixed effects (Conklin and Graham 1995; Niezen 2003; Povinelli 1993, 2002).

Until the late 1980s, the most common response of multilateral development institutions and states to the contradictions between the growing

pressures on them to uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples and the way in which development was carried out was the promotion of measures to mitigate the impacts produced by development (see Tomasevski 1993: 67–8; Davis 1993; Deruyttere 1997; Burger 1998; Swepston 1998; Kreimer 1998; Sanders 1998). However, through the 1970s the contradiction was increasingly clear, and this helped to open a crack in the so-far solid confidence that progress justified almost everything. This crack was widened with the consolidation in the 1980s of the transnational environmentalist movement. With this, the idea that Indigenous peoples have the right to sustain their own life projects received new impetus.

Ecological Differences

We will discuss here neither the antecedents nor the details of the last wave of environmentalism that arose almost parallel with the international Indigenous movement and that was consolidated during the 1980s.² Our focus is on how development was transformed by this movement and, in turn, how this transformation affected the struggles of Indigenous peoples to further their life projects.

By the mid-1980s, when environmental activism was booming, it was clear that a new form of relation between developmental and environmental concerns had to be worked out. Different positions about what the new relation should be were proliferating and becoming more visible as different organizations, institutions and movements established connections with each other. Just to mention a few, these positions included radical environmentalism arguing for the total subordination of human activity to natural cycles; environmental-justice movements and eco-socialists putting social inequalities at the top of the environmental agenda; peasants and Indigenous peoples mobilized against the privatization of their lands and resources; and ecological modernization advocating technical fixes for environmental problems (see Taylor 1995; Painter and Durham 1995; Hajer 1995; Collinson 1997; Esteva and Prakash 1998; Parajuli 1998). The result of these debates was the incorporation of environmental concerns into developmental agendas, and of developmental concerns into environmental agendas, by way of the concept of ‘sustainable development’. Popularized by the report Our Common Future (World Commission on the Environment and Development [WCED] 1987), the ambiguities in the concept of sustainable development made it a useful tool for those pursuing agendas across interfaces connecting organizations and movements with radically different views (Ekins 1993; Worster 1993; Adams 1995).

Sustainable development and its environmental underpinnings contributed to widening the cracks through which Indigenous peoples’ life projects could

be pursued. Moreover, it strengthened Indigenous peoples’ leverage in their dealing with development agendas promoted by state and markets. In the midst of heightened ‘environmental awareness’ (Lanthier and Olivier 1999), the trope of ‘endangered forest, endangered people’³ provided Indigenous peoples and their advocates not only with a way to frame integrationist development as inherently abusive of their universal human rights, but also with a platform to build the argument that Indigenous societies and cultures are a critical resource in the global search for sustainability because of their traditional environmental knowledge (TEK). Thus, as the sustainable use of the environment became the stated goal of several development institutions, Indigenous peoples came to be seen as worth preserving along with nature. With a synergistic effect, these developments were paralleled by the Indigenous peoples’ participation in the democratization movements that, as mentioned before, swept through Latin America during the 1980s.

One could say that with the UN’s Agenda 21, which provided the framework within which the nation-states should pursue the sustainable development of their societies into the twenty-first century, a reconfigured perception of Indigenous peoples was officially sanctioned by governments and development institutions. In this perspective ‘indigenous peoples are given central focus because of rather than in spite of their cultural differences’ (Ellen and Harris 2000: 13, stress in the original; see also Conklin 1997). For example, Chapter 26 of Agenda 21 states that,

In view of the interrelationship between the natural environment and its sustainable development and the cultural, social, economic and physical well-being of indigenous people, national and international efforts to implement environmentally sound and sustainable development should recognize, accommodate, promote and strengthen the role of indigenous people and their communities. (UNCED 1992)

The focus on the environment is important to Indigenous peoples in part because it provides a narrative anchor by which their concerns with survival can be articulated with non-Indigenous peoples’ concerns for survival. In many cases development projects promoted by states and corporations on Indigenous territories have important environmental impacts that reach well beyond local settings. Thus, the potential exists for Indigenous peoples to gather support on the basis that the threat to their territories and survival constitutes a threat or a loss to people located elsewhere and a responsibility on the part of those whose lifestyles would benefit from the resources being extracted. The connections between these concerns are often constructed through alliances between Indigenous organizations and urban-based NGOs which may translate Indigenous concerns into a language of environmentalist symbols that are meaningful for the public whose support is vital. The problem is that these translations often involve important distortions of

Indigenous perspectives that eventually resurface and often create feelings of betrayal between former allies.

Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997) point out what they call the fundamental difference between ‘the ecology of affluence and the environmentalism of the poor’. The dominant thrust of environmental movements and NGOs among relatively affluent urbanites has been the preservation of wilderness and protection and respect for other species. By contrast, the environmentalism of peasants and Indigenous peoples is often wrapped up in the problems of subsistence (see also Taylor 1995; Esteva and Prakash 1998). Because of the subordinated positions in which Indigenous peoples find themselves, it is usual for this second form of environmental concern to be translated into the first form. This pattern also occurs among those non-Indigenous allies who were more inclined to accept the idea of sustainable development than environmental preservation, but who nevertheless retain for themselves the authority to define what it means. Such alliances are bound to end in disappointment, for they disregard the fact that Indigenous communities oppose large-scale developments and programmes that imply the erosion or takeover of their subsistence base and territories, yet at the same time they seek to promote their own life projects. This usually entails resource-use projects that Indigenous communities envisage will improve the economic and social conditions under which they live but that can be entirely unacceptable to former allies.

Sustainable Development, Civil Society and Globalization

The role of Indigenous peoples and the environment is not the only feature that has changed in the new official visions of ‘sustainable development’. Now organizations of civil society and not state governments are seen as the most appropriate instruments to achieve the sustainability of an economic development whose main motor is the market (see Peet and Watts 1996). In relation to the previous view of development, this refurbished version shows important differences. Development is no longer the responsibility of the state; rather, the state sets the wider framework, the market must be its motor, and civil society would give it direction (Rist 1997: 223–6). These transformations of development discourses and practices are part and parcel of wider processes often referred to as globalization. These processes, characterized by the increasing circulation of peoples, ideas and commodities, prompt the emergence of organizational forms that are intended to control, adapt and tap into those circulations. Thus, many of the functions held by the nation-state are transferred upwards to supranational institutions and common markets through economic and political integration, downwards to regions and com-

munities through political and administrative decentralization, and sideways to NGOs and the private sector through ‘democratization’ and privatization. As Rose (1996) points out, the state is increasingly ‘de-governmentalized’ and the practices of government ‘de-statized’. The significance of these changes goes beyond any diminution in the role of the state, or shifts in the balance of power between the state, on the one hand, and market and civil society, on the other. Rather the meaning of these changes is that the boundaries of these domains get increasingly blurred (Alvarez et al. 1998; Wood 1997; Pearce 1997; Barry et al. 1996).

In the discourses of development this blurring of boundaries is underplayed, or rather it is interpreted as democratization because of the expansion of civil society. This view serves very well the development strategy that has become dominant in governmental and multilateral institutions. This strategy, based on neoliberal economics and liberal political theory (Edwards and Hulme 1996b), assigns to the state the role of a legislator and guarantor of the rules that allow the market to operate unhindered on a transnational and global scale. The assigned role for the market is to generate the wealth with which development can be built. The task of making development ‘human’ (see UNDP 1990: 10)–that is, to input other values than economic efficiency–has been increasingly assigned to organizations from civil society, or NGOs. This is because NGOs are perceived as well suited to provide the services that states abandon as structural adjustment advances, and to set limits to state abuse and inefficiency and provide a vehicle for more democratic participation through civil society (Hudock 1999; Eade 2000; Edwards and Hulme 1996a; Hulme and Edwards 1997).

The centrality that NGOs have acquired in development agendas has been shaped not only by forces coming from governmental and multilateral development institutions but also by pressures from grassroots movements resisting or trying to modify the development agendas promoted by states and markets. Often there is a coalescing into formal organizations, including NGOs of distinct social movements, such as those that resent the human, social and environmental consequences of development agendas, those that seek to incorporate their concerns into the development agendas, and those that want to further alternative life projects (see Geddicks 1993; Taylor 1995; Collinson 1997; Esteva and Prakash 1998). In searching for leverage to accomplish their purposes, NGOs have tended to establish links with each other and with governmental and multilateral institutions (see Keck and Sikkink 1998; Fox and Brown 1998; Alvarez et al. 1998).

In turn, the development industry and governments in many countries have realized that they cannot negotiate with the vast number of local communities and groups. Thus, since the late 1980s, they have begun to rely on NGOs to communicate, consult and implement programmes. In

this context, most organizations of the so-called civil society have ended up performing hybrid functions, serving multiple purposes and shaping, along with state and market organizations, a complex transnational network through which the life projects of Indigenous and other groups and the different agendas of development are struggled over (see Fisher 1997; Bellier and Legros 2001).

Indigenous peoples have had to keep pace with these complex changes. Thus they make use of a wide spectrum of strategies and organizational possibilities adapted to the evolving terrain in which their struggles take place. A detailed description of these organizational forms and strategies would exceed the scope of the volume, yet we think it useful to highlight some general patterns that can be extracted from the pertinent literature, specially those patterns that are relevant to understanding the cases discussed here.⁴

Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Organizations

To understand the organizational forms adopted by Indigenous peoples’ movements, it helps to consider the relationships between these movements and the degree of control and input that Indigenous peoples have in the political and judicial processes that affect them–in other words, to what extent they can further their claims through political parties, unions and/or other organizational forms with direct access to decision-making processes within the state and/or by recourse to a relatively independent judicial system.⁵ Another illuminating dimension is the relationship between organizational forms and the demographic weight that Indigenous peoples have in the total population of a nation-state. Focusing on these dimensions we suggest that:

• In national contexts where Indigenous movements have relatively high levels of control and input in the political process, and their demographic weight is nationally or regionally important, Indigenous concerns can achieve expression in practically the whole spectrum of organizational forms from political parties to NGOs, and from local forms of government to unions. This obtains in varying degrees, but the paradigmatic case is Bolivia, where in 1993 the president and vice-president of the Republic emerged from a coalition of Indigenous movements and a political party. To a lesser extent Ecuador and some regions in Mexico fit this scenario.
• Where high demographic weight is associated with low control and input to the political and judiciary process, it usually occurs because participation is blocked by the use or threat of violence. These are highly explosive con-
  texts where armed struggles are a likely occurrence with the consequent formation of guerrilla-type organizations, although this does not mean that other forms of organizations will not be present. The paradigmatic cases here are Guatemala and Chiapas in Mexico.
• In contexts where control and input are relatively high but demographic weight is low, organizational forms usually include, with varying levels of sovereignty and autonomy, some state-recognized form of tribal government, or Indigenous governments that exercise sovereignty over restricted territories, or de facto ethnically controlled regional governments within a national structure. The Kuna in Panama, the Miskito in Nicaragua, the larger self-governing tribes in the USA and the Inuit of Nunavut in Canada are examples of these possibilities.
• In contexts in which Indigenous movements have relatively low control and input and little demographic weight, what we commonly find is the presence of NGOs that may perform governmental functions in parallel or conjunction with established local Indigenous sources of authority.

Most cases in this volume fall into the last two categories. In these categories, complex forms of organization can develop and also be transformed into other types. Usually the invasion of governmental authority and development projects into local settings requires the creation of a forum that the interlopers can negotiate with and understand. Thus where local systems of organization cannot provide such forums, or established local governments are not recognized as such by dominant institutions, the state or private sector takes over essential functions such as the administration of justice and control over common resources, among others. This has happened to most Indigenous peoples throughout the world in varying degrees.

However, Indigenous peoples have often succeeded in creating NGOs that provide both an institutional interface with outside pressures and a forum in which the language of the state and development industry can be translated for the local community, and vice versa. Now, these forms of organization can coexist with already established or ‘traditional’ sources of authority and government, or they can eventually evolve into such. In any case, these organizations may administer community funds, start businesses, serve as a forum for negotiations among the communities’ members themselves and with provincial and national governments, carry out local governance functions, and engage in international diplomacy and litigation.

Local NGOs can provide a deliberative buffer between communities and outsiders (developers or other NGOs and social movements), often to the frustration of non-Indigenous NGOs and governmental units seeking quick decisions. This intermediary position opens up great opportunity to sustain and protect local processes, but also to create misinterpretations or even

abuse. This is ingrained in the nature of local NGOs, for they are generally controlled by a small group of people who act as representatives of a whole community, a community which might not operate according to the expectations of state representative politics. In addition, to the extent that these organizations are not clearly established as legitimate authorities, they are vulnerable to attacks by interested external parties who may claim that they do not represent the interests of the communities and therefore disregard them as valid political interlocutors. This is a common tactic by governments and private interests when the agendas put forward by local organizations collide with their interests.

In summary, Indigenous organizations could be analysed as part of civil society, yet many of them take on governance functions. In many cases they even become entrepreneurial, taking on functions usually relegated to the marketplace. Moreover, Indigenous administrative structures and service organizations are, on occasion, tied to state structures for funding and legal legitimacy, which in turn makes them partly accountable to the state. Nevertheless, they may also be held accountable to other sources of authority deriving from established ‘traditional’ institutions, such as hereditary chief-taincies or elders, or in relation to locally held moral values and notions of legitimacy. Thus, Indigenous organizations are inside and outside both civil society and the state and markets. But this positioning, as several chapters show, fits quite well with contemporary processes that make it difficult to sustain the distinction between civil society, state and market.

Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Strategies

There is also a relationship between the degree of control and input that Indigenous peoples have in a nation-state’s political and judicial processes and the dominant orientation that emerges in patterns of alliance-making, lobbying and support gathering. In varying degrees, the greater the control and input, the more the strategic orientation of Indigenous movements is inward towards the national context. In the Americas, inward orientations are observed mostly in contexts in which Indigenous peoples’ participation in the political process is not severely or specifically blocked, or where some degree of sovereignty and self-determination, recognized through treaty rights and other binding agreements, are enforced or can be plausibly contested on grounds of non-enforcement. In North America a dominant inward strategic orientation has also been connected to the modest effect that pressures and lobbying via external third parties can have in so-called First World states’ political and judiciary processes, although it can be important in specific instances.

The ‘boomerang strategy’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 12–13) of using international political arenas to influence national decision-making is most common in contexts where control and input by Indigenous peoples in the political and judiciary process are more restricted and where armed struggle is clearly not a viable option.⁶ The boomerang strategy can be aimed at stopping or modifying particular development projects or promoting wider policy and legal changes to attain Indigenous peoples’ rights. However, as we hinted above, Third World states are usually more vulnerable than First World states to these kinds of strategies because in most cases they need the latter’s political and financial support (also channelled through multilateral financial institutions) to advance development projects. These First World states, in turn, often do not have too much to lose, and sometimes have something to gain, by submitting to the demands of environmental and human rights lobbying groups, since they can claim credit for trying to improve conditions in the Third World.

Private corporations undertaking mega-development projects in Third or First World countries are even more shielded than First World states against this strategy, since private financing institutions do not necessarily subscribe to or enforce the norms officially accepted by public institutions regarding Indigenous peoples’ rights.⁷ Moreover, as Johnston and Garcia-Downing point out in this volume (Chapter 13), lack of accountability becomes the norm as the privatization of development financing expands.

A corollary of this is that Indigenous peoples facing mega-development projects are left in a very weakened position–they can count less and less on the boomerang strategy and often do not have recourse to a relatively independent judicial system. But even if a relatively independent judicial system exists, it is an alternative only to the extent that Indigenous peoples have the economic means to make use of it. And even in that case, the legal alternative is besieged by traps and counterproductive results for Indigenous movements. All of this indicates the need to follow a multi-pronged strategy of lobbying, alliance making, appealing to courts, and public campaigns.

Yet the feasibility of a multi-pronged strategy that includes alliances with other social movements and NGOs as well as public campaigns is highly dependent on the existence of clearly delimited and visible rallying points of common interest. Such can be the case in the impending construction of a dam or mine (see Coon Come, Craik, and Gedicks and Grossman, Chapters 9, 10 and 11 in this volume) or the destruction in a short period of time of a vast expanse of forest, as in the Amazon. The problem is that the most common situation for Indigenous peoples is the one described in this volume by Anguita Mariqueo (Chapter 12), where pressures over their territories and resources are more or less continuous, consistent with a wider logic of economic development, but not necessarily connected through a master plan

promoted by states or corporations. In these circumstances Indigenous movements only have recourse to the more general norms about human rights, environmental sustainability and cultural diversity that, while recognized to some extent by the public and in official documents, are often ambiguous. Even when they are unambiguous, their enforcement by the state and other international institutions is faltering, to say the least. These circumstances often generate inward-directed violence and sometimes–as a strategy of last resort to seize the attention of the national and international public about impending environmental and social catastrophes–violent uprisings in the communities.

Chapter Previews and Conclusions

In the shifting terrain of rapidly changing structures of governance throughout the world today, the opportunities for alliances across social movements have become more numerous. Indigenous peoples further their life projects by engaging themselves with and against governments and corporate interests while connecting themselves into networks of exchange and solidarity with other groups and communities in their region, country or across the globe.

These movements have the potential, through these alliances, to disrupt emerging structures of governance, as several of the papers in this volume show. For example, Glenn McRae shows (Chapter 7) how the interaction between Vermonters and James Bay Crees, during the latter’s campaign to stop a hydroelectric mega-development in Quebec, set in motion processes that led some Vermont activists to see their state in a new light and to undertake to transform the very structures through which Vermonters govern themselves. He shows that the forms of ‘grassroots transnationalism’ that emerge around this kind of campaign serve to stimulate and strengthen the communities that enter into contact, while they maintain their distinctiveness. These kinds of effects of Indigenous alliances have not been previously explored to our knowledge, and they expose the unexpected results and possibilities of Indigenous movements and alliances. Brian Craik (Chapter 10) looks at these connections from another perspective, that of the Crees’ strategists and Cree leadership. He discusses the complex issues and decisions that the Cree leadership had to face, having to wage campaigns that responded, at the same time, to immediate opportunities, long-term goals, community demands, and allies’ expectations. His is an insider’s view into how some contemporary Indigenous organizations operate and forge connections that strengthen them while enhancing the autonomy of their allies.

The strengthening of connections and the transformation of networks is also a point addressed by Al Gedicks and Zoltán Grossman’s chapter (11) on

the anti-mining coalition that emerged from a very unlikely terrain. In the 1980s Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in northern Wisconsin were often antagonistic to each other over the use of natural resources and treaty rights. Yet in the 1990s the threat that mining operations posed to the same regional resources led these communities into unexpected alliances, which emerged not only from recognizing new common concerns, but from the utility of treaty and Native Americans’ rights for protecting regional resources for all. As a result, the authors argue, the whole idea of who are outsiders and who are insiders has radically reshaped identities in ways that strengthen local and regional connections in the face of mobile capital. This resonates with Pramod Parajuli’s chapter (14) on the formation of ‘ecological ethnicities’. Parajuli argues that the ravages of transnational capital itself produce the commonalities that connect ecological ethnicities across their differences: they are all dependent on the local resources from which mobile capital incessantly dispossesses them. As the Zapata- and Gandhi-inspired movements in Mexico and India show, in their struggles to sustain the basis of their livelihood and their ways of living, ecological ethnicities strive for a form of autonomy that alters relations of power and questions: ‘what is power, what is governance and what are other possible roles of state, civil society and communities?’

Barbara Rose Johnston and Carmen Garcia-Downing (Chapter 13) discuss a different aspect of translocal connections. In their case, the connections under focus are those between a struggling Indigenous people, the Pehuenche of Chile, and human rights organizations, international professional associations, and development institutions. They show the possibilities and the limitations that these kinds of connections have for stopping human rights abuses in the context of mega-developments. Aldisson Anguita Mariqueo’s chapter (12) shows that, in the same national context, mega-developments are just part of a general historical and contemporary pattern of development that, because it proceeds through apparently unconnected operations, is not always recognized as a systematic abuse of Indigenous peoples’ human rights.

Chief Matthew Coon Come describes (Chapter 9) a very similar pattern in a different national context, Canada. He forcefully argues that since colonial times, Canada and Quebec have consistently disregarded the Indigenous peoples’ and his own James Bay Cree nation’s interests and way of life as unworthy of attention when they dispose of land and resources in Cree territory. Thus he argues that the Crees not only seek to survive mega-developments, they struggle to share equitably in the benefits of their lands, through their distinctive ways of life and ways of relating to the land, and he argues that this is founded on their determination to establish their rights of self-governance and self-determination. In her contribution (Chapter 18), Dawn Martin-Hill provides an intimate and powerful portrayal of the human

dimension of rights abuses. The testimonies she shares show the abusive exercises of power and the suffering they create, and how they are hidden by the abstract arguments of government and media. She shows what Lubicon Cree and particularly Lubicon women have to endure in the face of development, and yet how their struggles continue in the midst of their suffering.

Colin Scott argues in his chapter (17) that in contemporary politics contested rights are at the core of structural reform vis-à-vis Aboriginal peoples. His chapter maps the contours of conflicting political discourses on Aboriginal entitlements and scrutinizes the assumptions that underlie policy prescriptions. He shows that these assumptions are rooted in long-standing European notions of civilization and progress, race, freedom and equality. He explores the effects of these notions on ideologies of state governance, property and market organization, and their impact on different options for Aboriginal self-determination and development.

For Peter Harries-Jones (Chapter 16), the ability to control their own forms of development is critical for Indigenous peoples’ life-politics. He argues that the life-politics of Indigenous traditions counter a ‘wild globalization’ that is completely out of step with ecological cycles. He explores conceptual bridges that may both help science to understand and grapple with globalization in ecological terms, and establish connections between these scientific efforts and those that Indigenous peoples pursue through the traditional knowledge embodied in their life-politics. The connection between science and Indigenous traditional environmental knowledge, in the context of sustainable development, is the focus of Deborah McGregor’s chapter (5). She shows that the ways TEK is conceptualized and used within dominant Western settings undermines its insights into the reasons for the environmental crisis, and its possible resolution. Turning from thinking of TEK as knowledge to exploring it as an ongoing way of living, she shows how TEK addresses power asymmetries between Indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. As long as this is unrecognized in TEK research and implementation, the uses of TEK in science and policymaking constitute another form of colonialism that cannot but reinforce the current crises of the environment.

The profound connections, from the standpoint of an Indigenous epistemology and ontology, that exist between the domination of one group of people by another and environmental degradation, are convincingly demonstrated by Mary Arquettte, Maxine Cole and the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment (ATFE). In Chapter 19 they show how the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) conceive the whole of Creation as being a web of interconnections and responsibilities that cannot be interrupted without perilous consequences. Thus, the imposition of development and the disruption brought to the relations and responsibilities that the Mohawk of Akwesasne sustained with their

environment have had devastating consequences for the whole of Creation. In order to reverse this process they propose that relations and responsibilities be given their proper respect. Harvey Feit’s chapter (6) follows this line of argument by tracing the connections that many James Bay Crees see between ways of relating to non-humans and ways of relating to humans. In his analysis, Feit shifts the usual focus in studies of Indigenous peoples’ relations to the environment by exploring how Cree ways of understanding relations to animals extend into the political actions of Cree leaders. In this way he interprets Crees’ actions that, in the midst of struggles around development, appear to be in contradiction with their claims of attachment to the land, when in reality they are the most consummate example of this attachment.

In his statement (Chapter 3), Yshiro leader Bruno Barras aptly describes how governments, private interests and NGOs in Paraguay constantly make assumptions about the Yshiro’s needs and thus carry on with their own agendas of development, always claiming that it is for the Yshiro’s benefit. Against this the Yshiro counterpose their life projects, which are nothing less than being able to carry on with their own lives in a way that is meaningful and purposeful for them. For this, Barras says, the Yshiro need to be heard on their own, not through the voices of non-Indigenous NGOs or the government. In the following chapter (4), Mario Blaser discusses the context in which this plea for removing intermediaries makes sense. He shows how the idea of life projects took the form of a pan-Yshiro organization that is trying to regain for the Yshiro the authority to define themselves and their projects. Blaser shows that Indigenous peoples must engage with opponents and self-proclaimed allies, both of whom operate with dominant images of indigenousness that set the terms of debates about Yshiro futures. Thus, the Yshiro are compelled to cut across these debates in order to open up spaces for their own life projects.

Petra Rethmann focuses (Chapter 15) on a similar kind of attempt by Native activists in the Chukotka peninsula in the Russian Far East who search for ways to create political initiatives that are meaningful to the region’s Indigenous peoples. She argues that these attempts involve the creation of ‘fields of attraction’ that are articulated in relation to several layers of history and against the grain of contemporary governmental and capitalist discourses of development in the region. Wendy Russell also discusses (Chapter 8) multiple layers of history that operate as a mnemonic tool to interrogate received notions of economic development for the Cree of Fort Albany in Canada. The memory of the people and history inscribed in the landscape of the settlement exposes the colonial policies that are the continuing context of present imbalances between this community and the mainstream industrial economy. The Cree discourses politicize the poverty

of the community today and serve as keys in planning for self-sufficiency by building on the community’s entrepreneurial traditions to restructure their relationships with regional economic, social and administrative networks.

As a consequence of their pursuits of these life projects, and almost as a side effect of them, we suggest that these kinds of Indigenous movements imply a reshaping of current structures of governance. These chapters highlight the question and the possibilities: might Indigenous peoples, and other counter-hegemonic movements, generate alternatives to the structures of governance furthered by development under its new guise as globalization?

Notes

1. By ‘governance’ we refer to the complex of practices, discourses and institutions by means of which human populations and the processes of ‘nature’ are conducted according to certain ends that themselves are informed by specific values and visions of the world.

2. For the antecedents of the environmental movement, see Grove 1995, Judd 2000, and Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997. For details of the consolidation of the environmental movement in the 1980s, see Keck and Sikkink 1998.

3. We take the phrase from the title of an article by Peter Brosius 1997 on environmentalists’ representations of Indigenous knowledge.

4. Some sources in English focusing on different national contexts are Albó 1999; Maybury-Lewis 1999; Van Cott 1994; Diaz Polanco 1997; Warren 1998; Warren and Jackson 2002; Ramos 1998; Gutierrez 1999; Assies et al. 2000; Niezen 2003; Alfred 1999; RCAP 1996; Bellier and Legros 2001. The literature trying to provide a coherent picture of the transnational dimension of Indigenous movements is still scarce. For the most relevant examples see Wilmer 1993, Brysk 2000, and Niezen 2003.

5. By a relatively independent judicial system we mean not only that interference and intrusion by other state institutions in the judicial process is limited but also that even in cases where this is the case, the judicial system itself responds to culturally specific understandings of justice. Thus, it can never be impartial and independent in relation to Indigenous conceptions of justice.

6. The ‘boomerang strategy’ consists in Indigenous peoples allying themselves with other interested parties (most often environmental and human rights movements) who can reach and lobby external financing institutions or governments so that these exert pressures on national governments.

7. By ‘norms’ we mean values that are usually codified as laws, covenants, policy frameworks, operational directives, etc.

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2

Life Projects:
Indigenous Peoples’ Agency
and Development

MARIO BLASER

This volume explores the relations between Indigenous peoples and development in the context of the rapid changes in civil society, the environment and globalization.¹ It does this in part by focusing on the ways development, state and markets are reshaping Indigenous communities and movements. But the editors assert that Indigenous communities do not just resist development, do not just react to state and market; they also sustain ‘life projects’.² Life projects are embedded in local histories; they encompass visions of the world and the future that are distinct from those embodied by projects promoted by state and markets. Life projects diverge from development in their attention to the uniqueness of people’s experiences of place and self and their rejection of visions that claim to be universal. Thus, life projects are premissed on densely and uniquely woven ‘threads’ of landscapes, memories, expectations and desires. Contributors to the volume try to capture these complex, substantive, power-laden, and sometimes contradictory features of Indigenous peoples’ agency. Granted, in most chapters Indigenous peoples’ struggles against development projects are the key element in the storyline. Yet I think that this is because, more often than not, development is in the way of life projects. One of the aims of our book is to contribute to an understanding of what these life projects are about, how they are furthered in spite of having development blocking their ways, and what they offer in terms of alternative paths to Indigenous futures.

As indicated in the previous chapter, the theme of Indigenous peoples’ agency in the context of the changing terrains in which development processes take place is explored in many of the chapters of this book as a counterpoint between ‘life projects’ and ‘development projects’. The editors see three key moments that need to be examined in this counterpoint: (a) the contrasts between Indigenous peoples’ life projects as place-based

perspectives and the universalist visions that justify and shape development projects; (b) how Indigenous peoples pursue their life projects against those development projects being done at their expense and in the context of emerging structures of governance and subordination; and (c) how, in spite of Indigenous peoples’ willingness to share land and resources with other users, development projects are unwilling to recognize and seek to obscure coexistence.

These moments provide the thematic focus of each of the three sections in which the volume is organized: Visions, Strategies, Invitations. I take up each of these themes in more detail after I discuss why the editors find it is critical to focus on the interface between Indigenous peoples’ life projects and development.

Development and Life Projects

The ideas of development and of indigenousness have a long and intimate historical relation. It was the conceptual and legal-political problems that followed the discovery of hitherto unknown other humans in the ‘New World’ that helped set in motion the reconceptualization by Western Europeans of where and who they were and how they fit in time and history. In part because of their discovery of peoples and places not foreseen in medieval world-views or biblical and ancient sources, Western Europeans began to imagine themselves and their societies as distinctive agents in a progressive history (Elliot 1970; Dussel 1995). They came over time to see their own being as the result of development, ‘the active principle according to which new and higher stages of human society might emerge out of old and more simple ones: the driving motive in human history’ (Ferguson 1997: 153; see also Fabian 1983; Rist 1997: 25–46).

At the basis of this active principle that divided the human world into two (developed or modern, and underdeveloped or traditional) there was a third conceptual term, nature, which provided the ground, or departure point, of humankind’s voyage towards a secular paradise located at some point in the future. Paradoxically, advances on the voyage of progress were marked by the distance, implied by the dominion of humankind over nature, between society and nature. The more nature was mastered, the less humankind was dependent on nature, and the further humankind moved in the line of progress. With this background, and to the extent that Indigenous peoples were located closer to nature than the modern West, the dynamics of progress justified the treatment of the ‘Natives’, along with nature, as objects of domination. But where a common humanity with the ‘backward’ other was recognized by the ‘developed’ West, whether out of necessity as

in the case where Indigenous peoples were allies, or out of adopting a self-serving tutelage, this situation of dominion was reshaped by the avowed aim of bringing the Indigenous other closer to the vanguard of progress and its supposed benefits. This basic storyline formed the core of several succeeding discourses and practices of dominant Western-educated elites about Indigenous peoples in many and diverse settings.

By the late twentieth century the social and environmental consequences of this conceptualization of continuous development began to erode the dream of unending progress and confidence in the mastery of nature by ‘modern man’. As a response, new and mutually contesting ways of conceiving relations among humans and between humans and nature have emerged, producing transformations in the eroding idea of development. These changes are ongoing in the midst, and partly as a result, of the continuing and ever-expanding incorporation of lands, resources, territories and peoples into the effective dominion of nation-states and global markets.

The editors believe that most development practices have furthered, and still further, the transformation of relatively autonomous and self-governing communities, which over the years have carefully developed an intimate relationship with their lands, into dependent communities easier to subordinate to transnational markets and nation-states. Yet, while Indigenous communities have opposed many of these development agendas, their agendas are themselves emergent, rather than a reaction to other agencies. That is to say, their life projects are socio-cultural in the broadest sense rather than narrowly strategic. Their life projects are also place-based but not limited to the local.

In contrast, development promoted by market or state-backed agents, with its claims to political necessities, the greater good and market demands in the context of globalization, appears to be disengaged from place conditions. Development as a practice and discourse embodies the European Enlightenment’s implicit project of making specific local world-views and values, those broadly described as modern and Western European, into universals. As a successor to imperialism and colonialism, development has extended the reach of those local world-views and values far beyond the place in which they took shape. I think that pointing out the place-basedness of development is critical to understanding how life projects are situated in relation to development. A place-based perspective provides a fruitful standpoint from which one can understand life projects, become more open and receptive to their visions, and refuse the Enlightenment pretence of universalism. I believe that this pretence is fulfilled when the world-views and values of modernity that are promoted by development are taken to be disembedded from place, made entirely abstract and equated ultimately with ‘the global’. Thus, situating life projects in contrast to development requires

a discussion of place and how it is related to the politics and epistemology implicit in the ideas of local and global.

Like Escobar (2001: 152), I understand place as ‘the experience of, and from, a particular location with some sense of boundaries, grounds, and links to everyday practices’. I am also aware, with Escobar, that this experience is emergent and not a given. A previously implicit understanding of place, in anthropology and other disciplines, as a given and natural locus from which senses of community and identity derive, has been recently displaced by more complex understandings which conceive place as a process, as ‘embodied practices that shape identities’, in part through resistance to changing ‘strategies of power’ (see Gupta and Ferguson 1997). This perspective on place-making stresses the point that the immediate experiences of place and identity are inevitably constituted within larger sets of spatial relations.

Doreen Massey (1999: 18) has argued that place can be fruitfully seen as a knot made of a particular mix of threads (i.e. links and connections), ‘including local relations “within” the place and those many connections which stretch way beyond it’. I would add that, as the chapters by Russell, Rethmann, McGregor and Feit in this volume show, the links and connections that make place do extend not only spatially but also temporally, as previous ‘mixtures of threads’ are part of the genealogical make-up of contemporary constitutions of place. These chapters also remind us that place is ‘grounded’; that is, place is an emergent of the specific everyday engagement of specific peoples with specific landscapes, environments or ‘natures’ (see Dirlik 2001: 21; Escobar 2001: 6). Thus I will talk, for ease of presentation, of two kinds of ‘threads’ shaping place: vertical threads will refer to those links and connections that ground place in specific histories and landscapes; horizontal threads will refer to trans-place linkages in a spatial sense. Within the mutually constitutive relations between these vertical (history/‘nature’) and horizontal (trans-location) threads the specificity of places arises, thus contributing the elements with which people delineate their more or less stable but always porous boundaries that distinguish them from other lands and other peoples.

Within this brief discussion of the meaning of place, I can advance the argument that both development and life projects are place-based; that is, both are broadly socio-cultural praxes emerging from specific mixes of horizontal and vertical threads. What distinguishes them is the relative importance that each gives to horizontal and vertical linkages and what consequences these visions have for place-making. The chapters in the first section of the volume address the intersections of life projects and development projects, and their consequences, for these different visions.

Visions: The Particularity of Life Projects

Although it entails much simplification, let us say that development, as an expression of modernity, emerged from the addition to the vertical and horizontal links that made up medieval Europe, of horizontal links that were entirely unprecedented.³ The new horizontal links connected the emergence of modern Western Europe with the fate of another place, the New World, thus modifying the previous mix of threads. Yet the emergence of modernity has been marked by a persistent blindness to connections and hybridity not only between nature and society (Latour 1993) but also between the vertical and horizontal threads that make up place. The ‘moderns’ have imagined themselves and their place as pure and self-contained, as if the vertical links that made up the modern West were independent from the horizontal links that connected it to other places (see Blaut 1993).

The severing of vertical from horizontal threads allowed the moderns to raise this most disjointed sense of place to the status of a universal, and then, following another separation, concentrate on the horizontal threads to the point of neglecting the vertical threads. Thus modernity, a particular place project (see Dirlik 2001: 36), became a project of making other places whose only grounding threads extend horizontally to modernity itself.

Yshiro leader Bruno Barras clearly expresses in his chapter how life projects cut across this self-centred universalist project. In effect, he describes his people’s life project as being about the possibility of their defining the direction they want to take in life, on the basis of their awareness and knowledge of their own place in the world. The subsequent chapter by Mario Blaser provides further arguments showing that a central feature of Yshiro life projects is to cut across the imposition of universalist criteria. This feature contrasts sharply with the focus of development on applying general rules (ideas of indigenousness, for example) regardless of the specificity of a particular place.

Wendy Russell’s chapter highlights how development embodies the focus on ‘horizontal threads’. Indeed, the development programmes proposed to the Cree people of Fort Albany are concerned more with replicating models applied in other places than with attending to the specificity of this particular place. However, as she also shows, the universalist pretension of modernity (i.e. its fostering of self-centred horizontal threads) has not done away with vertical threads. On the contrary, everywhere, as in Fort Albany, people permanently connect newly emerging horizontal threads to their history and relation to the landscape, discovering and rediscovering ‘their own approach to life’. Russell shows that, to the extent that this approach to life is disregarded by the forces of development, a process of fast-paced and highly dysfunctional efforts to achieve accommodation between vertical and

horizontal threads is set in motion, which generates endless new programmes and blueprints for development.

Precisely because development, as a project that privileges horizontal threads, is hegemonic, other place-based projects appear, by contrast, as favouring the vertical threads making up places, identities and traditions. This is because, in the face of relentless attacks–through colonization, assimilation and development–aimed at suppressing the vertical threads shaping their sense of place and identity, life projects are devoted in large part to permanently rebuilding and strengthening those vertical threads. But the appearance of a central focus on vertical threads also responds to the fact that the pursuit of life projects takes place in a field of power still dominated by the modern conception of separations (i.e. the disjunction of vertical and horizontal threads). Thus, in many cases Indigenous peoples find themselves in the situation of having to authorize their life projects in a very modern fashion as ‘authentically Indigenous’–that is, as if they emerged solely from vertical threads. Yet, given that some groups and organizations truly embrace this tendency to favour vertical threads, it is necessary to distinguish such place-based projects from both development projects and life projects. In effect, although they might be opposed to development, I do not see projects based on the primacy of vertical threads as life projects. Rather, in so far as they assume the same disjunction of vertical and horizontal threads as development does, these projects appear to us as the reverse image of the former.

The particularity of life projects, then, resides in their constant awareness that place and identity arise from the mutually constitutive nature of vertical and horizontal threads. Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred clearly states this point when he argues that to accept the dichotomies of the European world-view (including the distinction of Whites from Natives, which is another way of talking of places) as fixed and essential not only goes against traditional Native beliefs but also fosters the continuation of the status quo (Alfred 1999: 20). In her contribution to the volume, Anishnaabeg scholar Deborah McGregor points out that traditional indigenous knowledge, which is critical to Indigenous identity-making, emerges not only from a history of engagement with the landscape (the vertical threads) but also from the struggles that Indigenous peoples sustain with the newcomers (the horizontal threads). She argues that framing Indigenous peoples and their knowledge within the dichotomous terms of modernity amounts to losing the richness and complexity of their life projects, including their ingrained criticism of power asymmetries and the possibilities they can offer for the survival of ‘Creation’.

In short, the awareness of the complex, non-dichotomous but mutually constitutive connections between one’s own self/place and others grounds

the common trait that allows us to distinguish life projects from other place-based projects. This common trait is the centrality of coexistence in their formulation. I will explore this point below.

Although life projects are one possibility among others, we must recognize that the field of power in which they must be furthered is nowadays dominated by one kind of placed-based project: development/modernity. The hegemony of development/modernity as a particular ‘regional discursive formation’ (Peet and Watts 1996: 16) means that the relations in the field are usually expressed in terms of binary oppositions in which development appears as the opposite to place-based, just as abstract is opposed to concrete, universal to particular and global to local.⁴ These binary oppositions, and particularly the last one, tend to obliterate the complexity of threads and the dynamics involved in place-making and, thus, make it hard to understand what life projects are about and how they are produced and advanced. This can be examined in more detail.

Global/Local, the Politics of Scale and Hybrid Networks

In a recent work, Arif Dirlik (2001: 24) pointed out that, given the ‘hegemony of the modernist marginalization of places’, one of the first tasks in disentangling the relationship of the local to the global involves the realization that the global is place-based as well. Building on Latour’s idea that the terms ‘local’ and ‘global’ offer points of view on hybrid networks that are neither local nor global, Dirlik suggests the term ‘glocal’ to capture the double process of localization of the global and globalization of the local. He argues that, given their hybrid nature, glocalities (i.e. places) must be compared in relation to the differences that arise between them from power asymmetries. As he puts it: ‘phenomena are all both local and global, but . . . they are not all local and global in the same way’ (Dirlik 2001: 30). This way of conceiving the differences between related and mutually modifying places in a network is very useful because it connects power and scale: to talk about the globalization of something implies the power of that thing to stretch out across space (see Swyngedouw 1997: 142). However, Dirlik insists on seeing the hybrid character of glocalities as emerging from binary oppositions between the subordinated local and the hegemonic local (i.e. development), which in virtue of its hegemony becomes global (see Dirlik 2001: 40). I believe that his and other analysts’ focus on binary relations obscures the complexity of place-making processes and the particularity of life projects in relation to other place-based projects.

Conceiving glocalities/places as the product of binary oppositions leads Dirlik to conceptualize ‘place as project’ in terms of a repudiation of develop-

ment and as a defence of places against the encroachment of capital and states. This defence of place can succeed only by forging new forms of ‘supra-place relationships’ through a ‘reorganization of space from below’ (Dirlik 2001: 37–9; see also Appadurai 2000, 2002; Harvey 1996). Dirlik foresees that this reorganization of space may arise only to the extent that place can conceive itself as different and opposed to the globalism of modernity. Esteva and Prakash’s (1998: 13) description of grassroots initiatives, which they see as challenging the global project, is a good example of this. In effect, in trying to give voice to these movements, the authors affirm that they ‘are autonomously organized by “the people” themselves . . . both independent from and antagonistic to the state [which plays the role of agent for the global]’. Yet one could point out the hybridity of those grassroots movements, in the sense that they are not only related to institutions that promote globalism by opposition but also through collaboration, ‘spaces of truce’ and areas of unwilling mutual reinforcement. Dirlik might dismiss this argument because talking of hybridity in this sense might mean not recognizing ‘the continued importance of essentialized identities in politics’ and, thus, defusing the claims to alternative hybridities that are not driven by developmentalism (Dirlik 2001: 40). In other words, while these movements might be hybrids of ‘global modernity’ and local places, their claims of being ‘pure’ are central to their capacity to produce projects that are different from development. Yet I believe that by conceiving of places mostly in opposition to the globalism of modernity, these authors end up presenting a picture in which it is hard to think of the former as not being already overdetermined by the latter.

This is not a minor issue. In a recent discussion a group of anthropologists addressed the dilemma presented to those who are engaged in critical analysis but are also sympathetic towards Indigenous peoples’ struggles for environmental rights, self-determination and justice (see Brosius 1999). Is it complicity with the status quo to speak of the complexity behind what may appear or be presented as homogenous fronts and ‘pure’ agendas that are confronting each other? My own position is that showing how the terrain is much more than a struggle between two forces, and contesting the very assumptions that make it necessary to present struggles on these terms, are part of what life projects do. This is clearly demonstrated in my chapter below, where I show how the Yshiro leaders face a discursive field in which the struggle is not only against the encroachment of state and capitalist development but also against the encroachment of projects promoted by Yshiro supporters. The latter limit the Yshiro’s ‘essentially different’ identity to their (assumed) hunter–gatherer traditions (vertical threads). This example highlights how life projects involve, to a large extent, the transformation of power asymmetries that would position Indigenous peoples between mutually exclusive alternatives defined by others.

Analytical and political perspectives that rely on binaries hide from sight the fact that even though modernity constitutes an ever-present horizontal thread in the make-up of contemporary places, it is not the only one.⁵ If different places have different but nevertheless existing capacities to stretch out across space (i.e. to globalize), there is no reason to assume that the hybrid character of a place/project will emerge from its interaction with only one other place/project, even if the latter is hegemonic (i.e. stretches out the furthest). This calls for a clarification of what is meant by globalization and other related terms. If, as Escobar (2001: 150) argues, the ‘local and the global are scales, processes, or even levels of analysis, but certainly not places’, and we agree that places globalize when they stretch out, then we should not be talking of places as in relation to a single ‘global’. On the other hand, if we are talking of the global as the specifically modern way of stretching out by colonizing other places, then we should not be using globalization to refer to phenomena like the Zapatistas stretching out through the Internet (see Dirlik 2001: 27), since they do not seek the control of other places. Not even the qualification of ‘grassroots globalization’ helps the matter, for either it is a platitude (all stretching out is done from a place, if that is what the term ‘grassroots’ implies), or it glosses over the variety of stretchings out of non-hegemonic projects.

It is precisely the difference between forms of stretching out that must be added to power differentials and scales in order to clarify the specificity of life projects. Consider the example of the James Bay Cree campaign in Vermont, discussed by Glenn McRae in this volume. McRae argues that the Crees looked for the support of Vermonters in their campaign against the Great Whale hydroelectric mega-development project, not chiefly by inviting them to embrace the Crees’ cause (‘we are all Cree’), but by prompting Vermonters to consider their own situation in relation to the problem that the Crees brought to their attention. In other words, the Crees ‘stretched out’, not through ‘colonizing’Vermont but by redirecting Vermonters’ attention to the connections between their own self-images, traditions and landscapes (all vertical threads) and to the relations Vermont sustained with other places, as in its imports of energy (horizontal threads). I would argue that this way of stretching out reflects the Crees’ (and other Indigenous life projects’) awareness that promoting a balance of horizontal and vertical threads elsewhere is the only way to achieve balance in one’s own place. How Cree hunters cannot conceive of a balanced and sustainable relation with animals (what I have been calling vertical threads) by cutting connections (i.e. by not communicating) with the non-Cree is very eloquent in this regard (see Feit, Chapter 6).

As I mentioned above, the commonality across life projects is not their opposition to development but their focus on having a meaningful degree of

control over (or, what is the same, having some degree of control over the meaning of) life as being-placed-in-the-world. This understanding requires careful attention to both horizontal and vertical threads. The beauty and the promise of life projects is that they trace a possible path towards the idea of unity in diversity. Indeed, what unites them is a focus on reaching a balance in the complex mix that produces places, yet the whole idea of balance depends on accepting that each place is, and must remain, unique. Because of this uniqueness life projects do not simply oppose development. It is true that, in trying to reach a balance between the horizontal and vertical threads constituting places, they stand in the way of development. In this sense, life projects consistently work to thwart the universalist pretensions of development. Yet because this is not necessarily the goal of life projects, they can on occasion strategically incorporate opportunities and openings offered by development.

Strategies: Networks and Grey Areas

There is opposition to development and the universalist pretensions of modernity, but I see this opposition as contingent, and thus I think that analyses dichotomizing the field of power in which life projects unfold are of little help. Instead of focusing on identifying ‘globalization from below’ (Appadurai 2000), ‘oppositional networks’ (Harcourt and Escobar 2001: 12), or ‘binary oppositions’ (Dirlik 2001), I find it critical to focus on the grey areas, those points in the networks connecting place-based projects in which there is not only opposition but mutual reinforcement, unwilling collaborations, turning points, indifference or sympathy. I also find it critical to recognize that these networks involve much more than two kinds of place-based project. Even when development and life projects might be the focus of our interests, we must keep in mind that sometimes their mutual relations are mediated by other place-based projects that do not respond to either of them. Thus most chapters in Part II refer, at least implicitly, to place-based projects that are neither life projects nor development, yet that often play a role in how the mutual relations of life projects and development are played out.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the chapters in Part II show that Indigenous peoples engage in a variety of alliances and partnerships with movements and organizations that have their own agendas and visions. These partners may range from environmental NGOs to neighbouring non-Indigenous communities and from professional associations to provincial governments. These alliances are central for Indigenous peoples’ struggles. Barbara Rose Johnston and Carmen Garcia-Downing’s chapter shows how transnational networks of environmentalists, human rights advocates and a

professional association were mobilized to pressure the World Bank into addressing the violation of human rights suffered by the Pehuenche–Mapuche communities of Chile in the construction of a dam. But the chapter also shows that there are innumerable interfaces in the networks that connect these kinds of alliances and development institutions, and that these grey areas of connection can be used to create the appearance that something is being done while the development projects in question proceed. Moreover, as Brian Craik hints at in his chapter, in many such alliances the life projects of Indigenous peoples might be subordinated to the projects of their more powerful allies.

The case of the broad anti-mining coalition in Wisconsin analysed by Al Gedicks and Zoltán Grossman, and the James Bay Cree campaign against hydroelectric development analysed by Brian Craik, stand out because of their uniqueness: in these cases the Indigenous peoples involved have had a relatively high level of control over the direction of their struggle. These cases show what can be achieved when the appropriate conditions are in place. However, this situation is not enjoyed by the majority of Indigenous peoples. Thus the fact that Indigenous peoples promote their life projects in a hostile context and from a subordinated position must be borne in mind when evaluating the performance of their organizations in the complex transnational networks where struggles around development take place.

With the exception of a few relatively isolated instances, most contemporary Indigenous peoples are moving not from acceptable to bad conditions, but from bad to worse conditions. Of course, Indigenous peoples resist development projects that worsen their situations, but their life projects are not about resisting development; they are about the opportunity to live those life projects. Yet, as I said before, most chapters of the volume show Indigenous peoples struggling against or confronting different development projects.

Life projects are pursued as an uphill battle where the dominant values of development and evolutionary progress not only block their way but also continually subordinate them. As Brian Craik’s chapter shows, the strength achieved through organized resistance to development projects sometimes creates rare opportunities to further those life projects that have been consistently blocked by the dominant society. The paradox of being in a subordinate position is that these situations sometimes afford opportunities, because they provide something to bargain with: the capacity of Indigenous peoples to block (perhaps only temporarily) a project from some sector of the dominant society. Thus, Indigenous peoples’ struggles against development often involve much more than resistance.

For many non-Indigenous observers and allies, the situation appears in a different light. Many urban-based NGO allies start from a position in

which resistance to a particular development project constitutes an attempt to maintain a previous status quo. Thus, their interest is very circumscribed, and a campaign is for them a win or lose game. Of course, this means that there are not many other connected issues that can be offered to such NGOs for negotiation. In contrast, Indigenous organizations cannot disregard offers to negotiate. In part, this is because–as former Assembly of First Nations National Chief Matthew Coon Come shows in his chapter on Canada–negotiations have something to offer when contrasted to development that is presented to them as a fait accompli, as usually is the case. It is also because–as Mapuche activist Aldisson Anguita Mariqueo shows in his chapter about development in Chile–a refusal of leaders or Indigenous organizations to negotiate may mean that governments or corporations bypass them and engage in one-to-one negotiations with community members. In contexts where attempts at organizing are only beginning or the leadership opportunities are very limited, this tactic can be highly successful, with deleterious consequences for the whole of the community. Finally, resistance to a project is seldom an end in itself. Rather, it is usually framed within the wider perspective of pursuing life projects. Thus, a deal offered to Indigenous peoples can be seen as an advance if it allows them to further some aspects of their life projects and improves their capacity to negotiate new openings for themselves.

How should we characterize such recurring strategies? In a recent article, Arjun Appadurai (2002) argues that facing the fact that today more than half the world’s population lives in severe poverty, a variety of visions of emancipation and equity have begun to circulate that are at odds with ideas of development associated with the nation-state. Among the diversity of grassroots social movements that uphold these visions, Appadurai distinguishes those that follow a politics of partnership–that is, ‘a politics of accommodation, negotiation, and long-term pressure [applied to states, markets and international organizations] rather than confrontation or threats of political reprisal’ (2002: 29). The political horizon of these grassroots movements is, through alliances, to gain long-term capacity in order to transform their circumstances; thus they have to display a ‘politics of patience’ in order that the urgency of the problems assailing them does not take over and lead to their being overcome by their more powerful partners’ interests (Appadurai 2002: 29–30). At a very deep level, Appadurai argues, these movements and their politics are shaping globalization from below (2002: 23). However, he says, although they provide some glimpses into a more democratic future, it is still to be seen whether the ethos and purpose of these local democratic projects can contain the ravages of development and the increasing mobility of capital that it fosters.

Invitations: Coexistence and the Politics of Resilience

The idea of a politics of partnership, its visions (i.e. political horizon), its prospects in the face of development and globalization, is an excellent entry point to discuss the topics addressed by contributors to Part III. Although many Indigenous life projects embody visions that assume the desirability and inherent possibility of their coexistence with other (human and non-human) users of land and resources, these ‘invitations’ to coexist are not readily accepted by states and other interested parties. Nevertheless, their searching for ways to enhance dialogue and mutual understanding is part of putting their own visions into practice rather than a means to an end. Thus, another peculiarity of Indigenous peoples’ life projects is that they embody a politics of partnership whose political horizon or vision is not situated in the future. This peculiarity, which is based on ontologies radically different from the Western ontology of modernity, implies that life projects must be lived even when the surrounding conditions are profoundly unpropitious.

In his chapter Pramod Parajuli argues that peasants and Indigenous peoples, who depend on the maintenance and regeneration of ecosystems for their livelihood, constitute a barrier to the motion of global capital. Having to ensure the ‘symbiotic connection between the human collectivities and the non-human collectivities’, they stand in the way of development. Yet, as I argued above, and as Petra Rethmann shows in her chapter on the ‘dreams’ of Native activists in the Russian Far East, development stands in the way of life projects to the extent that it impedes the fulfilment of their embodied visions of a good and meaningful life. Because these visions are in many cases informed by ontologies and conceptions of self and place that differ from those that inform development, I argue that a politics of patience does not appropriately describe the ethos I see in life projects. A politics of patience might well have a longer temporal horizon than development projects, as Appadurai asserts, but nevertheless it still conjures up images of a final goal and of instrumental reason that resemble modernist tropes and their ontology of object/subject. Perhaps this is related to the fact that the movement analysed by Appadurai comprised urban poor, whose leaders were ‘secularist in outlook’ (Appadurai 2002). In any case, I surmise that while Indigenous organizations certainly have goals to which, on occasion, they subordinate their means, the politics of life projects are not goal-oriented and thus cannot be described as a politics of patience.

I see life projects as a politics and epistemology of resilience that assume relations, flows and openendedness as their ontological ground. There is a growing literature that has shown how Indigenous non-dualist ontologies open up an ‘intellectual landscape . . . in which states and substances are replaced by processes and relations’ (Descola and Palsson 1996: 12; also the

contributors to Descola and Palsson 1996; Ingold 2000). These ontologies are embodied in conduct but are also often codified in stories and prayers. The chapter by Mary Arquette, Maxine Cole and the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment (ATFE) provides us with good examples. The ethos that informs the stories and the prayers reproduced in this chapter (and the ontologies of which they are a part) does not envisage the value of partnership and coexistence in relation to an ulterior purpose but as the conditions of life itself.

An important body of literature has been devoted to how the lived experience embodied in these kinds of stories is conducive, in practice, to the regeneration of ecosystems upon which Indigenous peoples depend (see Grim 2001; Ingold 2000). In his chapter, Peter Harries-Jones discusses how these embodied traditions constitute forms of ‘life-politics’ that are in direct opposition to ‘wild globalization’. These life-politics, which are attuned to the cycles of recursion (regeneration) of the environment, actively try to bring disturbances caused by human action within a range that can be absorbed within those cycles. Harries-Jones sees the concept of resilience as a promising bridge between these life-politics and the science of ecology. I also find the concept very appropriate for describing the politics of life projects.

The concept of resilience is connected to the central characteristics of the epistemologies and politics of life projects. According to Harries-Jones, the concept ‘embodies inherent unpredictability and unknown outcomes of interactions between ecosystems and the human societies’; thus it refers to ‘the conservation of the ability to respond to change’. I argue that, in contrast to modern epistemology and politics, unpredictability and unknown outcomes of interactions are taken as ontological conditions in the epistemologies and politics of life projects. Before I discuss this in detail it is convenient to point out that modern epistemology and politics are based on an ontological dualism that resolves the tension between its two terms in some form of synthesis (temporary as it might be). In practice, if not in theory, this synthesis is sought through the control of one of the terms of the dualist relation by the other. In political terms this leads to domination of the self over the other; in epistemological terms, this leads to the dominance of the knower over the known and, thus, of uncertainty about the status of the known.⁶

Amidst their enormous variety, Indigenous ontologies (at least in the Americas) seem in accord on the futility and/or danger of trying to control others. For example, in Arquette Cole and ATFE’s chapter this is clarified by the idea that the different entities that populate the universe are ‘nations’, each with its own responsibilities to Creation, and that interfering with those responsibilities has catastrophic effects. Similarly, Yshiro mythology stresses the interconnectedness of everything that populates the universe, yet

it also underscores that maintaining the universe as it is known depends on keeping the uniqueness of their own entities (Cordeu 1989a, 1989b, 1990, 1991a, 1991b, 1992a, 1992b). James Bay Cree cosmology sets human lives and animals in a world of persons bound by relationships of reciprocity and respect, a way of relating that Cree hunters extend even to those who deny respect to others, for to do otherwise because one insists one knows better is to reduce further the fabric of relationships that is the world itself. Knowledge in these ontological conditions cannot even be intended to be absolute. Knowledge is knowledge in context; it is relative. Given that one cannot have certainty about the results of interacting with others (humans and non-humans), the most sensible way of relating to others is always to try to conserve the ability to respond to change–in other words, to follow a politics of resilience.⁷

Life projects are about living a purposeful and meaningful life. In this sense, their political horizons cannot be located in the future, just as living in the present cannot be put on hold in pursuit of a future goal. Being forced to do that means a slow death, as Dawn Martin-Hill’s chapter on the Lubicon women shows. Life projects have no political horizon; they are the political horizon. They are not points of arrival, utopian places, narratives of salvation or returns to paradise. They are the very action of maintaining openendedness as a politics of resilience. That is why, as Parajuli and Harries-Jones point out, Indigenous movements seek autonomy and self-management. These constitute the best conditions in which to live life projects. However, as Harvey Feit forcefully argues in his chapter, this does not mean that, when these conditions do not obtain, life projects can be put on hold; they have to be lived even in the face of their denial.

Coexisting with Denial

Indigenous peoples’ politics of partnership have in some cases borne fruit, and there has been some recognition that Indigenous ways of conceiving relations among humans, and between humans and non-humans, deserve more attention. Throughout the 1990s constitutional reforms in Latin America and Canada recognized the rights of Indigenous peoples to maintain and foster their own ways of life (see Van Cott 2000; Sieder 2002; Lindau and Cook 2000). However, as Colin Scott argues in his chapter on Aboriginal rights and development in the Canadian North, this recognition is more rhetoric than practice. Indeed, the recognition of Indigenous life projects is in practice blocked by entrenched visions of development and social progress as ‘evolutionary inevitabilities’. Governmental decision-making is led by these visions as if they were not anchored in cultural values and political actions

that are not universal in character and that, therefore, should be tested on the ground of experience. On the contrary, these visions are taken to be grounded in a reality that can be known with increasing certainty; thus, errors can be fixed and ‘done better’ the next time, but the visions and goals do not need to be revised.

Dawn Martin-Hill’s contribution lets us look into what development is as an experience for the Lubicon Cree women. Hers is a painful yet powerful reminder of the ravages of development. The suffering expressed by the Lubicon women is like the suffering caused by the loss of a loved one: one might eventually heal and learn to live with the loss, but one cannot ‘fix it’.⁸ Yet Martin-Hill is not just telling us a story; she performs her way of knowing and writing as a process that brings into sharp focus the importance of relationships, of responsibility and the costs of not honouring them. Knowing in this way is a life project that is carried out even in the midst of denial and suffering. As she expresses it, ‘the fact that we are here continuing to do what we do is testimony to our strength, resilience and beauty as Indigenous women . . . who hang in there no matter what.’

The ontologies that ground the politics of resilience of life projects demand a sense of responsibility that ‘denies closure; the actions, connections, and intentions are not causal but obscure ceremonies’ (Vizenor 1995: 675). It was to this kind of responsibility that Latour (1993: 41–2) referred when he argued that while the moderns have concentrated on purifying what exists as either nature or culture, thereby embracing a realist epistemology and becoming blind to the total effect of their operations, the wrongly called ‘pre-moderns’ have concentrated on the whole extent of relations: ‘It is [the recognition] of the impossibility of changing the social order without modifying the natural order–and vice versa–that has obliged the pre-moderns to exercise the greatest prudence.’ This prudence and the sense of responsibility attached to it cannot be delegated to abstract bureaucracies; it cannot be disregarded because other partners who share the world with us deny the connections that hold the universe together. This kind of prudence and responsibility have to be sustained no matter what.

How can life projects, their politics of resilience and their sense of responsibility towards Creation be fostered in the face of development and ‘wild globalization’? The contributions to this volume show some examples of how Indigenous peoples are doing it. They also make explicit the meanings and broadly cultural foundations of life projects. In the chapter by Mary Arquette, Maxine Cole and the ATFE there is an invitation to the New York Power Agency to join the Mohawk of Akwesasne in their life project ‘as we reflect and then proceed as partners in the restoration of balance and harmony in the world that we now share’. The editors believe that the answer to the question posed above is to accept these kinds of invitations

to dialogue and coexistence. This implies not only a change in policymaking but also a change in the ways in which non-Indigenous peoples and institutions produce knowledge. The editors hope that in preparing this volume we have taken a step in this direction.

Notes

1. In this Introduction and in the context of the cases discussed in this volume, I use the term ‘Indigenous peoples’ to refer to ‘the descendants of the people who occupied a given territory when it was invaded, conquered, or colonized by a foreign power or population’ (Stavenhagen 1996: 148–9). Thus, some of our arguments may not apply to other Indigenous peoples living in countries where, like many in Africa and Asia, ruling groups are not necessarily the descendants of colonizing populations.

2. The term is introduced in the volume by one of our Indigenous contributors but seems to be gaining currency among grassroots activists in several places (cf. Escobar 1995: 212).

3. In this Introduction I use ‘development’ and ‘modernity’ as synonyms.

4. Peet and Watts (1996: 16) define a regional discursive formation as the modes of thought, logics and themes, but also the silences and repressions, that run through the discursive history of a particular region.

5. The tendency to think of hybridity in terms of the outcome of reproduction from two original stocks is just one of the several problems that besiege the use of hybrid as a metaphor (see Dirlik 2001: 26–30). Another one is that if it is not in contrast to a ‘pure’ state the term ‘hybrid’ is meaningless by itself. Given that hardly anybody claims the ‘purity’ of any phenomenon nowadays, I find the term ‘hybrid’ more confusing than helpful, precisely because it permanently brings back, even as a shadow, the idea of purity.

6. For a thorough discussion of the dynamics of this ontology in the relations between Europeans and Indigenous peoples of the Americas, see Dussel 1995. See Plumwood 1993 for a discussion of Cartesian dualism as an ontology of control and domination of nature, and Apfel-Marglin 1996 for a discussion of Cartesianism in relation to development.

7. In certain contexts, such as environmental movements, resilience might be seen as a goal, something that must be achieved. In the context of Indigenous peoples’ life projects, I see resilience as a self-performing ethos. I discuss the issue further below.

8. The attitudes of governments, corporations and part of the non-Indigenous public that ‘know’ that these processes are inevitable can only be considered sadistic when, faced with their ‘errors’ that cannot be fixed, they feel that there is no reason to stop development. This is like telling someone who has lost a child that, since the child cannot be brought back, he or she should not mind losing any remaining children.

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PART I
Visions:
Life Projects, Representations and Conflicts

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3

Life Projects: Development Our Way

BRUNO BARRAS

Bruno Barras is a leader of the Yshiro–Ebitoso people of the Paraguayan Chaco. He has participated in numerous organizations searching to improve the living conditions and political situation of his people in particular, and of Paraguay’s Indigenous peoples in general.

I want to introduce you to our idea and vision of development, and to show why I propose a ‘life project’ instead of development projects to solve the problems of our people. I must begin, and I do not intend to offend anybody, with the arrival of the so-called ‘discoverers’ and what this event meant to us. Upon their arrival, they justified their deeds by saying that they came to civilize us. I wonder, what did they mean by ‘civilization’? In our understanding and experience, civilization means the dispossession of our lands, the demise of our culture and the attempt to make White people out of us. We had our stories, our knowledge, our ways of organizing, our ways of praying and our ways of mapping our territories. But none of that was of importance to the Whites. They made their written words and their maps the only valid ones. Thus we lost our territories, and the younger generations were turned away from the ways of our ancestors. The colonizers completely disregarded our realities and asserted their own views of us. For example, they believed that they had arrived in India and called us Indians, when actually they had arrived in what is today called Latin America. In Paraguay, to this day, when ordinary citizens speak of Indigenous peoples they refer only to the Guaranis. Yet there are sixteen different ethnic groups, with their own languages and cultures. What about them? As you can see, from the beginning our relations with the Whites have been based on mistaken ideas and lack of knowledge of Indigenous peoples’ realities.

Here our topic is ‘development’. I wonder, what does ‘development’ mean? For us, it is the same as what we have seen in the Americas for the last

511 years. We do not see any significant change in the forms in which the offspring of the colonizers relate to us. After 511 years of ‘civilization’, in Paraguay there is not one university-educated Indigenous individual. After 511 years of ‘civilization’, we are still not allowed to speak for ourselves. In the Paraguayan parliament there is a commission on human rights that speaks in our name. Here, as in most institutions that are supposed to be in charge of our affairs, we do not have a voice or a vote in the decisions that are taken. I wonder, is it that we are mute? Who better than Indigenous peoples to defend our rights? What would be properly respectful is that we, Indigenous peoples, become the protagonists of our own future instead of having someone else speak on our behalf. Any other way of doing things diminishes us.

In Paraguay there is the Instituto Nacional del Indígena (INDI), which is the governmental institution in charge of furthering the development of Indigenous communities. We believe that it is time for us to control this institution. It is necessary that institutions in charge of Indigenous affairs be managed by Indigenous peoples. Many non-Indigenous people are in agreement with this idea, and many others are in strong disagreement. We wonder, why are there some who refuse to grant us control of this governmental institution? The answer is that with Indigenous participation it would be harder for corrupt functionaries to do their business. For example, a few years ago the government appointed, as INDI’s head, a person about whose honesty Indigenous leaders had expressed serious concerns. We, Indigenous leaders, said that we did not want any more thieves in INDI. We took risks putting signs in front of INDI’s building. We said that we were mourning. We were not mistaken in our distrust. The head of INDI, who was given the position by the president of the Republic for past political favours and who had no knowledge whatsoever of our realities and cultures, filled his pockets and now is on the run from justice. This kind of corruption still intervenes every time that we want to design and advance our own agendas for the future of our peoples. This is not acceptable.

There are others–private businessmen–who come to our communities offering diverse ‘development projects’. It never fails that these projects will be based on the use of our natural resources. For example, a factory to process palm-sprouts was opened in the area where I come from. Nobody asked us anything, and that is how the destruction of the palm forest began. Palms are very important to us. We use them as food, as medicine for hepatitis and parasites, and as material for our houses. But here a businessman shows up wanting to cut down every single palm in our forest just for the palm hearts. We, the leaders, got together and calculated that the 600 guaranis (US$0.25) that would be paid for each sprout did not begin to cover the total value of the palm trees in terms of food, medicine, construction materials

and handicrafts. Without palm trees we have no reserve of food, no medicine, no houses. We decided not to give away a single tree. This factory failed, thanks to the decision of the Indigenous leaders, who were able to foresee the consequences of the communities giving away their trees.

But it is not always like this. Unfortunately, there are situations in which community members do not want to listen to the advice of their leaders. Instead they listen to the NGOs. This situation leads many communities to commit enormous errors in following the advice of outsiders who do not understand our realities. The problem is that most NGOs treat us as if we are babies still drinking from feeding bottles. They speak for us and design projects for us. Most times they are the main beneficiaries of the projects ‘for the communities’. In Paraguay there are hundreds of NGOs who, by obtaining the compliance of some Indigenous individuals, believe that they possess the right to decide on behalf of entire Indigenous communities. In other cases, not even acceptance by a few is required for advancing what outsiders view as solutions to our problems.

I have seen this with my own eyes. Once, an NGO came to our community. The NGO had designed a project without ever asking us what we wanted. When funding for the project was granted by an international donor, the NGO sent a musicologist to oversee the project. What we needed badly at that time was an agronomist, for the Yshiro-Ebitoso had been hunters, gatherers and fishers. We do not know how to plant very well, what seasons correspond to each crop, and so forth. We asked that this NGO send us an agronomist, but there is always this attitude of not listening to our voice. They sent us a musicologist, as if in our poverty what we need is just to go on singing. ‘An agronomist, not a musicologist, is what we need’, we said to them. ‘Yes, yes. Sure, sure’, they said but later on sent us a veterinarian. He was probably a friend of the NGO’s director. We do not have animals! This is shameful. The projects never work out well because those who organize and direct them will not listen to us.

Something similar happens with the ecologists, which is very interesting, too. Nature is always being taken care of by Indigenous peoples. The environment is handled by our expert shamans. These are professionals, like astronomers, who observe the cosmos and its movements. They know what is going to happen in nature–the coming of the seasons, the behaviour of the rain, the coming and going of droughts, whether the animals will appear or whether they will hide. The shamans’ school is the forest. In the past, our children were taught in the forest. They were taught not to damage the trees or burn the forest. Our ancestors knew that otherwise nature would curse them. Nowadays, the ecologists show up with their new preoccupation for the environment and wanting to create national parks and biological reserves without allowing a place for Indigenous peoples to live. They want

to prohibit us from using the forest as we have always done. Is not this also a dispossession of our lands? They change the name, but for us it is just another word for the attempt to use our lands. The best they offer us is to be guardians in their parks. What is this? It is shameful.

Governments make their agreements for financing projects to do this or that with our lands, and nobody asks us what we think. It has always been this way. When in the early 1980s, during Stroessner’s dictatorship, Indigenous peoples mobilized to create a national organization, we were deemed communists. We did not even know what a communist was. They just said that to silence our voice. They did not care what we had to say. But we fought until we obtained recognition of our existence and our rights to the land. I fought nine years to obtain property titles for my community. Bureaucrats and ranchers showed me papers and more papers to demonstrate that our lands were privately owned. I did not care because in that land our grandparents are buried. They showed me papers. I showed them bones. When I received the titles to our lands, the bureaucrats and ranchers who had laughed at me asked, ‘How did you obtain the land?’ ‘With the bones of my ancestors’, I replied.

The younger generations of our people are becoming more aware of our dispossession. When they want to move around our territory and cannot, they see that we must confront these problems. We are intent on recovering our ancestors’ values. But for this to work, we have to make the Whites understand our values. Without understanding there is no communication. Without communication there is no mutual respect. We are simply asking for this: let us respect each other. We are really tired of things being done to us without ever being asked our opinion. This is at the root of our problems. We do not want anybody to speak for us.

We ask international donors to find mechanisms for direct consultation. We ask them to create mechanisms for making sure that funding requested by an NGO, on behalf of Indigenous communities, really reaches those communities. Those mechanisms must include the participation of Indigenous peoples in the administration of the funding. We are not children who need tutors to perform their duties. There are many among us who are perfectly able to take positions of responsibility in the management of programmes to further our peoples’ quality of life.

I know that there are many potential donors who are sympathetic to our plight. We merely want them to avoid the perils and mistakes of funding projects that lead nowhere and only mean a waste of resources that never reach the communities. Be aware that in our country there are hundreds of projects that are made by someone sitting at a desk without having a hint of what is going on in the communities. Nevertheless, many of these projects obtain funding to pay big salaries to their personnel. The only thing these

NGOs do is pay a quick visit to the communities, distribute some food and medicine, and, as soon as they can, take their plane back to the city. Then they prepare a report for the donors saying that the project is working fine. But the project goes wrong, very wrong. And when the fact that it has gone wrong cannot be denied any longer, Indigenous peoples are blamed. ‘They do not want to work’, the ‘professionals’ say. The professionals have nothing to worry about. After all, they are left with the savings from their salaries and their four-wheel-drive vehicles while we are left as poor as ever and with our two legs.

For these reasons we are proposing what I call a life project. I call it that because our plans and projects are oriented to achieving autonomy in deciding our own future. We do not want somebody else taking us by the hand to lead us wherever they want to go. We want to advance our own projects so that what is done in the communities has continuity and so that the knowledge and skills brought by the technicians we hire will be transmitted to our youth. We are searching for ways to unite all our communities under one organization. We are trying to recover the way of our ancestors in organizing our communities. Who better than ourselves to do this and to fight for and defend our territories?

For us to carry on this life project we need the respectful support of donors and financing institutions from the North. We need them to consult Indigenous leaders and listen to them. The leaders know their peoples and, due to their participation in meetings and conferences, know what is going on at the national and international levels. I cannot find a stronger way of expressing the urgent need for direct contact between donors and Indigenous leaders to avoid the waste of resources and to remove the mistrust of Indigenous peoples’ capacity to manage their own lives. If you want to know what we need and what we want, if you have meetings to discuss our situation, please, I ask you to contact our communities. Invite us directly, not the NGOs who say they represent us. Otherwise you will be playing their game, you will be empowering them and silencing us. Then they will always believe that they are our parents. Please do not do this any longer.

4

‘Way of Life’ or ‘Who Decides’:
Development, Paraguayan Indigenism and
the Yshiro People’s Life Projects

MARIO BLASER

In community development projects it is standard procedure to call upon expert advice in order to obtain the most accurate picture of the target population and their needs. Such needs might include services, the effective exercise of granted rights, relief aid, reparations, impact assessment and the like. When these kinds of development projects target a particular Indigenous group, it is often the case that their needs are defined in advance as the needs of (generic) Indigenous peoples. Although specific projects may use participatory methodologies to establish what are the needs of a given Indigenous group, usually these projects have their objectives already defined in relation to wider policy frameworks. It is precisely through the objectives set up in policy frameworks, ranging from the operative plan of a development project to constitutional rights, that the needs of more or less generic Indigenous peoples are implicitly defined.

At this level of generality, the needs of Indigenous peoples are defined in association with dominant images of ‘indigenousness’. A couple of simplistic examples will illustrate the point. If indigenousness is viewed as a state of backwardness, Indigenous peoples’ needs might be taken to be progress guided by those who are more advanced, as the rhetoric of the civilizing mission and its successor, development, has it. Conversely, if indigenousness is conceived of as a state of harmony with nature, Indigenous peoples’ needs might include the conservation of their cultures, as some versions of sustainable development would argue. If we discard conspiracy theories, it is admissible to assert that while these concepts of indigenousness are functional for certain interests, they are produced in complex interactions and struggles involving experts, activists, governments, interest groups and Indigenous peoples themselves.

Dominant understandings of indigenousness, which shape global standards of public credibility, conflate authenticity with objectification (Hornborg 1994). In other words, authentic indigenousness is conflated with objective and observable traits (from clothing to behaviours) that conform to the dominant definitions of what it is to be Indigenous. Given that Indigenous peoples’ struggles to empower themselves ‘are occurring in a global political space in which claims to authenticity are a critical dimension of legitimacy’ (Brosius 1999a: 181), it is often the case that Indigenous peoples and their supporters have to resort to the same set of dominant images of indigenousness that states, interest groups and experts use to advance their own agendas. In Paraguay, for example, non-Indigenous supporters promote the rights of Indigenous peoples, including rights to land and specific forms of development, by using a definition of indigenousness that includes traits such as harmonious relations with nature and generosity with neighbours. An association of powerful landowners uses the same definition of indigenousness to argue that the current policy framework addressing Indigenous peoples’ development (particularly the laws pertaining to their land rights) is flawed and must be changed. Their argument is simple: contemporary Indigenous peoples in Paraguay do not display these defining traits of indigenousness; therefore they are not authentically Indigenous. Non-Indigenous supporters also use the label of ‘inauthentic’ to refer to those Indigenous individuals who pursue economic and political goals that do not conform to their definitions of indigenousness.

In academic circles, the politics of representing and self-representing indigenousness and their consequences have been hotly debated during most of the last decade. These debates shed light on the entrapments posed by a politics of representation in which standardized images of indigenousness function as indexes of authenticity and legitimacy (see Jackson 1995; Mato 1996; Rogers 1996; Friedman 1996; Conklin 1997). However, these debates seem to have had little impact among those who design, implement or resist development agendas targeted at Indigenous peoples. Recognizing that Indigenous peoples’ movements use standardized images of indigenousness to empower themselves in the face of encroaching agendas of development, scholarly debates have recently begun to reflect on the political impact that academics’ critiques of these images may have on those movements (see contributors to Brosius 1999b). Friedman (1996: 568), for example, has argued that, ‘If we are to make a critique of identity politics, our energy should be focused not on debates about authenticity but on the repudiation of endless analysis of discourse which neutralizes the struggles against the real structures of power in the capitalist world system.’ Yet discourses and practices which are structured around notions of authenticity are very much part of the real structures of power in which Indigenous peoples are immersed.

In this chapter I will focus on how the leaders of the Yshiro peoples face material/discursive structures of power that are shaped by competing visions of development for the Indigenous peoples of the Chaco region of Paraguay. These visions of development, which are promoted by competing Paraguayan indigenist institutions and organizations,¹ draw inspiration from dominant notions of authentic indigenousness. I will argue that the life projects of which Yshiro leader Bruno Barras speaks in this volume are always in the making, and thus do not fit within the ready-made definitions of indigenousness that supporters and detractors of Indigenous peoples use to justify their visions of development. Moreover, life projects are to a large extent aimed at transforming the structures of power that constrain Indigenous peoples to act and live according to criteria of indigenousness that have no regard for their own ways of conceiving themselves and their being-in-the-world.

Primitivists, Ethnocidals and ‘Way of Life’

In Paraguay, indigenist organizations and institutions provide expert advice, lobby the government, and promote policies affecting Indigenous peoples on the basis of their conceptions of indigenousness and the needs associated with them. The material and symbolic field in which indigenist institutions operate is traversed by tensions and antagonisms. The last two decades in particular have seen two distinct opposing sectors emerge. The line that both separates and connects the sectors is a notion of indigenousness associated with a hunting and gathering way of life. Authentic Indigenous peoples of the Chaco region of Paraguay are supposed to display certain traits that are typical of hunter–gatherers. These traits were identified by anthropologists who, in the mid-1980s, attempted to account for the failures of development projects based on the promotion of agricultural practices among Indigenous communities of the Chaco. Two of the most important traits are the moral ecology and the moral economy of hunter–gatherers.

According to the anthropologist Von Bremen (1987), Indigenous peoples of the Chaco display the moral ecology of hunter–gatherers since they live in harmony with nature and gather whatever nature has already produced without transforming it. Thus, development projects have failed because they have tried to transform people who do not transform nature (hunter–gatherers) into people who do transform it (agriculturalists). According to the anthropologist John Renshaw (1989, 1996), the moral economy of hunter–gatherers is revealed by the Indigenous peoples’ maintenance of mechanisms of ‘generalized reciprocity’ that determine their ‘cultural preference’ for wage labour. This author argues that pressures on individuals to share with their group imply that activities with immediate returns–such as hunting and

gathering, but in current contexts particularly wage labour–are preferred over activities with deferred returns, such as agriculture. Consequently, development projects have failed because they have assumed the wrong economic motivation among Indigenous peoples and have tried to incorporate them in activities that interfere with their search for immediate returns.

I will not discuss here the various problems that exist in the attribution of these traits of indigenousness to Indigenous peoples of the Chaco. Rather I will point out their success in providing criteria that have become the standard by which the justification or rejection of policies for the Indigenous peoples is evaluated. Indeed, it is hard to find indigenists who do not use these descriptions, either to justify or to discredit proposed or implemented policies (see, for example, Fritz 1993; ARP 1994; Rojas 1996; Delport 1998).² The wide adoption of these criteria is due in part to their simplicity and the aura of scientific anthropological truth, which make them attractive to semi-professional and amateur anthropologists who shape the field of Paraguayan indigenism. However, as we will see, a more fundamental reason for their success is that these criteria serve diverse purposes, sometimes mutually antagonistic.

Yet why has the definition of indigenousness based on the assumed moral economy and moral ecology of hunter–gatherers divided indigenist institutions in Paraguay? Because Article 64 of the Paraguayan Constitution of 1992 makes the way of life of an Indigenous community a criterion that must be taken into account in calculating the amount of land that the state is obliged to give it. This article grants Indigenous communities the right to own ‘lands enough, in size and quality, to assure the preservation and development of their idiosyncratic [peculiar in the original Spanish] way of life’ (CNP 1992).

Introducing the ‘way of life’ criterion into the equation for determining the actual amount of land that would be due to specific Indigenous communities of the Chaco region made the question of whether these peoples are still hunter–gatherers an issue hotly debated by indigenists. In this context, one would expect that the very definition of hunter–gatherer would be highly contentious, but this is not the case. Instead, the debates have centred on the ‘developmental stage’ of contemporary Indigenous peoples of the Chaco and whether this developmental stage requires special treatment regarding land tenure. Debate has been cast, by opposing indigenist sides, in terms of the alternatives of committing ethnocide or of being committed to primitivism. One sector of indigenism labels as ‘primitivists’ another sector that argues that Indigenous peoples of the Chaco are still hunter–gatherers and accuses the primitivists of opposing economic development. Correspondingly, those who argue that hunting–gathering is a stage of the past and that the people who inhabit the Chaco are no longer

hunter–gatherers, are labelled ‘ethnocidals’. The ethnocidals are accused by the primitivists of promoting a form of development that is unsustainable either for humans or for nature.

The labels of ‘primitivist’ and ‘ethnocidal’ make a caricature of the underlying visions of development advanced by those located at the opposing extremes of the indigenist arch, misrepresenting important nuances on each side.³ The labels ‘conservative’ and ‘radical’ seem more appropriate for distinguishing one sector from the other since they make reference to visions of development, and their underlying land needs, that each side sees as more adapted to contemporary Indigenous peoples. Thus conservatives argue that development must be pursued as usual, without touching the current structure of land tenure. In contrast, the radical sector proposes models of development that entail a profound reform of that structure.⁴ In what follows I will present a brief picture of the most important institutional actors within the field of indigenism. I will deal in depth with the institutions that have direct relations with the Yshiro people. I will begin by briefly discussing an organization, Asociación Rural del Paraguay (ARP), that has no direct relationship with the Yshiro but is the key actor in shaping the national policies that affect them.⁵

The Conservative Indigenists

ARP, the landowners’ powerful national organization, got involved in the Paraguayan indigenist field in order to counter the threat of land expropriation deriving from the Indigenous peoples’ land claims (Kidd 1995: 71–5). An ARP document argues that Indigenous peoples of the Chaco are either no longer hunter–gatherers (ARP 1994: 114, 138, 142–205) or are actively seeking to move away from that condition (ARP 1994: 113, 303–5). The authors cite the depredation of natural resources committed by Indigenous peoples in lands already granted to them as an example of the loss of their indigenousness. In other words, these peoples no longer display the Indigenous trait of moral ecology. In addition to being based on a mistaken evaluation of their developmental stage, ARP’s report maintains that the policy of allowing large-scale and geographically specific land claims threatens Paraguay’s economic development by frightening away investors (see Carisimo Pfannl 2000). Instead, ARP argues, development could be furthered if the state and NGOs supporting Indigenous peoples buy them the lands freely offered in the marketplace.

An institution that has direct relevance for the Yshiro people is Instituto Paraguayo del Indígena (INDI), the state institution in charge of Indigenous affairs. One of the purposes of INDI’s creation in the mid-1970s was to

oversee the activities of indigenist institutions that had become suspect under General Stroessner’s regime (Susnik and Chase-Sardi 1995: 327–9; Blaser 1997: 98–101).⁶ Under normal operations, INDI’s proactive policies towards Indigenous communities can hardly be distinguished from those of beneficent institutions such as the Red Cross, Caritas or the Salvation Army.⁷ However, given that INDI is the institution in charge of processing the legal recognition of Indigenous communities and their leaders, its position goes beyond beneficence, for it functions as a gatekeeper between the Indigenous peoples and the bureaucracy, both governmental and nongovernmental. Without INDI’s recognition little can be done when dealing with other state institutions and many national and international NGOs. Furthermore, contacts within the institution provide the most direct access to a network of beneficent organizations serving Paraguay and whose resources are critical for Indigenous communities and their leaders. Since INDI was created, the governing Colorado Party has used it as a tool to root structures of patronage deep into Indigenous communities.

INDI is supposed to be the state institution in charge of enforcing the law and constitutional articles that protect and promote the Indigenous peoples’ rights to their way of life. However, INDI’s actual policies are constrained within the limits set by the state’s aim of integrating, within the terms dictated by the dominant groups (including the landowners), all the resources of the country to the market economy. For this reason, to the extent that the Indigenous peoples are seen as hunter–gatherers needing large tracts of land, a contradiction arises between their formal rights and the actual policies of the institution. Thus, it is not surprising that in 1999 a president of this institution stated in her inaugural speech that

Our current world works on the basis of a very sophisticated technology. If we do not make this technology reach Indigenous peoples they will be condemned to poverty. But we have to give them the alternative to choose between living in their traditions or living in the current world. (Pane 1999)

It is clear that the Indigenous peoples face the alternatives of changing their traditions (those ‘unsophisticated’ economic systems such as hunting and gathering) or living in poverty. Although, given its deplorable budgetary state, INDI can do little to direct that change, it can and does put obstacles in the way of other projects that go against the main aim of the state. I will return to this.

Proyecto de Desarrollo Sustentable del Chaco Paraguayo (Prodechaco) is a programme of cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the Paraguayan government and is the last indigenist actor I am going to discuss from the conservative side. If the definition of Indigenous peoples of the Chaco in the objectives and policy framework of the documents creating

the project had been followed, Prodechaco should have been located on the radical side of the arch. The original documents described Indigenous peoples of the Chaco as being ‘still today essentially forest dwellers’ (SETA 1992: A1–1). The original aim of the programme, stated in early versions of the project proposal, was to ‘preserve the way of life of the Indigenous populations [and] to protect the forest and the environment of the Chaco region’ (EC 1994). These objectives were and are in line with several existing and developing EU policy instruments on sustainable development and Indigenous peoples (for an overview, see Fiering and Prouveur 1999). In spite of these characteristics, Prodechaco found insuperable obstacles to promoting effective projects of sustainable development based on the notion of the Indigenous peoples of the Chaco as hunter–gatherers. Indeed, Prodechaco has implemented its stated objectives only to the extent allowed by the more immediate interests of the actors involved in the execution of the project. Thus, the overarching interests of the EU, the Paraguayan government and Prodechaco staff set the limits within which Prodechaco effectively promotes the ‘preservation of the [assumed] way of life of Indigenous populations’. Let us take a closer look at these interests.

According to some analysts–and the way Prodechaco has been handled confirms this–the EU’s aid towards Latin America is secondary or instrumental to other interests such as trade and investment promotion (see Freres 2000: 64). The Paraguayan state, in turn, has shown a remarkable resistance to carrying out serious land reform for the benefit of the Indigenous peoples (see Stunnenberg 1993). Finally, Prodechaco staff had concrete economic interests in avoiding conflicts that may have ended in the termination of the project and their contracts. Changes that were later introduced to Prodechaco’s objectives make it evident that these interests were incompatible with a vision of development based on the view of the Indigenous peoples as still hunter–gatherers. For example, in early drafts of the project proposal it was held that hunting–gathering was a way of life that, so long as it was performed within large territories, fitted the environmental conditions of the Chaco (EC 1994). In later documents, by contrast, hunting–gathering was deemed to fit present conditions no longer because of population growth. Consequently, the objectives of the project changed from the preservation of the Indigenous peoples’ way of life to ‘their incorporation into civilization’ (see Prodechaco 1998a).

Obviously, the EU’s bureaucrats in charge of this project and the company that won the bid to execute it were not interested in risking their immediate interests by antagonizing the Paraguayan government in its own area of interest. Nevertheless, the EU’s institutions and their projects are to some extent accountable in terms of their written policies.⁸ Thus, while Prodechaco avoided directly addressing the controversial issue of hunting and

gathering–and the associated land tenure issue–it did not give up its claim that the project was profoundly committed to help the Indigenous peoples find their own path for development. However, Prodechaco’s collaboration with the Indigenous peoples systematically avoided undertakings that could touch disputes over land tenure and tended to focus on agriculture and the acquisition of work skills (see Prodechaco 1998b and 1999).

The Radical Indigenists

The positions of radical indigenists on the Indigenous peoples and their development are closely connected to the issue of their representation, both in the sense of how they are imagined and in the sense of who speaks for them. While the dominant representation of the Indigenous peoples as hunter–gatherers is embraced by some radical indigenists out of conviction, others accept it in part as a strategy to harness national and international public support for land claims. In any case, predicated characteristics of hunter–gatherers are at the core of the radical indigenists’ justifications of their actions. This is evident when the issue of ‘who speaks for’ the Indigenous peoples is addressed. For a variety of reasons radical NGOs claim a virtual monopoly on the ‘legitimate’ representation of Indigenous peoples and the decisions made regarding their future. The arguments are that the Indigenous peoples see them as their legitimate leaders, as one indigenist told me, that the Indigenous peoples lack knowledge of non-Indigenous institutions, and even that the Indigenous peoples’ innocence makes them ‘easy targets’ for corrupted and corrupting characters.

It would be incorrect to assume that these justifications are intentionally self-serving. Rather, they are the logical consequence of how radical NGOs see the Indigenous peoples and the complex stakes they have in those representations. This is clear in an editorial note on the ‘last sighting’ of the ‘forest Totobiegosode people’ published in Suplemento Antropológico, Paraguay’s anthropological journal:⁹

[The Totobiegosode’s] traditional life style in harmony with nature, which feeds and shelters them, represents, perhaps, the desire for freedom, for essence, for solidarity which probably all of us cultivate in the deepest secret corner of our lives. [Their case] represents in the continent, and in the world, a way of life which is on its way to extinction. Let us save it! (CEADUC 1997)

The images of freedom, essence and solidarity constitute a powerful mobilizing force without which, for many indigenists, there would be no reason to support the Indigenous peoples’ struggles. Indeed, as one indigenist told me when I questioned the portrayal of Indigenous peoples as ‘essentially’ different

from non-Indigenous people: ‘If they are not different [in an essential way] from us, why should we struggle for special rights to be granted to them?’

On the radical side of Paraguayan indigenism, the dominant understanding is that to be Indigenous is to be essentially different and that this difference is embodied in traits of hunter–gatherer societies such as living in harmony with nature, equality, solidarity and the like. These traits might be more or less hidden because of the influence of non-Indigenous peoples but, nevertheless, they are always there, ready to be ‘saved from extinction’. The radical indigenists envision that the way to save the traits of indigenousness (and thereby save the Indigenous peoples) is through development projects that promote sustainable ways of living. This implies granting the Indigenous peoples lands large enough for them to make use of natural resources without depleting them (Grünberg 1997).

We have seen that different indigenist institutions produce or shape their visions of development, directly or indirectly, in relation to the assumed characteristics of the hunter–gatherers. These characteristics determine whether Indigenous peoples of the Chaco deserve or require one form of development or another. It is clear that, for diverse reasons, the conservative side is averse to any important change in the land tenure structure of the Chaco. Thus their policies, in the best of cases, tend only to provide outlets for the ‘social steam’ produced by the permanent structural adjustment to which Indigenous communities in the Chaco have been subjected since the end of the nineteenth century. From the radical perspective, the problems faced by Indigenous peoples can only be solved through a policy of land granting that implies profound changes in the land tenure structure. Thus the radicals’ main strategy has been mostly directed to support or, in some cases, to lead land claims. The common ground for this debate is provided by the traits that define ‘authentic indigenousness’. Yet in this debate the voices of the Indigenous peoples appear as a mere chorus for the leading voices of the indigenists. As we will see in the next section, it is precisely this silencing of their voices that is at the centre of the Yshiro’s preoccupations.

Facing Material/Discursive Structures of Power

During 1999 the Yshiro leaders joined their five communities under the organizational umbrella of Unión de las Comunidades Indígenas de la Nación Yshir (UCINY) (see Blaser 2003 for an ethnographic analysis of this process). As we will see, the discourses and actions undertaken by the Yshiro leaders with the aim of creating UCINY show that ‘life projects’ are not comparable to the different visions of development that indigenists struggle about. Since the first meeting, when leaders began to discuss the creation of the

organization, the issue of the representation of the Indigenous peoples was at centre stage. However, the discussions were not about the relative accuracy of the Yshiro being represented either as hunter–gatherers or as no longer hunter–gatherers. Nor were the discussions about the relative advantages of the visions of development emerging from those representations. Instead the discussions were about who claimed to represent the Yshiro and the effects on their communities of having non-Yshiro speak for them. This does not mean that land tenure, poverty, lack of economic opportunities and declining natural resources were not discussed. Rather they were considered issues amenable to solution only to the extent that the central issue of who represents and, ultimately who decides, was tackled first. Let us see these discussions in more detail.¹⁰

Life Projects and Who Decides

During the discussions, it was pointed out several times that divisions within the communities were at the root of the problems faced by the Yshiro people today. This was underlined by comparing the cohesion existing among the ‘ancient Yshiro’ and the disorganization, individualism and lack of a unified agenda reigning within the communities today. For example, one of the leaders said:

Our problem is that we have abandoned our ancestors’ way; we do not follow our customs. For that reason we have this problem of each one pulling on its own direction. . . . The [non-Indigenous] Paraguayans know very well we are divided and take advantage of it and disrespect us.

The leaders gave several examples of how the divisions in the communities are taken advantage of by non-Indigenous peoples. One example was the proliferation of indigenist NGOs that gather signatures from individuals in the communities in order to ask for funding that never reaches the communities:

Indigenists ask [for funding] on behalf of Indigenous peoples but do not let Indigenous peoples manage those funds. The Paraguayans ask for funding on our behalf but never let the leaders know exactly what they get. They eat all of it. If we get organized, we will manage those resources, because we know better what we need and what happens in our communities.

However, the leaders were also aware that the problems with indigenists go beyond some cases of bad faith and corruption:

Of course, there are many [White] people with good will. Nevertheless we have to be conscious that when somebody provides you with economic resources, like

it or not, you have to respond to that provider. We all depend on somebody else, but when you depend on a patron you cannot resist them. Because that’s the system of the Whites, if you do not obey them they cut ‘the stream’. [You wonder] what the stream is? Economic support. If UCINY is the organization that will defend us against our yamaho [adversary], the maro [Paraguayan Whites], then its leaders must be free to oppose them; they must have no patrones.

As the last two quotations indicate, the leaders were clearly aware that the asymmetrical relations that the Indigenous peoples sustain with indigenists were not something that could be overcome by good will. The last quotation, in particular, shows that the leaders saw the pressures and demands that indigenists exercise over them as systemic, ingrained in the very structure of the field in which they interact with each other. One of the leaders pointed out that

Many [indigenist] organizations, when helping Indigenous peoples, are the same as the politicians and the churches: they help you and then they want you to do as they want. . . . We should not fall in the trap of UCINY being economically sustained by any [Paraguayan] organization because once this happens our organization will have no strength to criticize.

Even when indigenists have good intentions, lacking control over organizational resources means that the Indigenous peoples lack control over decision-making and therefore are constrained to accept the viewpoints of their supporters. Thus, seeing that the unequal structure of power in which they were immersed had emerged in part from the indigenists’ monopoly in representing the Indigenous peoples, the leaders saw regaining command over their representation as a possible way to escape this structure: ‘We do not want intermediaries, we want our organization to manage our affairs. . . . Our ancestors have their voices; if we do not have our organization our voices cannot be heard.’ Yet the leaders were aware that regaining control over their representation would not be unopposed. A leader recommended that ‘It is very important that we communicate with each other [because] Paraguayans are liars and want us to fight each other so that they can do their deeds undisturbed.’ Another leader warned that

Our organization will be attacked not only by the Paraguayans but also by some of our brothers. I know my people very well. I know one by one those who like to criticize their brothers who are working for their communities. The Whites will support this kind of person so that they can create misunderstandings and confusion in our communities.

As one of the more experienced leaders eloquently expressed it, to promote community well-being and the recovery of traditional territories, the leaders would have to ‘seal off’ the extremely permeable boundaries of their communities in order to make them speak with one voice.

When the intipohr [wild boar] stick together the hunter cannot get his prey. He will wait for the intipohra that is detached from its group and then he will get his prey. In the same way when an Yshir is detached from our union he or she can be tamed by an external political influence to undermine our organization. For these reasons our organization has to watch out for its people, to avoid these traps. If we stick together as the intipohr, brave against the dogs, the hunter [the politician] is not going to get any of us alone. . . . We will sanction those that promote indifference towards our organization and those who speak with the authorities [the government] without having authority because they will be breaking the principles of our union. . . . The objective of this organization is to further the well-being of our people. You know that misery gets worse year after year and we cannot fight against it because we are divided. . . . We know this land is ours but how are we going to prove it if the Whites get away with claiming their words are the only truth? . . . Once the Whites have taken possession of our lands we do not have the right to go across their fences to secure our subsistence. . . . It is our dream that through this organization we are going to recover our territory, and we are not going to rest until we do it. [But] as we are a minority, and divided, non-Indigenous peoples dominate us at their whim. . . . Now we are closer to that great day in which we will create this organization. We are going to terminate individualism, and when outsiders intend to fool us we will force them to deal with our organization, because it will be through our organization that decisions will be made.

As is evident from this passage, the leaders saw the possibility of improving the situation of the Yshiro communities by making UCINY their only representative. In this sense, they showed an understanding of an aspect of the politics of representation that dominates the indigenist field–that is, the idea that an organization is representative when it is authorized to speak for those whom it represents. But they also understood that to be authorized to speak for the Yshiro, UCINY would have to speak in specific ways that suited the indigenist institutions’ visions of the Indigenous peoples and their developmental needs. It is here that, in order to alter ‘who decides’, the leaders had to struggle with the indigenists’ debates over the Indigenous peoples’ ways of life.

Representing Ways of Life

The first practical problem faced by the Yshiro leaders was to find the material resources for the meetings necessary to create their organization. The leaders sought, and quickly obtained, from Prodechaco material support for the meetings. Moreover, this institution also offered radios for communication between communities, expert advice, and the promise to back up ‘productive projects’ proposed by the nascent organization. Prodechaco’s enthusiastic

embrace of UCINY as a legitimate interlocutor was in part due to the fact that the Yshiro leaders carefully avoided bringing to the forefront UCINY’s long-term objective of recovering the Yshiro’s traditional territory. Downplaying this, the leaders requested support, giving Prodechaco the opportunity of demonstrating its commitment to participation and grassroots organizational strengthening, and to its abiding by the objectives set up by the EU’s policy without antagonizing the Paraguayan government on any sensitive issue.¹¹

INDI is another important actor in UCINY’s progress towards its consolidation as the legitimate representative of the Yshiro nation. The authority invested in INDI to recognize leaders and communities legally means that it can erode at the base any attempt to construct intercommunal representations. The leaders’ aim was to obtain INDI’s recognition of UCINY as the only valid representative of the Yshiro. They wrote a letter to the president of the institution claiming for UCINY the exclusive right to represent the Yshiro people in several matters, including land claims and the adjudication of legal leadership. The leaders argued that having UCINY as the only Yshiro interlocutor would speed up INDI’s administrative procedures and thus would contribute to the ‘development of the communities’.¹² INDI’s response to UCINY’s request was ambivalent. On the one hand, its president was inclined to accept the idea since UCINY could relieve the pressures that Indigenous individuals exert on the staff and the coffers of the institution. On the other hand, to accept UCINY as the only interlocutor meant to give up the remote control that INDI has within the communities through the formal recognition of leaders. That is, if UCINY were the only interlocutor, it would become the gatekeeper to the communities and this, in turn, would undermine the basis on which the governing Colorado Party’s political-clientelistic apparatus rests. Facing this dilemma, the official attitude was to go halfway: an internal memorandum was circulated calling to the attention of INDI’s staff the fact that UCINY had asked that no aid be granted to Yshiro individuals without its authorization. However, no mention was made as to how INDI’s staff should respond to this request. The memorandum also made no mention of the most critical areas in which UCINY had requested exclusive rights to represent the Yshiro, the recognition of leaders and land claims (see INDI 1999).

Almost at the same time that dealings with INDI were being carried out, the leaders began to establish contacts with diverse indigenist NGOs. The general objective was to undermine the material base for independent ‘wannabe’ leaders. It was thought that by obtaining exclusivity in the intermediation of NGOs and the communities, UCINY could neutralize those people who, through their individual agendas, erode the basis for a unified leadership. A more specific purpose was to obtain legal advice and

basic organizational support such as access to telecommunications in the capital city, Asunción.

The reactions of radical NGOs to UCINY were generally positive, though, in many cases, doubts as to the representativeness of the leaders were expressed. For example, one NGO staff member expressed doubts about the leaders because they had contacts throughout the spectrum of Paraguayan indigenism, showing that the leaders had learned ‘too well how to hunt and gather projects’. This meant that they could garner too much power and destabilize the egalitarianism of the communities. To avoid this situation, it was argued, indigenists had to limit their support to raising leaders in spite of the fact that, as several indigenists put it, to operate in the Paraguayan indigenist-political field, Indigenous leaders need ‘godfathers’. Thus this radical NGO’s staff member demanded that, in exchange for his support, the leaders avoid relations with certain organizations labelled ethnocidal. The leaders did not respond directly to this demand, but afterwards carefully avoided mentioning meetings and activities with conservative indigenists like Prodechaco.

In general, the reactions of indigenist institutions to UCINY were ambivalent. The question that was always lurking in this ambivalence was whether UCINY would represent the Yshiro in a way that contested the visions of development promoted by either sector of Paraguayan indigenism. Given that the Yshiro leaders avoided taking a position along these lines, UCINY was seen by indigenist organizations as both an opportunity to further some of their visions and as a possible threat to themselves.

From the conservative side of the spectrum, it is not surprising to find ambivalence towards anything that might challenge the status quo. Indeed, it is their support that, although limited, is surprising. It was the Yshiro leaders’ careful use of their knowledge of where institutions like Prodechaco and INDI stood that made dealings with this side of the spectrum relatively fruitful. Of course, such relations required trade-offs and a low profile regarding sensitive issues, but this was a condition imposed by the structure of a field also shaped by the radical indigenists.

While the conservatives’ ambivalence is not surprising, the same cannot be said of the radical indigenists who supposedly are very much in support of empowering the Indigenous peoples. I believe that the ambivalence of this sector is related in part to the strong attachment that they have towards their images of authentic indigenousness or, as Ramos (1998: 267–83) calls it, the ‘hyper-real Indian’ (see also Conklin and Graham 1997). As in the case described by Ramos, the Indigenous leaders are expected by radical indigenists to be ‘pure’, without the tricks or tactics of manipulation used by non-Indigenous politicians. The ideal leader, according to these models, is one who is not involved in Paraguayan politics, who ‘remains in the forest’, and

whose leadership is based on supposed hunter–gatherer values. This is a leader who will always need the mediation of non-Indigenous NGOs to deal with the rest of the world. Thus, the political skills displayed by the Yshiro leaders, even when seen by radical indigenists as stemming from hunting–gathering skills, appeared as a possible index of inauthenticity to the extent that they seem to alter the egalitarianism of hunter–gatherer societies.

In short, the ambivalence reflected in the indigenist institutions’ responses to UCINY reveal that the Yshiro leaders’ struggle to gain command over representation, and over who decides in what ways they must live, cut across the indigenists’ debates over their way of life. In this sense, the occurrences I have discussed make it evident that life projects are not alternative blueprints for organizing human societies and their relations to nature. Rather, I would argue, life projects are about opening up spaces and creating the conditions for dreaming one’s own life.

Dreaming One’s Own Life

The dominant debate about Indigenous peoples in Paraguay has centred on whether or not they are hunter–gatherers. The radical indigenists seem to have found an apparently powerful imagery to rally public support for land claims. Some radical indigenists would argue, in private, that in spite of its shortcomings the hunter–gatherer argument is necessary because it is the only one that will allow large tracts of forest to be saved from destruction for the use of future generations of Indigenous peoples. They argue that the Indigenous peoples are currently not aware of the threat to their future, or are so enmeshed in the problems of daily survival that they are not able to see the significance of the struggles led by the radical indigenists. But even in this case, taking the lead on behalf of the Indigenous peoples does not guarantee that the land claimed, if it is ever obtained, will survive destruction and be there for future generations. The attachment and responsibilities towards the land and the environment which radical indigenists automatically ascribe to Indigenous peoples of the Chaco are rooted in concrete experience, and thus are necessarily transformed by history. The colonization of the Chaco has meant great displacement of communities from their former territories. This has had an enormous impact on the way in which the younger generations, especially, feel attached to the land. Such attachments can only be reinforced in the younger generations if they are thoroughly involved in the struggle to recover their land.

In any case, the radical indigenists’ trust in the hunter–gatherer storyline has provided the conservative indigenists with a dead horse that is easy to beat. Indeed, the terrain on which debates about the Indigenous peoples’

future has been situated not only imposes constraints on Indigenous peoples’ capacity to further their life projects but is of dubious benefit for their land claims. Justifications of land claims that rely on the hunter–gatherer storyline are easily contested since the idealized images of the Indigenous peoples used in public campaigns are, as a radical NGO staff member confided to me, ‘not verifiable in real conditions’. The subtle and not so subtle pressures that non-Indigenous supporters exert on Indigenous leaders to make them fit those images of ‘indigenousness’ estrange many Indigenous leaders from the radical indigenists and their strategies. This is readily used by the conservative side to wrest legitimacy from the objectives that the radical side stands for (see ARP 1994; Stahl 1993: 39). The result is the subordination of the Indigenous peoples to non-Indigenous supporters and very little land being obtained.

Debates about who the Indigenous peoples really are, and consequently what form of development they need, lose sight of the fact that communities are always complex, emergent processes. This is most evident when Indigenous peoples’ actions do not fit established (although often mutually contradictory) notions of indigenousness. This automatically sets the analysis of these actions in the Manichaean dichotomy of authentic versus inauthentic, seriously constraining the ways in which the Indigenous peoples can form their own conceptions of themselves and their being-in-the-world. Life projects, as exemplified by the Yshiro case, are aimed at transforming those constraints by shifting the core of the debate that produces them.

For clarity’s sake, let me distinguish the hard core of the debates over authentic indigenousness from their shell. By shell I refer to the obviously interested objectifications of the Indigenous peoples (either as backward savages needing development, or as noble savages functional to sustainable development) that are aimed at justifying more powerful actors’ visions of development. I will not dwell on this kind of rhetorical operation because it is easy to expose such objectifications. In contrast, the hard core is more difficult to deal with, because it is the principle by which the visions of development imposed on the Indigenous peoples and their lands are continually generated. This generative principle is the profoundly ingrained notion of ‘true knowledge’ that grounds those visions. As long as indigenists of any persuasion do not question this notion, it is unlikely that they will engage the Indigenous peoples as subjects with the right to dream their own futures.

When the Yshiro leaders, through their life project, strive to be addressed directly and to manoeuvre carefully between various visions of indigenousness held by the indigenists, they are trying to lay the groundwork for a different sort of material/discursive field–a field that avoids the traps of the debates over authentic indigenousness by taking at its core the issue of who decides. It is important to keep in mind that life projects do not emerge with

ready-made answers from a supposed ‘pure’ indigenousness standing against some of the blueprints for global development. Rather, life projects are an attempt to shift attention from the definitions of indigenousness used by the blueprints of development towards the idea that decision-making must be in the hands of those who are going to be affected by the decisions.

While Indigenous life projects certainly have roots reaching into the (hi)stories that precede conquest and colonization, they are also thoroughly historical, attentive to immediate political conditions and always in the making. As McGregor points out in this volume, Indigenous traditions include the experience of dealing with colonialism. This, I believe, is an experience that cannot be disregarded in the common struggle to make Indigenous and non-Indigenous life projects viable in the midst of very unfavourable material/discursive structures of power.

Notes

This work owes much to the honesty and openness of several people working in the Paraguayan indigenist field. I hope they will take my critique of indigenism with the constructive spirit that inspires it. My gratitude goes to Stephen Kidd, Mirta Pereyra, Rodro Villagra, Serafina Alvarez, Jorge Vera and Verena Regehr, with a special note of thanks to Ursula Regehr, with whom I began discussions of the ideas presented here. The welcoming and generous attitude of the Yshiro leaders, who made me part of the experience of taking UCINY out of the realm of daydreaming, is something I will never forget. I am grateful, therefore, to Bruno Barras and his family, Teresa and Gaspar Payá, Candido and Maria Martinez, Marciano Barboza, Zulma Franco, Julio Baez, Justino and Nidia Mallero, Don Sanchez, Feliciano Rodriguez, Babi Ozuna and Alejo Barras. I want also to thank my partner, Amanda White, for her untiring intellectual and human support. The opinions reflected in this chapter are solely the responsibility of the author. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, the Organization of American States and the School of Graduate Studies at McMaster University generously funded the research on which this chapter is based.

1. The term ‘indigenist’ is very different from ‘Indigenous’. The former refers broadly to non-Indigenous institutions and individuals that promote practices and policies that target Indigenous peoples (Diaz-Polanco 1997: 23).

2. From a Marxist framework, Gordillo (1993) has thoroughly criticized the arguments, pointing out their lack of factual grounds, their interpretive weaknesses and their internal contradictions.

3. The ethnocidal side is supposed to intend the total integration and assimilation of Indigenous peoples into a mass of indistinguishable rural poor. The primitivist side is supposed to conceive for the Indigenous peoples a future of being anthropological exhibits.

4. The structure of Paraguayan Chaco land tenure is characterized by the ownership of huge tracts of lands by a few landowners. In recent years these lands have begun to be parcelled up and sold to feed the demands of an expanding agricultural frontier. See Pastore 1972 for a study of land tenure structure in Paraguay.

5. Several small NGOs, which could be located all along the arch, are not mentioned because they do not develop their own policies; rather, they follow the lines traced by the institutions mentioned here.

6. The Stroessner regime lasted almost thirty-five years (1954–89), making it the most durable autocratic regime of South America.

7. I refer to normal operations because from 1995 to 1998 the Paraguayan government allocated nearly US$45 million to buy lands for the Indigenous peoples. During this period several partnerships were formed among landowners, ‘false’ Indigenous leaders and INDI’s bureaucrats to profit from the land claims. Stephen Kidd (1998) has shown that most lands purchased during this period were not claimed by any real community, that the prices paid for some lands were up to 700 per cent above market prices, and that the lands were of poor quality.

8. In fact Prodechaco was, almost from the beginning, strongly criticized and endured a well-organized lobby of radical NGOs allied with European NGOs. The main point of the criticism was that Prodechaco did not take into account in its execution that Indigenous peoples of the Chaco had a hunter–gatherer way of life. This, the radical indigenists argued, revealed that the word ‘sustainable’ was just a token in the project (Meliá 1997; Lackner 1998).

9. The Totobiegosode are a subgroup of the Ayoreode. They came into permanent contact with non-Indigenous peoples in the 1960s. A group of Totobiegosode was ‘hunted down’ and brought into a New Tribes Mission in 1986, raising a public uproar (see Escobar 1989; Perasso 1988). Another small group has been spotted several times, but it actively avoids contact.

10. What follows are extracts from transcriptions of meetings recorded by the author between April and September 1999. The discussions were carried on in the Yshir language, and I tape-recorded them. Later, with the assistance of Yshiro interpreters, I transcribed the tapes and translated them into Spanish. In translating the speeches from Spanish to English I have favoured the intended meaning over a literal translation. The names of the speakers have been omitted to protect their privacy.

11. A dispute over hunting rights between UCINY and the Sub-Ministry of Natural Resources soon made clear that land claims were not the only controversial issue in Paraguay. The dispute, which originated in a project financed by Prodechaco, showed that this institution would not stand up to the Paraguayan government on any issue; at least where the consequences of avoiding confrontation were understood to be immediately threatening to the survival of the project. Although I cannot enter into the details here, let me point out that in the controversy over hunting rights, Prodechaco sided with UCINY because otherwise it might have had to face an antagonistic Paraguayan–European environmental lobby in addition to the indigenist lobby. See several notes signed by Roque Gonzales Vera and published in the Paraguayan newspaper ABC between 2 April and 6 August 2000 for a version of this controversy.

12. Letter dated 10 December 1999 from UCINY to INDI’s president. Copy in the possession of the author.

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5

Traditional Ecological Knowledge
and Sustainable Development:
Towards Coexistence

DEBORAH McGREGOR

Deborah McGregor is an Anishnabeg and member of the Whitefish River First Nation. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in the Aboriginal Studies Program and the Department of Geography. Her research focuses on First Nations and environmental issues.

Uncritical belief in Western science and technology as the only valid approach to resolving environmental problems has fallen by the wayside. In fact, science and technology are believed to be the cause of many of the problems that we now face (Mander 1991). Realizing the faults in its own system and recognizing the value of other knowledge in addressing global environmental concerns is a significant step for dominant Western society. Science and technology, at least on their own, cannot get us out of the situation that we are in now. Other approaches are required, especially ones with long, successful track records like Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK). TEK is increasingly viewed as a viable alternative to the status quo that caused the problems in the first place. Thus, TEK has received increased attention over the last couple of decades, particularly in the area of sustainable development (Williams and Baines 1993; WCED 1987).

Although there are protocols (the Convention on Biodiversity, for example) that promote and encourage the recognition and utilization of TEK as an integral part of moving towards sustainability, there has been little evaluation of the methods being implemented to achieve this sustainable future. Nor has there been much in the way of monitoring the level of achievement of its desired outcome: sustainability. In this chapter I will argue that the way in which TEK is understood and implemented within a Western perspective means that the insights into the nature of the environmental crisis and approaches to its resolution that TEK offers get lost.

What Does ‘Sustainable Development’ Mean?

From a Western perspective

Sustainable development is a concept derived from conventional Western ideology. It is the product of a particular world-view and its interpretation and implementation reflect Western culture and values. Though it is touted as a framework for addressing challenges faced the world over, these challenges and their solutions are defined through Western eyes.

The sustainable development concept emerged out of the recognition that there are ‘strong links between economic development and environmental protection’ (Courrier 1994: 508). Our Common Future (WCED 1987) popularized the term and brought it to the attention of the world. The WCED described the concept as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability to future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED in Courrier 1994). Others have described it as ‘economic development with due care for the environment’ (Ramphal 1994: 680).

Whatever the specifics of its definition, sustainable development presents a major challenge to society. It requires us to ‘re-examine our current practices and procedures’ (Dearden and Mitchell 1998: 22). It requires a shift in world-view. Despite initial enthusiasm for the concept and the stir created by the WCED Report (also known as the Brundtland Report, after the commission’s chairperson), the debates around sustainable development remain (see Dearden and Mitchell 1998 for more on such debates). There has been no uncritical acceptance of the term and there is no consensus on what it means, although the definition provided in Our Common Future is the one most often cited.

The term ‘sustainability’ is often used interchangeably with ‘sustainable development’. Sustainability is seen as less confusing. Sustainability ‘refers to the capacity to persist and to be robust and resilient’ (Dearden and Mitchell 1998: 26). Draper (1998: 13) describes sustainability as the ‘ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes and functions, biodiversity, and productivity over time’. The term ‘sustainability’ is fraught with many of the same shortcomings as ‘sustainable development’. Proponents of both concepts, however, are faced with the challenge of encouraging a shift in societal world-views in order to achieve the goals they promote. People must ‘learn how to sustain environmental resources so they continue to provide benefits to us, other living things, and the larger environment of which we are a part’ (Draper 1998: 13). The dominant Western definitions of sustainability and sustainable development do not, despite some claims, actually propose to replace the status quo; it is simply the slowing down of the same old agenda. The purpose of sustainable development is to enable

future generations to continue indefinitely with the same exploitive practices that have caused the problems we face in the first place. It is based on the notion of economic growth or development and a particular world order. In recent times, this growth has been threatened because environmental resources are running out.

Sustainable development does not challenge the power imbalances between Indigenous and Western nations in a meaningful way. It does not empower Indigenous nations. Although the Brundtland Report did recognize the value of Indigenous knowledge as a source of knowledge for moving towards sustainable development, such recognition was still framed within the dominant Western agenda. The conventional concept of sustainable development also tends to perpetuate tension between environmental and economic aspects. While recognizing that something is ‘wrong’, it concludes that changes must be made in order to survive as Western, economically ‘developed’ nations. Moreover, the so-called ‘underdeveloped’ nations are expected to ‘catch up’ with the rest of the world. Surviving the way Indigenous people have for thousands of years is not given serious consideration.

While interest in TEK as part of the solution to environmental crises is growing, using TEK to achieve the goals of Western society may not be what many Indigenous people have in mind. In fact, TEK research and implementation in support of sustainable development is arguably another form of colonialism. ‘Development’, in its various forms, has seldom benefited Indigenous people. Throughout the history of colonialism, Indigenous people have been dispossessed of their lands and subjected to policies aimed at ‘developing’ them, often with devastating effects. Sustaining this kind of development may indeed be counterproductive so far as Indigenous people are concerned. The way sustainable development is currently conceptualized, Indigenous knowledge is required to fit into the existing framework designed to fulfil the needs of Western ideals. We have been down that road before! What, then, might be an Indigenous view of sustainable development?

From an Indigenous perspective

There are superficial similarities between Indigenous views of sustainable development and those of Western society. Primary among these are the recognition that the path of progress upon which the current world order relies is not sustainable, and that fundamental changes are required. Despite such similarities, the two views remain fundamentally different. This should not be surprising as the two are products of very different world-views.

In the spring of 1997, I had the honour of working with Mahgee Binehns (Robin Greene) of Iskutewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation¹

in northwestern Ontario. He is an Anishnabe (the name of the group of Indigenous people to which both he and I belong) speaker who was raised traditionally in his own culture, and for whom English is an acquired language. I worked with Mahgee Binehns on a ‘Nationhood and Sustainability’ submission for the Chiefs of Ontario Office (the ‘Chiefs of Ontario’, as it is generally referred to, is the primary political voice of the First Nations Chiefs in this province). This initiative was part of a larger undertaking initiated by the federal government to understand what sustainable development would mean at a practical level. The Chiefs of Ontario, in recognition of the fact that Aboriginal views would be very different from their Western counterparts, wanted to prepare a separate submission rather than integrate their views into a larger perspective. Before this time, I found myself always reacting and feeling uncomfortable with the dominant views of sustainability being imposed upon me. It was during my time with this group of First Nations people working in the environmental arena that an understanding of First Nations views of sustainability finally crystallized.

In the Nationhood and Sustainability working group, we began talking about the concept of sustainable development but did not really get anywhere. It was not until we started to discuss our world-view and the things that mattered to us that we realized that we have the Creation stories to tell us who we are and how we are supposed to live sustainably. Creation stories provide the fundamental understanding of our place in the world. They present us with teachings and lessons explaining how we are to relate to the rest of Creation. Once the discussion turned to our world-view, rather than trying to figure out how our understanding was supposed to fit into someone else’s understanding (or agenda), we finally made some progress. Then came the ‘insight’.

Before I convey the ‘insight’, I’ll tell you about a rule of thumb I live by in my work with Indigenous knowledge. This is what I call the ‘language rule’, which I created for myself to enhance my own understanding. I apply it whenever I encounter a concept or construct (such as ‘environment’, or ‘traditional ecological knowledge’ or ‘sustainable development’) for which Aboriginal people are assumed to have an automatic affinity. In these cases I conduct the language test, which is simply this: I ask someone who was raised within a First Nations world-view and who learned their mother tongue before learning English or another colonizing language about the concept. These people are usually highly knowledgeable about their cultural traditions, values, and so on. I ask them to think about the concept I am interested in to see if there is a corresponding concept in their own language. Not surprisingly, often there is not. In many cases, expressing even a similar meaning takes a significant amount of time and involves constructing Indigenous knowledge in a variety of different ways. Coercive processes that

force Native people to think and operate in non-Native terms frequently result in loss of meaning.

While talking with Mahgee Binehns, I asked whether there was any notion that corresponded with ‘sustainable development’ in his language. He had been listening intently to the other conversations and knew what the mainstream view was. He said there was no corresponding idea in the Ojibway language. The closest he could come was to explain that Aboriginal people concern themselves with (and have based their whole world-view on) the idea of learning how to give back to Creation, rather than taking away.

Using this as a starting point, it becomes apparent that Indigenous views of development are based not on taking but on giving. Indigenous people ask themselves what they can give to the environment and their relationship with it. The idea of sustaining, maintaining and enhancing relations with all of Creation is of utmost importance from an Indigenous point of view. Indigenous ways of life focus on this type of relationship with Creation. Indigenous people understand that with this special personal relationship with Creation comes tremendous responsibility; it is not something to be taken lightly.

Creation is regarded as a gift. To be sustainable means to take responsibility and be spiritually connected to all of Creation, all of the time. Everyone and everything carries this responsibility and has duties to perform. All things contribute to the sustainability of Creation. It is not a responsibility carried only by people. All of Creation contributes, and this includes everything from the tiniest animals to the powerful sun. It includes the land, the weather, the spirits–all of it. An important principle that emerges from the Creation stories is that we cannot interfere with the ability of these elements or beings of Creation to perform their duties. When we interfere, then the sustainability of Creation is threatened (as we now see).

Over many years Indigenous people developed ways of living that sustained this relationship with all of Creation. This relationship was based on giving. From an Indigenous point of view, all of Creation matters. Sustainable development therefore means the survival, not just of people, but of all Creation.

Since colonization, the ability of Indigenous people to live up to the responsibility of caring for all of Creation has been seriously inhibited. The sustainability of Indigenous peoples’ lives has been compromised in every aspect of everyday life, resulting in destroyed lands, infant mortality, high suicide rates, and so on. Colonization and the accompanying oppression have been so pervasive that even Indigenous people themselves are sometimes disrespectful and harmful to Creation.

However, the strength and perseverance of Indigenous views of sustain-

ability should not be underestimated; they remain in fact very powerful. Despite a concerted effort to eliminate Indigenous peoples as a recognizable group in Canada, First Nations have persisted and continue to pass on their knowledge. Many Elders remind us to be thankful to our ancestors, and that because of their courage we are still alive today. Every time you hear a prayer in the Indigenous language, it is a powerful reminder of how clever and strong our ancestors were.

Through our long history of oppression, our survival depended upon and still depends upon our traditions. This understanding permeates every aspect of our lives and efforts at nation-building (Mercredi and Turpel 1993). We have learned to resist and thus have survived. Understanding colonialism and its devastating impacts upon us, as well as learning how to resist various forms of colonialism (including internalized forms), constitute an important part of the our traditional teachings today (Fitznor 1998).

In summary, Indigenous views of sustainable development are concerned with giving rather than taking, and with what it is that we can contribute to creation. Indigenous views also include active resistance (sometimes to sustainable development itself) and the process of reclaiming our traditions. Resisting and reclaiming form an integral part of our concept of sustainable development.

What Does ‘TEK’ Mean?

The knowledge that Indigenous peoples have in relation to the environment has come to be referred to as ‘Traditional Environmental Knowledge’ (TEK). At national and international levels, TEK is currently a recognized term in the move towards increased environmental sustainability. However, its precise meaning, role and application remain elusive at both policy and operational levels. The last decade has seen quite an interest in TEK and it has now emerged as a field of study, complete with theory, research approaches, models and potential applications.

Despite the interest in TEK by environmental managers, policymakers, academics, consultants, environmentalists and Aboriginal communities themselves, the meaning of TEK remains both elusive and controversial. There is no commonly accepted view of the term. This matter is examined in more detail in recent texts (e.g. Battiste and Henderson 2000; McGregor 2000, 1994; Procter 1999). For the purposes of this chapter only some of the basic issues in defining TEK need be presented below.

Following are a few brief definitions. The most commonly heard views of TEK from a dominant or mainstream perspective tend to be variations of Martha Johnson’s description, in which TEK is defined as:

a body of knowledge built up by a group of people through generations of living in close contact with nature. It includes a system of classification, a set of empirical observations about the local environment, and a system of self-management that governs resource use. The quantity and quality of traditional environmental knowledge varies among community members, depending upon gender, age, social status, intellectual capability, and profession (hunter, spiritual leader, healer, etc.). With its roots firmly in the past, traditional environmental knowledge is both cumulative and dynamic, building upon the experience of earlier generations and adapting to the new technological and socioeconomic changes of the present. (Johnson 1992: 4; see also Berkes 1999: 8; Doubleday 1993: 41; Nakashima 1993: 99)

In summary, while many of the non-Native definitions incorporate valid aspects of TEK, they tend to consider TEK as a ‘body of knowledge’, something that can be considered as being separate from the people who hold it. As we shall see, this constitutes a fundamental difference between the Native and non-Native views.

Aboriginal perspectives vary by nation and cultural group, though there are common themes that run throughout. In some cases the language used to describe TEK is similar to that of Western academics, as Aboriginal people have increasingly had to use the dominant language and terminology in order to communicate (AFN 1995). At the same time, this practice is being challenged by some parties with the result that alternative Aboriginal descriptions are emerging. Following is a sampling of Aboriginal views of TEK.

Elder Annie Catholique (in Raffan 1993: 49) states that, ‘When the government people talk about land, I find it very funny, talking about all the things we use, all the things we survive on, like animals and caribou and those things. When I think about land, I think about the Great Spirit.’

Knowledge is regarded as inseparable from the land. According to Gleb Raygorodetsky (in Gwich’in Elders 1997: 14):

The term ‘Land’ . . . is not restricted to the physical environment only. It has a much broader meaning, used by indigenous people to refer to the physical, biological and spiritual environments fused together. The closest scientific equivalent of the ‘Land’, taken without its spiritual component, is ‘ecosystem’.

Raygorodetsky also observes (in Gwich’in Elders 1997: 14) that ‘Spiritual and ethical values have been woven into this knowledge, creating a system that has guided the people and helped them survive.’

Taiake Alfred (1999: 9) states: ‘The Indigenous belief, reflecting a spiritual connection with the land established by the Creator, gives human beings special responsibilities within the area they occupy as Indigenous peoples, linking them in a “natural” way to their territories.’

Aboriginal participants in the ‘Circumpolar Aboriginal People and Co-Management Practice’ workshop (Roberts 1996) explain that

Traditional knowledge is an accumulated body of knowledge that is rooted in the spiritual health, culture, and language of the people and handed down from generation to generation. It is based on intimate knowledge of the land, water, snow and ice, weather and wildlife, and the relationships between all aspects of the environment. It is the way people travel and hunt. It is a way of life and survival.

Traditional knowledge is practical common sense, good reasoning, and logic built on experience. It is an authority system (a standard of conduct), setting out rules governing the use and respect of resources, and an obligation to share. For example, it tells people that they do not have the right to hunt all animals of a species, as in wolf kill programmes. The wisdom comes in using the knowledge and ensuring that it is used in a good way. It involves using the head and heart together. Traditional knowledge is dynamic, yet stable, and is usually shared in stories, songs, dance and myths. (Roberts 1996: 114)

In summary, Aboriginal people define TEK as much more than just a body of knowledge. While this is a part of it, TEK also encompasses such aspects as spiritual experience and relationships with the land. It is also noted that TEK is a ‘way of life’; rather than being just the knowledge of how to live, it is the actual living of that life. One way of looking at the differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal views of TEK is to state that Aboriginal views of TEK are ‘verb-based’–that is, action-oriented. TEK is not limited, in the Aboriginal view, to a ‘body of knowledge’. It is expressed as a ‘way of life’; it is conceived as being something that you do. Non-Aboriginal views of TEK are ‘noun-’ or ‘product-based’. That is, they tend to focus on physical characteristics. TEK is viewed as a thing rather than something that you do. Aboriginal views of TEK are inclusive of non-Aboriginal views, but tend to be broader in scope and holistic. The focus is not solely on the physical aspects, such as the natural environment. TEK is also viewed by Aboriginal people to be inherently sustainable and spiritual. Non-Aboriginal scholars and researchers see TEK as ‘contributing’ to sustainability, and that spirituality is merely an aspect of TEK.

One of the most significant differences between Native and non-Native views of TEK is the fact that Aboriginal people view the people, the knowledge and the land as a single, integrated whole. They are regarded as inseparable. As Roberts (1996: 115) points out:

Capturing a single aspect of traditional knowledge is difficult. Traditional knowledge is holistic and cannot be separated from the people. It cannot be compartmentalized like scientific knowledge, which often ignores aspects of life to make a point. However, traditional knowledge parallels scientific knowledge. (Stress added)

Aboriginal views of TEK are broad, and include spirituality, world-view and a way of life. Non-Native views tend to focus on ‘ecological’ aspects

(similar to Lewis 1993; Nakashima 1993; and Richardson 1993). Such differences can be attributed to world-view. Aboriginal peoples’ way of life is based on spirituality. A lifetime is spent enhancing and maintaining appropriate and sustainable relationships with the Creator and all of Creation. This is the essence of Indigenous science. Aboriginal people are reluctant to reduce TEK to simply ‘ecological’ aspects. Aboriginal views tend to move in the opposite direction to Western-trained researchers, scientists and scholars; that is, towards wholeness (pulling it together rather than taking it apart to understand it).

Barriers to the Use of TEK in Sustainable Development

In addition to the difficulty in defining TEK are the complications involved in applying it in various environmental and resource management applications. Barriers to the incorporation of TEK in environmental and resource management in Canada have been explored by a number of researchers and scholars. Many of the barriers are long-standing and have not been adequately addressed. Many are systemic and will require substantive restructuring of existing relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal society in Canada in order to be resolved. Naskashima’s research perhaps best summarizes the main barriers when he discusses the difficulties experienced in utilizing TEK in Environmental Impact Assessment, or EIA:

Herein, however, lies the environmental scientist’s dilemma. Traditional knowledge, in spite of its evident strengths, corresponds poorly with Western intellectual ideals of ‘truth.’ In our society, the acceptable norms of intellectual development have been rigidly institutionalized. University degrees, journal publications, conference presentations are the milestones which mark our narrow ‘path to knowledge.’ Guided by these inflexible norms, environmental scientists reject the traditional knowledge of Native hunters as anecdotal, non-quantitative and amethodical. Unable to overcome a deeply engrained and ethnocentric prejudice against other ways of ‘knowing’, they turn their backs on a source of data of exceptional utility to EIA. (Nakashima 1990: 23)

Environmental Impact Assessment is arguably the area where most of the TEK work in Canada is being applied. Nakashima’s analysis holds true, however, for other resource management arenas, including forestry, as described in the literature and as found in my research. Nakashima’s words were written a decade ago. Unfortunately, the attitudes that underlie the unsuccessful application of TEK in environmental and resource management still exist. In some cases there has even been a ‘backlash’ against attempts to use TEK (e.g. Howard and Widdowson 1997, 1996).

Barriers to TEK use include the cultural disruption that has occurred in Aboriginal communities as a result of colonization. Some TEK has been lost, at least for the time being, and there is a need to revitalize Native communities in order to maintain and develop what still exists and to begin to regain what has been lost. Kemp and Brooke (1995: 27) summarize this issue as follows:

The most important lesson learned . . . is that indigenous peoples must first and foremost control their own information. It has also become clear over the years that the knowledge base of indigenous peoples is vital, dynamic and evolving. Merely ‘collecting’ and ‘documenting’ indigenous environmental knowledge is in fact counter-productive. These knowledge systems have been under serious attack for centuries, and the social systems that support them have been seriously undermined. However, indigenous peoples must not just support ‘salvage’ operations of what now is often referred to as ‘a rapidly disappearing knowledge base.’ It is not just a question of recovery and recording indigenous knowledge; it is one of respect and revitalization. This information has to remain current and not be considered a relic of the past. Indigenous peoples must also insist that their knowledge not be reduced to an interesting research topic for western science to explore.

The literature reveals many similarities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal views of barriers to the incorporation of TEK in resource management. Some concerns are unique to Aboriginal people because they are the people from whom TEK is sought. This situation is complicated by the unequal distribution of power that characterizes Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations in Canada. Brubacher and McGregor (1998: 14) discuss this power imbalance in relation to forest management in Canada, noting that:

Further compounding the distance between these understandings is the fact that dialogue around TEK takes place on the basis of a largely dis-empowered Aboriginal minority talking to the dominant culture, in the language of the dominant culture and within the existing institutional frameworks that govern forest management.

Healey (1993: 21) adds to this, suggesting that:

It is difficult to separate political aspects of the relationship between the custodians of traditional ecological knowledge and those who wish to have access to that knowledge from legal, ethical and economic dimensions. . . . A consequence of this situation is that the relationship between traditional communities on the one hand and researchers, sponsors of research and development, and consumers of insights gained from traditional ecological knowledge on the other is generally a very unequal one. Power is concentrated on the side of researchers, sponsors and consumers, whether the power is political, economic or even military. . . . More often, at least in the contemporary world, the power relation is muted, masked, and benign; but not less unequal for all that.

This unequal power relationship and its impact on the utilization of TEK in environmental and resource management is also recognized by others such as Chapeskie (1995), Johnson (1992), Lukey (1995), and Stevenson (1997). The continued existence of such an imbalance means that the knowledge and the people who hold it remain vulnerable to exploitation.

The ‘State of the Art’ of TEK Application

The state of the art of TEK application in mainstream environmental and resource management framework remains weak. Most work in the field of TEK comprises collecting and documenting information. There is little in the way of meaningful application. This results from the fact that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are coming from different world-views and their perceptions and experiences of the very same concepts, such as TEK and Sustainable Development, are quite different.

These differences are not fully appreciated. Non-Native scholars and resource managers may object and claim that indeed they understand and appreciate the differences. If this is the case, then one can justifiably ask, ‘Why, then, do decision-makers continue to attempt to integrate TEK into environmental and resource management regimes created and designed by dominant society?’ Most of the literature on TEK still suggests that ‘integration’ is desirable. Much of the effort expended in the field has been used in attempting to achieve this goal, but with relatively little success. This has given rise to severe criticism of TEK itself as well as of Aboriginal people (see Howard and Widdowson 1996), and has raised cynicism levels in many Aboriginal communities.

These disappointing results are in no way indicative of the importance of TEK and the potential contribution of Aboriginal people. ‘Traditional Ecological knowledge is absolutely essential. Crafting a relationship between us is absolutely essential’ (LaDuke 1997: 36). Cajete (1994: 192) adds that ‘intellectual, social, and spiritual learning unfolds in a definite context of relationships’ (stress added). From an Aboriginal perspective, positive relationships hold the key to a move toward sustainability and the fair use of TEK in environmental and resource management.

TEK and sustainable development are about relationships. Meaningful integration is difficult if not impossible to achieve in this larger social/cultural/ political framework. Because of the existing power structure, integration has translated into ‘assimilation’ of Aboriginal TEK into dominant regimes. Chapeskie (1995: 27) observes that

the discourse of resource management employed by the dominant non-aboriginal society which invariably forms the context of co-management discussions between

aboriginal groups and state agencies is plagued with ambiguity. The state largely controls the conceptual framework in which co-management negotiations take place.

This issue has been examined by a number of scholars and researchers (AFN 1995; Berneshawi 1997; Brubacher and McGregor 1998; Chapeski 1995; Feit 1998; Stevenson 1999; Wolfe et al. 1992). Assimilation has never been a desirable policy option for Aboriginal people in Canada, and the field of TEK is a microcosm of this larger social/political situation.

Significant changes to state environmental and resource management paradigms are called for. Merely wishing to include Aboriginal people and their knowledge is not enough. The dominant paradigms and the professionals (managers, planners, scientists, policymakers, decision-makers) who adhere to them are ill-equipped to deal with Aboriginal people and their concerns. Aboriginal people are expected to conform or acquiesce to the dominant paradigm in order to be ‘involved’ or ‘consulted’ (Stevenson 1999: 164). The knowledge of Aboriginal people is forced to fit into dominant frameworks that often render irrelevant the intellectual, social, cultural and spiritual contribution that Aboriginal people have made or can potentially make. Fully appreciating and utilizing Aboriginal knowledge must occur in the context of positive, equal and healthy relationships.

Aboriginal Interest in TEK

Despite the issues and challenges outlined above, Aboriginal people continue to find themselves in a position of sharing their knowledge and are frequently willing to do so to advance their goals and interests. In fact, Aboriginal people have been doing this for some time in Canada in an effort to protect their land and traditional life. Although not formally recognized as TEK, Indigenous environmental/ecological information was being collected and documented for various reasons in Canada prior to the explosion of the field in 1980s. The main reason for Aboriginal people sharing their knowledge was to protect their interests, including their land and the assertion of their rights via land claims (AFN 1995; Poole 1998; Roberts 1996). To a large extent, the reasons for sharing this knowledge with external interests remain the same.

TEK is being expressed in various environmental assessment and resource management areas, including issues relating to wildlife, forestry, fisheries and endangered species. Despite this, the meaning, theory and practice of TEK advanced little in its first two decades. It has only been in roughly the last five years that significant challenges to the mainstream concept of TEK have come forth, influenced by the increasing dissatisfaction among Aboriginal

people of the misuse of their knowledge by external interests (see AFN 1995; McGregor 1999; Roberts 1996; Stevenson 1999). There has also been a backlash against TEK, particularly since in some mainstream processes, such as environmental assessment in the North, it has gained a secure foothold (see, for example, the position offered by Howard and Widdowson 1997 and 1996; and responses by Berkes and Henly 1997, and Stevenson 1997). The debate on the utilization of TEK continues (see Abele 1997; Wenzel 1999; Usher 2000).

In theory, the recognition of Aboriginal contributions to sustainability is generally well-intentioned. It is the practice and application (or lack thereof in some cases) that have come under scrutiny. Despite the interest in TEK, there is little to show for it on the ground. Aboriginal people throughout Canada are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with this state of affairs.

Further Thoughts on What TEK is About

So, what is TEK really about? Because of the past and continued colonial onslaught on Aboriginal people, the expression of TEK can be boiled down to our continued survival, which in turn is inherently intertwined with the survival of Creation. Before the term ‘TEK’ was ever coined, Frank T’Seleie, Dene from Fort Good Hope, stated during the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (arguably the first major TEK study in Canada) that:

It seems to me that the whole point in living is to become as human as possible; to learn to understand the world and to live in it; to be part of it; to learn to understand the animals, for they are our brothers and they have much to teach us. We are part of this world.

We are like the river that flows and changes, yet is always the same. . . . It is a river and it will always be a river, for that is what it was meant to be. We are like the river, but we are not the river. We are human. That is what we were meant to be. . . . We were meant to be ourselves, to be what it is our nature to be. (T’Seleie 1977: 16)

Water, in the form of a river, provides some of the greatest understandings of what TEK means to the people. T’Seleie (1977: 16–17) continues:

Our Dene Nation is like this great river. It has been flowing before any of us can remember. We take our strength and our wisdom and our ways from the flow and direction that has been established for us by our ancestors we never knew, ancestors of a thousand years ago. Their wisdom flows through us to our children and our grandchildren to generations we will never know. We will live out our lives as we must and we will die in peace because we will know that our people and this river will flow on after us.

The river inspires connections, continuity and the feeling that the generations yet to come can ‘rest and look over the river and feel that [they] too [have] a place in the universe’ (T’Seleie 1977: 17).

The river itself is a source of the knowledge that people require in order to survive. This survival has a physical basis (we need water for our bodies), but it also has spiritual (defining the role of humans in the world), emotional (providing strength and vision), and intellectual (developing the minds of the knowledge holders) aspects. The river provides a holistic metaphor for the relationship between people and the rest of Creation, the essential core of what TEK is, in my view.

According to Elders of the Grand Council, Treaty Number Three (in Ross 1996: 254–5):

Respect for each other and a universal appreciation for the power of the creator kept everyone walking down a path that encompassed honesty, truths, respect for everything in their immediate life or ecosystem, whether it was your fellow man or beast or plant life. It was a holistic respect for everything that the Anishinaabeg could see, smell, hear, taste and feel.

The relationship between people and Creation from an Aboriginal perspective can be aptly described as sustainable. The people made sure that relationships were sustained through duty, responsibility and reciprocity. It was not and is not automatic. The people care for each other and their surroundings. TEK, then, is practised by someone who takes care of his or her relations (including Creation and the life it supports, and all the associated spiritual aspects).

Coexistence: Re-creating an Old Relationship

TEK is about relationships: not just about understanding the relationships in Creation, but about participating in those relationships. TEK is about sustaining a creative reciprocal relationship with all of Creation, and about fulfilling our lives as human beings in relation to Creation, as T’Seleie (1977) so eloquently points out. This includes the spiritual core of Creation, not just the physical environment that is noted by the five senses.

From a Western perspective, TEK and sustainable development (and sustainability) are discrete concepts. From an Aboriginal point of view, they are intimately related and are in fact part of the same continuum (or circle). They are both about relationships. They are both about relating to Creation in a certain way. If people do not take care of their relations, then they are not fulfilling their duties and responsibilities; they are denying their relationship with Creation, and dysfunction will result. In a reciprocal fashion,

non-human elements are expected to fulfil their responsibilities to Creation. Traditional teachings offer profound guidance about how to work with Creation and not to interfere with the other beings’ ability to fulfil their duties and responsibilities.

Since the time of contact, a consistent message from Aboriginal people has been that they regard their relationship with the newcomers as one of nations interacting. The call for a nation-to-nation relationship between Aboriginal peoples and Canadians is thus not new or unknown among federal and provincial governments. In fact, this type of relationship has existed in the past and for a period of time was a key characteristic of the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in North America. The knowledge and technology that Aboriginal people possessed enabled the newcomers to survive in these lands when the newcomers themselves lacked the capacity to do so.

The broader picture in terms of global sustainability is changing, internationally and nationally, and specifically includes calls for the meaningful participation of Aboriginal people. Can this be interpreted to mean that Aboriginal people and their knowledge and resources are now needed again? Many people seem to think so (LaDuke 1997; Low 1992). On what terms will Aboriginal people flourish in a climate of renewal and renegotiation? New relationships based on mutual reconciliation and peaceful coexistence are required. According to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP, a Canadian federal government-funded five-year study completed in 1996), this renewed relationship must recognize that ‘land is not a just a commodity; it is an inextricable part of Aboriginal identity, deeply rooted in moral and spiritual values’ (RCAP 1996: 430). The new relationship must also recognize Aboriginal and treaty rights in a meaningful fashion–to embrace them as an expression of Aboriginal relationships to the land.

This new or renewed relationship RCAP calls for is based on the ancient Indigenous philosophical view that sought ‘coexistence’ among nations. It is founded on the belief that having separate world-views is not necessarily an undesirable thing, and that developing a framework that would respect different world-views would be an appropriate approach to take. This approach is based on the idea behind the Two-Row Wampum. A beaded belt describing part of a treaty of friendship between the Dutch and the Haudenosaunee (often referred to as ‘Iroquois’) peoples, the Two-Row Wampum consists of two rows of purple beads separated by rows of white beads. The purple rows represent the different vessels of the Dutch (a ship) and the Haudenosaunee (a canoe) travelling side-by-side down the ‘river’ of existence (the white beads). While the two vessels remain separate (i.e. the cultures remain distinct), the people from each vessel are meant to interact and assist each other as need be (see Ransom 1999 for a fuller description).

The Two-Row Wampum serves as a model for renewing and reconciling a damaged relationship between two peoples. It is a model that can apply to any interaction between two nations. In the current situation involving sustainable use of resources in Canada (and throughout the world), in which the participation of Aboriginal people and their knowledge is sought, the Two-Row Wampum and the principles it symbolizes can be appropriately applied. The principles of sharing and respect can apply to the intellectual tradition in the form of sharing knowledge. In the times when treaties were made based on the Two-Row Wampum, it involved the sharing of knowledge. Indigenous knowledge was used almost exclusively in the early years in order for the Europeans to survive. Aboriginal people shared their knowledge readily and it was also readily accepted. An important element to consider as well was the principle that both nations would come to the mutual aid of one another; again this applies to sharing knowledge.

At this point in the history of humanity, Aboriginal knowledge is needed to offer insights into sustainability and the contexts in which it finds meaning (e.g. spirituality). What has not been achieved in recent years are the conditions that make the principles of coexistence meaningful: equitable power relationships. Nation-to-nation relationships have as much relevance today as they did centuries ago. Only through a shift in power relationships can Aboriginal people and their knowledge be effectively involved in moving toward sustainability.

The model of coexistence is viewed as holding promise for environmental and resource management (Brubacher and McGregor 1998; Chapeskie 1995; McGregor 2000; Ransom 1999). Coexistence may serve as a potentially promising bridge between two world-views. Brubacher and McGregor (1998: 18–19) anticipate that the coexistence approach can function as a starting point for renegotiating an old relationship in a contemporary context:

a co-existence approach would promote a focus on formally acknowledging Aboriginal people as legitimate partners in resource management. It would ensure their rightful place in the development and implementation of management policies and decision-making. . . . By drawing upon principles which express the values and perspectives of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures, there is potential for developing an effective co-existence model, one that bridges distinctions by building upon shared values.

The coexistence approach does not devalue Western or Indigenous resource management practices and the knowledge that informs them. Coexistence does not allow for the domination of one over the other. Both systems are valued, and, most importantly for Aboriginal people, their cultural survival is assured. The Aboriginal world-view and all it has to offer will no longer be threatened, dominated or distorted. Relationships based on coexistence, if

established on a broad scale, would greatly facilitate a global move towards sustainability.

Note

1. ‘First Nation’ is defined by the Canadian government (DIAND 1997: 406) as: ‘A term that came into common usage in the 1970s to replace the word “Indian”, which many people found offensive. Although the term First Nation is widely used, no legal definition of it exists. Among its uses, the term “First Nations peoples” refers to the Indian people in Canada. . . . Many Indian people have also adopted the term “First Nation” to replace the word “band” in the name of their community.’ As an example of this latter usage, the ‘Whitefish River Indian Band’ is now the ‘Whitefish River First Nation’.

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Williams, N. and G. Baines (eds) (1993) Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Wisdom for Sustainable Development, Canberra, ACT: Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University.

Wolfe, J., C. Bechard, P. Cizek, and D. Cole (1992) ‘Indigenous and western knowledge and resource management systems’, University School of Rural Planning and Development, University of Guelph, Ontario.

WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development) (1987) Our Common Future, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6

James Bay Crees’ Life Projects and Politics:
Histories of Place, Animal Partners
and Enduring Relationships

HARVEY A. FEIT

Contradictions?

In 1994, Matthew Coon Come, who was then Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees in Quebec, appeared before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature to ask them to support the Cree struggle against the proposed Great Whale hydroelectric project by not buying Hydro-Quebec power. The Grand Council of the Crees had just signed a complementary agreement with Hydro-Quebec, the public electricity utility of the province, giving C$50 million to the Crees and allowing new construction at the site of a hydroelectric dam that was part of the LaGrande project, which had been constructed over the previous two decades. A committee member asked:

Why would you be so agreeable and so willing to modify an agreement, in light of the fact that we have heard that you folks signed the original agreement in 1975 under duress? In other words, if I were you, and Hydro-Quebec came to me and said, ‘by the way . . . we want to [install] four more sub-stations’, I would be telling Hydro-Quebec to take a hike. (in Isacsson 1996)

The Grand Chief explained that ‘we live in a society in which we have to see how we can coexist, how we can live together [with Quebec].’ His questioner persisted, asking the Cree if it was true Hydro-Quebec needed Cree approval to undertake the construction. Grand Chief Coon Come confirmed that and explained that the Cree agreed to more construction in part because of the already compromised quality of these areas–the ‘river . . . is already dead’. But there was no escaping the implication that had been painted by the questioner: the Crees were not really interested in saving the rivers, animals and a hunting way of life, but in money.

This was a trap the Cree political leaders had clearly foreseen, and there were strong disagreements among them about whether to sign another in a series of agreements that made concessions to Hydro-Quebec, while fighting new project plans (in Isacsson 1996). The Cree participants in that debate had several reasons for signing, but they did not think that their actions were inconsistent, or opportunist. What they all were concerned about was that non-Crees would not understand the choices they were making, and thus they would be vulnerable to having the new agreement used against them. The differences among Cree leaders were over whether to take the risks.¹ The Crees have been accused of similar contradictions repeatedly by the media and non-Crees, by governments and developers, and by their allies and social analysts (see LaRusic et al. 1979; Feit 1985, 2004; Tanner 1999).

It is assumed by most analysts that the Cree organizations would, if they could, simply oppose large-scale development projects on their lands. This appears to make sense because these are projects which many Crees insist have detrimental effects on their lives and the lands they occupy, and the great majority of Cree leaders and people are unwilling to accept deals that give them cash for accepting destruction. Yet they have signed a series of agreements with Hydro-Quebec and Quebec that provide funds to improve Cree lives and communities and permit development projects, albeit mostly of modest scale. That most Crees do not see contradictions in the political actions the leaders pursue, even where their opponents, their supporters and social analysts do, suggests that Crees’ agency does not arise solely as a response to development projects or from agreements that offer cash, but from a different setting. I will explore their actions as rooted not in opposition or opportunism, but in the practice of everyday life in communities and on the land.

Life Projects: Places, Histories and Animals

In James Bay Cree struggles against transnational hydroelectric and forestry developments Cree leaders address state institutions; forge access to transnational forums; build alliances with other Indigenous, environmental and human rights movements; and build relationships with international media and access to world financial centres (see Coon Come and Craik, chapters 9 and 10 in this volume; Rousseau 2001).

Yet James Bay Cree leaders also draw on powerful paradigms for collective agency provided by Cree hunters and hunting leaders.² The hunters embody practices and envision desired ways of living in the context of hunting on a land they know intimately. These hunting leaders typically live for half or more of the year on the particular tracts of land that they have inherited, used and stewarded over their lifetimes, and these tracts are places they have nurtured and made into their homes.

The processes of place-making (Gupta and Ferguson 1999) are accomplished not only through the actions of those on the land but also through their long histories of connections to markets and governments. As a result, their landscapes and their agency are not isolated or separate from the contexts that inform the struggles that Cree political leaders undertake; indeed, they are closely connected, as I will show. While many outside observers see Cree hunters as tied to the land in ways that isolate them from national politics and transnational markets, the experiences and lessons of hunting leaders are easily related and relevant to the decisions of Cree political leaders. This chapter develops an account of Cree agency in which I stress Cree statements, and my own understandings, of Cree hunters’ life project politics. It is a case study for the analysis of Indigenous practices that are rooted in life projects closely linked to local places but that have wide connections to other places and broad political relevance.³

Cree hunters’ lives and problems are place-based not universalist because they are concerned with communities and lands that are the intimate settings of their everyday lives. In a sense, they live in a world in which their communities and lands are centres, not the margins of some other cosmopolitanized place.⁴ Yet they are connected widely. Cree hunters’ communities and hunting lands are places where they encounter people from transnational corporations, trading empires, government agencies, diverse political ideologies, and international legal forums. Their lands and communities are also places to which they invite representatives from other communities to build understanding and connections (see, for example, Craik and McRae, chapters 10 and 7 in this volume).

Histories are part of both hunting and the processes of landscape making. Indeed, the land is layered with histories both personal and far-reaching. Place names known to and used by hunters who live on a particular hunting territory over many years cover nearly every feature of the landscape, and many are tied to stories of how the name came to be given–stories that recall past persons, events and associations. They also record past ties to Europe through the fur trade, as at ‘Dress-up Creek’, where hunters prepared to descend the last stretch of the Rupert river to enter the fur-trade post and meet the European traders. The presence of other Indigenous peoples is recorded, for example, by the Cree places named for Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, who raided the area in the late seventeenth century by travelling along particular rivers that now carry their Cree names. Connections to Canada and the United States occur through the names of the first places where an early American sport hunter, known in Cree as a ‘long-knife’, did something memorable. They record corporate connections and histories of commercial fisheries, mines, sawmills and trading posts, now closed.

These localized histories are manifested as interrelated places, stories that are associated with particular Cree predecessors, personal memories and ongoing practices of occupying the land and of hunting. These intersections of places, histories, persons and activities tie the hunters to distant parts of the world and to the people who have come from those parts and entered into relationships here. They record the encounters that give hunters knowledge, experience and relationships to those other places, times and people that are rooted in their hunting places and in their own sense of identity. And they can draw on long and rich encounters with some of these others. Hunters are connected far and they have often been connected for long. But they are not connected universally. Their places, histories and relationships are always personal and specific, even as they are generalizable.

These hunters’ relationships extend beyond the human world to the worlds of animals and other non-human beings that are part of the multi-person process of the hunt. Animals are hunted and are encountered as partners in the hunt, as I will indicate below. Animals are partners not only in the chase, but in the histories they produce, and they too are recorded and present in the place names that recall memorable encounters. They are also parts of the relationships that tie these places through time to other places far away, for they too are part of the fur trade, and they too are partners in the suffering that results from development projects.

When people come from other places they enter, whether they know it or not, Cree places in which their presence sets them into arenas of Cree life projects. To encounter these places, histories and relationships is to enter into new/old relationships not solely determined by the conditions and needs of the arrivees, even if they are unaware of the specificities of these places.

For example, the Crees as a nation have signed a treaty that governments consider to have significantly constrained Cree sovereignty over lands, although the legal reality is somewhat more complex because specific provisions of the agreement recognize Cree systems of territoriality and governance (the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA), 1975, between the Crees, Inuit of northern Quebec, Canada, Hydro-Quebec and the James Bay Development and Energy Corporations). The inequalities between Cree and governments profoundly shape how Crees and governments act on the land, and the very unequal consequences their actions have for the other. Therefore recognition of Cree tenure is clearly thought to be quite minimal by governments, both because they refuse to take them into full consideration, and because they consider the Cree hunting territories as isolated and exclusively involved with the Crees, not as places with far-reaching connections, recognitions and histories.⁵ Whether governments ever recognize these dimensions of their obligations as such, or not, they constantly are engaged with them for there is no general Cree acquiescence to the unique sovereignty

claimed by the governments of Canada and Quebec. Autonomy that does not recognize exclusive sovereignty is exercised every day by Cree hunters on the land they care for and nurture (see below). The contests over the imposition of more and more constraints by governments go on day by day, intrusion by intrusion, hunting territory by hunting territory, without Cree consent. Cree people’s agency has its fullest expression in these very personal and yet shared practices of exercising an inherent ownership and governance of land, in the broadest sense. This exercise is embedded in Cree life projects.

Hunters’ Life Projects in the Face of Development

The recent affidavits given by hunting leaders as part of their testimony for a court case against forestry companies articulate clearly the everyday problems the hunters face, the relationships out of which their actions emerge, and their assumption and exercise of inherent responsibility for the whole land. The series of court cases against the governments of Quebec and Canada and over twenty logging companies sought to get the courts to regulate forestry cutting because of the failure of governments to fulfil their obligations under the JBNQA to regulate forestry activities on Cree territories and to provide an effective voice for Crees in forestry management. Many Crees also emphasized that the companies, with government authorization, were accelerating forestry cutting and their destructive effects on forests, lands, wildlife and the Crees.

Allen Saganash, Sr. of Waswanipi, whose hunting lands had not yet been cut, described his inherent responsibilities of governance, as well as what he wanted to protect as a hunting territory leader, and on what he did and did not want to compromise.⁶

I am the Ndoho Ouchimau [hunting leader] of trapline W05A [a government-initiated designation for hunting territories, see below]. I am 80 years old this year. . . .

As I said our land is uncut now but I know Donahue [a forestry corporation] plans to build a road into it. . . . This will seriously affect my hunting grounds.

We had a consultation session with Donahue. . . . The idea was to try to protect some wildlife habitat. . . .

I am opposed to this road. Ours is good hunting and fishing land. The food is very good quality. The road will change all that; it will damage the habitat and open it up to hunters and fishermen. . . .

I want all of this considered in a full environmental assessment but they won’t do it. I know the government well. I have seen how they work throughout my life. They refuse to consider all development together. I have no chance to get all these issues looked at. I worry all the time about what will happen when the

road comes. The road is not to come to the heart of my land. I don’t want it. The government is not trustworthy. . . .

We are pushed out of our land again and again. We are told to move our hunting grounds. I have seen this happen many times in Waswanipi.

They concentrate the cutting too heavily in one place. Too much is cut. There are too many roads.

Others support me on this. . . .

The companies and the government don’t listen to us. They take what is ours and push us aside. This must stop. (Affidavit of Allen Saganash, Sr, 22 July 1999)

Allen Saganash eloquently expresses his rights as Ndoho Ouchimau to a decisive say in what happens on his lands, his sense of loss and fear of destruction, and his experiences of government and corporate betrayals, domination, and failures both to protect the land and to respect the Crees. He implies that the Crees have shared the land enough.

Joseph Neeposh, an elderly hunting leader, indicated that he has shared because he recognized the needs of others, that he expected them to consider his needs in turn, but that continued sharing might not be appropriate under all circumstances.

I am the Ndoho Ouchimau or tallyman of the Ndoho Istchee or trapline now known as W-10. . . .

Everyone in our community understands my authority and respects it. They know that I am the one that decides who can have access to the land and where they can hunt, fish or trap. They know that I must guide people to productive areas while I protect the land and the animals from overuse. Non-Natives and the logging companies do not understand or respect my role. They come to the land without my permission and take what they want.

All these roads, camps and activities lead me to believe that my Ndoho Istchee will soon be even more affected by forestry. I do not want this to happen. I want the game to stay. . . .

I honestly think it is time for the cutting to stop in my hunting territory.

I understand that the forestry workers presently working in my hunting territory need their work for their families. If they wish to continue with forestry operations, they may do so. But they must consider my livelihood. The land is where I work and support myself. The forestry companies and those responsible for the cutting must do something to help me continue to live on my trapline. I do not want my Ndoho Istchee to be like some of the other Waswanipi traplines. I know they could eventually destroy it. I do not want to move . . . to another hunting territory. It would be an expropriation of my hunting territory where I have hunted all my life. (Affidavit, Joseph Neeposh, 22 July 1999)

These testimonies echo the common themes of rights, destruction, betrayal, the need for restrictions on forest cutting, and a common call for respectful sharing. Throughout these affidavits Cree hunters eloquently reveal the sovereignty the Cree hunters still exercise, and their continuing determination

to bring changes to the present relationships with governments and companies. These views have been repeatedly misunderstood by supporters of Cree struggles. The hunters assert basic and unchallengeable rights to their lands, yet they also express a willingness to respect the needs of others and an expectation that this will be reciprocated. As their assertions of ongoing governance of their lands indicate, this is not a compromise that arises out of subordination or a politics of the oppressed. It is a vision that arises out of the tie to the land and to all that has occurred on the land. It is embedded in the changing historical relationships of this place, as well as in their intimate relationships with the land and animals.

Histories of Relationships

The fur trade: commerce, relationships and reciprocities

The recent Cree histories of the abuse of lands and of ignoring the Cree that these affidavits express also allude to older histories of relationships, relationships that endured for decades and even centuries.

Cree stories of the fur trade have been reported in the recent literature (see Scott 1989; Feit 1994), but here I want to note the recent work by ethno-historians on the fur trade that echoes many of the Cree stories. The trade had begun in the James Bay area by the 1670s, and both Cree stories and recent research reveal rich and complex histories of alliances, partnerships and reciprocities in a trade in which the fur traders’ practices were often adapted to Cree social values. There is not one fur trade but many (Francis and Morantz 1983). Here I will pick out some threads relevant to the newly realized aspects of much, but not all, of this trade.

The fur trade in the James Bay region was without doubt a very profitable and capital-making enterprise par excellence throughout almost all of its three centuries. Capital was accumulated as a result of substantial profits, mainly by the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), but also during several periods by Montreal traders. The trade produced exceptional profits in part because it exchanged generally easy-to-produce European goods with hunters, who welcomed them but had access to them only through traders. In exchange, furs and, until the mid-nineteenth century, especially beaver pelts were in high demand as valuable goods in Europe. From a Cree perspective, furs were labour intensive to produce, but many fur-bearers were also food staples, and trading their skins was not an inappropriately high labour cost over and above a subsistence hunting effort. A key feature of the profitability of the trade to Europeans was that it depended on Cree production on the land using Cree social and economic organization. It

was to the advantage of HBC profitability to encourage Crees to produce furs because they provided most of their own subsistence needs, something European trappers would not do were the HBC to change its strategies and employ such production methods (Tanner 1979). In the twentieth century, with an increasing government presence, it was also in the interests of the HBC to promote exclusive Cree occupation and tenure of land as a barrier against itinerant trappers financed by competing non-resident traders.

From the Cree perspective the trade was beneficial for the increased security and labour-saving devices it brought, and although the Crees became dependent on the trade for these goods, their needs were specific and limited within a Cree economy of reciprocity (Scott 1983). The traders’ records are replete with the difficulties of getting Crees to trap more than was required to secure their equipment and supply necessities and specific ‘luxuries’ (Salisbury 1976). Crees also demanded and generally got useful and quality trade goods, although their ability to affect the rates of exchange was limited primarily to pressure for stable prices and comparative pricing, when that was possible, among competing trading companies all setting prices for their traders in order to maximize profits.

The Crees also were able to shape the form and practice of the trade process itself, often not accepting a simple indebtedness created by traders’ advances, and reshaping the relationships with traders into forms of partnership. To secure Cree efforts to trap more furs, and to try to tie Crees to their trading company, traders repeatedly adapted trade processes to Cree notions of reciprocity and enduring responsibilities. Traders often gave extensive gifts before trading began, sometimes up to half the value of the expected furs, and they gave special gifts and emblems of recognition to hunting leaders known as ‘trading captains’ (see Francis and Morantz 1983). Traders living in isolated trading posts were often not maximizing profits but rather trying to please their bosses by doing a bit better than last year’s returns (Salisbury 1976). The traders themselves were sometimes dependent on Crees for food supplies, and more often for love and companionship. When not effectively prohibited by the HBC, ‘country wives’ and families were common while traders were in the region. In these ways Cree forms of kinship, leadership and partnership structured much of the trade process, and resulted in forms of relationships, reciprocity and mutual aid that were clear and enduring, if not universal.

The relationships were not egalitarian, but amidst their continual changes there were some periods of enduring relationships of respect and mutual reciprocity. Cree recollections of the fur trade sometimes speak of it as a satisfying exchange, sometimes as excessively profitable for and insufficiently reciprocated by the companies. But it is almost always talked about in terms of mutual responsibilities and their abrogation or fulfilment. That is, the fur

trade is not, whether it was a good or a bad thing at the period being discussed, a simple market relationship between producer and commercial enterprise or between a buyer and merchant.

From these stories of decades and centuries of fur trading Cree hunters know that commerce and coexistence on the land with ‘Whitemen’ (a Cree term) can be conducted on a different basis than that employed by Hydro-Quebec and forestry companies today. Their approaches demand respect and reciprocity whether they are dealing with logging foremen in the field discussing how close to cut the forest along a stream, or with corporate lawyers or professional foresters discussing policy and best-practice guidelines.

Conserving beaver and co-governing territory

Cree hunters’ stories of relationships with representatives of governments are equally complex and ambiguous, but also embedded in mutual dependency and recognition. The first on-the-ground intervention of governments in the James Bay region occurred when beaver reserves were established by Quebec in the early 1930s in response to the initiative of a concerned fur trader and his wife, working in dialogue with Cree hunters. Quebec was soon joined by Canada and the HBC, with the initial goal of restoring beaver populations depleted in the post-World War I boom years. The reserves excluded non-local trappers, who had been the main impetus for the depletion, as well as limiting Cree harvests until beaver populations recovered (Morantz 2002; Feit, in press). These initiatives had multiple origins, having been suggested in one form or another by fur traders, missionaries, anthropologists and Cree hunters from various communities.

When the time came actually to harvest beaver in the 1940s, the government claimed that its employees were exercising managerial authority over the beaver and the Crees. But the employees were confronted by their lack of knowledge of beaver dynamics and the distributions of beaver in the region. This made setting the quotas they envisioned difficult, as well as their decisions on how to allocate beaver harvest quotas to some Crees and not to others. To solve these problems government agents adopted and copied the Cree customary tenure system. Each hunting leader was paid to tally the number of active beaver lodges on his hunting territory, and to report them to government. The government then set the harvest quota and the hunting leaders were often left to allocate beaver taken on their territory to hunters whom they allowed to use their land. One government official described what was happening thus:

When it is borne in mind that the Tallyman is the head of the family; that each district is a family trapping ground; that . . . all boundaries are laid out by the

Indians themselves, it is apparent that we have not only adhered strictly to Indian custom but have actually improved on it since, through our Supervisor, we have maps of the districts and written records, which we can use to settle future disputes over trapping grounds. (Quoted in Morantz 2002: 167)

The claim that the beaver trapline system was an improvement obscured the fact that in practice it not only depended on the Cree hunting territory system; it left the Crees in charge of information and often allocation issues, and thereby left them to do what the hunting leader thought necessary on his land. The check the government had was when pelts were sold, but quota numbers were a function of Cree reports, and who killed beaver and where they were taken could be adjusted by Cree hunters, arranging among themselves who would do the selling or where they should report that the beaver had been caught.

The government beaver-reserve agents were more systematically dependent on the Crees than the reverse, although they claimed credit for the success of the scheme. Government officials and Cree hunters benefited from the plurality of practices and from the numerous ways they were interlinked. The Crees had exclusive use of their lands again as the government closed beaver reserves to other trappers; the appointment of hunting leaders as tallymen was taken by Crees as an acknowledgement by the government of the hunting tenure system, and it enhanced their legitimacy both within Cree society and by non-Cree. The government presented itself as having taken control of the governance of the lands and wildlife resources of the region, a claim that followed from the exercise of legislative authority, from the establishment of a new bureaucracy and from its control of public communications.

Under the beaver-reserve system, which lasted from the 1930s up to the 1970s, the Cree shared decisions about the use of the land for the first time, but on terms that were generally advantageous to themselves both in terms of decision-making and on-the-ground control of the land. Christine Saganash, the wife of Allen Saganash quoted above, said as part of her affidavit for the forestry case:

I remember so many years ago when Indian Affairs [agents] came to draw boundary lines [of the hunting territories for the Beaver Reserves]. Allen was already the tallyman. They gave him a badge to show he was a game warden. I still have that badge and carry it with me. . . .

They must listen to us and respect us. We are the owners of the land. We are part of it. To cut our land is to destroy us and our way of life. (Affidavit of Christine (Jolly) Saganash, 22 July 1999)

Here government recognition not only acknowledges Cree governance; it affirms an expectation that lands would be used to protect a Cree way of life. The ambiguities over who was in control under the beaver-reserve system

were heightened early in the 1960s as government-promoted mining, commercial forestry and sport hunting and fishing increased dramatically. These problems created by new resource uses came to a head in 1971 when work began on the James Bay hydroelectric project.

Choosing How to Fight Development Projects

When a youthful Cree leadership emerged to lead a regional Cree opposition to the hydroelectric development in the early 1970s, the hunting elders were turned to for advice on what position to adopt vis-à-vis the governments. They set the crisis in history but also suggested perspectives that drew on their own authority over the land that was threatened by these development projects. Philip Awashish, one of the emerging Cree political leaders of the time, wrote that the elders were saying that the present pattern was

started by the arrival of the first white man into the area and still continues to this very day. Development is solely in the hands of people outside the region. . . . The region has been utilized almost exclusively by the Cree people who have no voice in the decision-making body which [is now] planning the development of resources in the area. (Awashish 1972b, discussed in Feit 1985)

When asked what they saw as the goal of their opposition, Awashish reported that ‘most of the chiefs felt they would accept some form of hydro development under conditions that would be acceptable to the native people of the area. A negotiable development project would be the goal’ (Awashish 1972a; see Feit 1985). The elders sought as a goal the experience of the sometimes respectful relationships of the past, but they now insisted that shared use of the land be explicitly negotiated and recognized.

The events put in motion by the ensuing court case and the negotiation of the JBNQA are described elsewhere in this book (see chapters 9 and 10 by Coon Come and Craik). Cree hunters’ visions of recent agreements are reflected in the 1999 affidavits where hunters express their mistrust and frustration at the failures and betrayals of negotiations and agreements, and with the sham consultative relationships governments and corporations established during this period of industrial resource developments (see, for example, Feit and Beaulieu 2001).

Yet Cree hunters and Cree leaders seek to find means of sharing the land, and continue to offer and insist on reciprocity with governments and developers. To comprehend this dual insistence on recognizing their Cree rights and also again establishing respectful relationships, we need to examine how the life projects of Crees are envisaged in the light of long local histories of relationships that extend transnationally to institutions of commerce and governance. We must also consider how their life projects are embedded in relations to their lands and the non-human beings on the land.

Their Words Cannot Be Trusted: Asserting Land as Agency

As forestry expanded following the 1975 JBNQA, hunters like the late Noah Eagle tried throughout the 1980s and 1990s to communicate with forestry companies. When I talked to Noah two years after a first interview in which he reported to me that he had had talks with the companies about how to cut his land, he himself returned to the subject of forestry company practices because he wanted to report the results and wanted to make an invitation:

Another thing I want talk about is the log cutting. . . . When they first started that business, they said they’d get the logs just in the bush not close to the river or creeks. But that is not true. . . . They don’t do what they said, just to cut down the trees from far in the bush. That’s how everyone’s ground is. . . .

If anyone doesn’t believe what we say, we could take them there to see or we’d take pictures of what we’re talking about. . . .

Then he described what was happening on the land:

Some Indians that hunt up north say they have a lot of moose there, where their ground is not yet damaged. I guess the moose just takes off and goes to where the land is good and plenty of their food there. It can’t stay where the ground is damaged, it’s the same way with all the other animals.

I don’t know what will happen to us in the future, but right now we’re okay, the way we’re living. In the olden days I remember we didn’t have any tea or sugar, all we had to drink was [the broth] from what we cooked, fish, rabbit and other game, we never had anything to make soup. And I think it’s going to turn out that way pretty soon, by the way things look, in the past two years. (Noah Eagle, 8 May 1984; quoted in Feit and Beaulieu 2001)

Like those who gave affidavits more than a decade later, Noah is clear that he is dealing with people whose words cannot be trusted and who do not do what they say they will do. Yet he reaches out to seek recognition by forestry companies and his generalized listeners, and calls on them to recognize the dangers and act responsibly. His proposal is to invite his listeners to come and see what he has learned and seen on the land.⁷ Here Noah actively seeks the re-creation of mutual understanding. He has experienced that this cannot be achieved by yet another conversation with forestry company representatives. Rather, they need to come onto the land. I think that for Noah there is no use in a discursive contest over truth, or even a discursive effort to convince others through argument about whose truth should prevail. He avoids words and in their place issues invitations to enter a place more fully. But why? I think that he is inviting the forestry operators to come onto the land and learn from what the land has to teach. This suggestion requires a brief discussion of Cree ontology.

In the Cree hunters’ view there is no fundamental separation in kind between the social world and the natural world, or between humans and

nature, and the land is not a thing. The social world of the Crees extends beyond Cree society not just to other humans: the whole of the cosmos is understood as being a social world. That is, the whole of the Cree world is conceived of by most Cree hunters as comprising beings that are like persons. The world of Cree hunters is a society of non-human persons with wills, idiosyncrasies, intelligence and capacities of communication. Hunters emphasize that they know the non-human persons of the lands they hunt as individuals, not only as generalized categories of persons. They know the world through the relationships they know intimately.

Animals as persons are not soulless machines; animals are active agents. Animals are full of subjectivity, awareness and social relations, and they respond to and convey meaning through their actions. This is true of many ‘natural’ phenomena as well. Thus in the early 1970s when I would ask about Chuetenshu, the powerful ‘North Wind’ person, I would get much more extended answers on cold and clear days associated with weather that arrived from the northwest. To talk extensively on warm days of the powerful and potentially dangerous wind person who brought cold and winter was potentially disrespectful and made many hunters uncomfortable. They did not like to talk in the absence, or ‘behind the back’, of so powerful a person. It could know what was said and might think it was not being referred to respectfully and could take offence.⁸ That did not prevent joking, or complaints, but in appropriate contexts as in all social relationships. The same was true of animals. They knew what was said of them, and they knew of the needs of hunters and their families. Because of these needs animals were often willing to give themselves to hunters so that humans could feed themselves, but in return they expected respect and reciprocity, a mutual caring for the well-being of each others’ societies. Thus the hunt was both an exercise in the skill of the hunter and a result of the willing participation of the hunted animals. Animals left signs and indications of their presence and possible willingness to be killed for the hunter to find, signs that made the hunt possible and more reliable. Nevertheless, animals would also often unexpectedly escape when they were not ready to give themselves. This world of non-human persons has been described by numerous non-Crees who have encountered Cree hunters, from missionaries to fur traders to anthropologists (Hallowell 1955; Preston 2002; Tanner 1979; Feit 1994; and Scott 1996). This cosmology has repeatedly been shown to underlie an extensive system of traditional knowledge, hunting practice and effective game conservation (Feit 1994; Scott 1996; Berkes 1999).

Thus, Noah does not invite his listeners into the bush to see an essentialized nature, or an objective fact, but to come on to the land in order to learn about relationships from those who live there. When moose numbers have declined it is because, as he indicates, many moose are choosing to

move away from cutting areas both because their food is scarce and because they judge the land is not ‘good’ where there is forestry cutting. Inviting foresters to the bush would allow a subject-laden land to pass its own messages to viewers willing to learn about what is good or bad in this place after forestry operations have transformed it.

When Noah proposes to take people onto the land, we cannot dismiss this as either metaphorical or naive. As the work by Tim Ingold (2000) and Bruno Latour (1993) emphasizes, listeners need to avoid imposing the culture–nature separation on ontologies and epistemologies not founded on the assumptions that underlie the modern world-view that has developed since the sixteenth century. When we do that we treat them as just interpretations, whereas they are statements about what both is known and what is (see McGregor, Chapter 5 in this volume), made not by a knower separated from a nature that is passively known but from a human engaged in relations with other active persons. They are, we can say, statements from within non-modern life projects.

But what is the purpose of such an invitation, especially if one suspects the invitee is blind to the possibilities of learning from the animals on the land? An answer emerges from other Cree statements and responses to the forestry crisis.

Life Projects and Relationships

The views that I have suggested are implicit in Noah’s invitation became clearer to me in exchanges among Crees over how to deal with governments and forestry companies. In a telephone conversation in the late 1990s with a middle-aged Cree hunter about forestry cutting and the court action the Crees had initiated, I supported breaking off discussions with the forestry companies and accelerating legal action. He did not oppose court action, but he did oppose not talking at the same time to the companies. He said those Cree leaders who wanted to fight only in court were ‘stupid’, a strong word in his vocabulary, but one he thought I indirectly deserved. He asked rhetorically, ‘Don’t they’–those Cree leaders and myself–‘know that we cannot protect the land if we go around only blaming and accusing them?’ He gave the example of declining moose numbers and the non-Cree sport hunt, saying we cannot simply blame the sport hunters. If we did that we could not respond effectively to the crisis because caring for the moose depends on working with the sport hunters and the government.

He claimed it was necessary to continue to seek relationships, even when they are not working, because only with such relationships can the animals and the land be effectively cared for and respected. To cut off relationships

on an enduring basis in frustration would affect not only what can be in the future; it would affect the expression of relationships now. Cutting off communication denies the relationships one already has, and expresses a thoughtlessness and disrespect. His vision is not, however, modern in the sense that there is not any clear path to a defined objective or state: he does not offer a plan for establishing better or new relationships. He is committed to keeping relationships here and now, and by doing so to express here and now what is needed in the present and in visions of the future. Moreover, these relationships to animals and to others have implications for strategies of living.

Animal Agency and Surviving

These issues were expressed in the summer of 1998, when Waswanipi Cree hunters met to discuss possible responses to continuing forestry cutting on their lands. The leaders of the Cree communities had just accelerated their court case on forestry, and there was talk of blocking the provincial highway in protest against continued unregulated logging. The hunters heard from Cree negotiators about the modest changes that the forestry companies and the government of Quebec were proposing as their solutions. It was a meeting fraught with a sense of anxiety and frustration, although periodically relieved by humour. A middle-aged hunter and administrator said to Cree negotiators:

Go to the government and tell them about forestry. This is what is pushing wildlife out. . . . How can we participate if they’re not willing to participate with us? . . . [logging companies] they’re just going crazy and taking all the wood out and they’re destroying the moose yards which are used in the winter time. They’re destroying the mating grounds and they’re destroying the playgrounds [of moose]. (Transcript, Waswanipi Cree Trappers Association Meeting, 26 August 1998)

It was a passionate speech, with a controlled but frustrated tone. The father of the speaker, himself an elder hunter, spoke next, and he said that what had been said was true. But he went on to say:

The animals of this world love us, they can’t leave us. I was told by my grandfather, who was a mean old man, . . . if someone else kills your moose, it can happen that there will be more than what was killed. You showed love when you didn’t say anything to the person who hunted on your territory, and that’s how much love will be returned to you. (Transcript, Waswanipi Cree Trappers Association Meeting, 26 August 1998)

Although this sounds like a familiar story advising listeners to turn the other cheek, and the teller is an active Christian, the story is also embedded in

Cree storytelling traditions and hunting practices. Crees do hunt and kill moose, and moose are persons who consent. Thus this is a story about complex relationships. It asserts that respectful and life-supporting relationships do continue, and indeed can continue, even in the midst of disrespectful and destructive practices, even by Cree.

Even so, it is not a metaphor; it is descriptive. The speaker is reminding his listeners that animals remain generous in the context of denials of respect and destruction of habitats by other humans. These moose are material persons. They are hunted, forestry reduces their food yards, mating success and play, and many moose chose to move away as a result. But moose do not cease to be, they are still being hunted, and they are still giving themselves to hunters both on lands affected by forestry, and in larger numbers on lands not yet affected. Moose that move away respond to the destructiveness of forestry, and those that stay show that some may survive in its midst.

The Cree ability to continue to receive animal gifts in the midst of extensive destruction caused by forestry is experientially undeniable, even if game numbers are reduced by the destruction. This both results from and confirms the continuing respectful relationships sustained by Cree hunters through this crisis. Animals here are social as well as very embodied teachers. They are active agents who help and are at the same time models of how to seek to continue to survive. The moose both move and stay amidst forestry, reflecting the dilemmas and suffering Cree face as the choices expressed in Cree hunting leaders’ affidavits. The continuing survival and the continuing generosity of animals reassure Cree hunters of their own future in the midst of great destruction and uncertainty for both Cree and animals. To have to give up the land completely is unthinkable, and the moose confirm that it need not come to be. This story bespeaks a capacity both to survive abuse and suffering, and to continue to seek to change abusive relationships.

Conclusions

For Cree hunters and Cree political leaders, their opposition to development and at the same time their invitations to relationships are both essential to living here and now.⁹ The pursuit of relationships is not a request (waiting for others to act), a compliance (willing acceptance of failures of others to reciprocate), or an acquiescence to the control by others. It is an ongoing pursuit essential to maintaining the everyday lives and life projects of the Crees. It is in this knowledge that I think Noah Eagle offered his invitation.

Some readers will note with concern that seeking relationships with developers is a response that can be beneficial to state institutions and corporations. It is intended to be. This is not naive in the view of Cree hunting

leaders. Recall the older hunter who defends the lessons of moose against too ready a dismissal by noting that his grandfather was ‘a mean old man’. In doing so he highlights for his listeners that his grandfather did not act out of kindness when he did not confront those who killed moose on his hunting territory. He implies that this is the way things have to be done to benefit yourself as well as the moose. It is not just a morality but an ontology that motivates action here.

In seeking effective relationships within Cree life projects, the hunters reassert the power of their relationships to histories, lands, animals, to other places and peoples, and to the diversity of Crees and Cree communities. Contrary to what several analysts have suggested, this practice of inviting respectful relationships is not a sign of the need to compromise because the Crees have limited resources and power, although they do have limited means. It is not a turning to the moral because they cannot succeed in the political–they have had some significant successes (see Craik in this volume). It is not a sign of inconsistency in their commitment to their lands or a singular desire for monetary benefit. It is the means of re-creation of life projects and relationships for everyday living and survival in the midst of continuing destruction.

Notes

This chapter draws on the work of many Cree people and other scholars from whom I have drawn insights, including: Philip Awashish, Mario Blaser, Matthew Coon Come, Brian Craik, Paul Dixon, Sam Gull, Sr, Peter Harries-Jones, Peter Hutchins, Ted Moses, Matthew Ottereyes, Alan Penn and Colin Scott. Many others go unnamed. I also want to acknowledge financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Arts Research Board of McMaster University.

1. The film-makers who caught part of this debate on video (some scenes look like they may have been re-enacted) themselves felt the contradiction enough to have to explain it to viewers, by stressing that offering an agreement at this time was part of a divide-and-rule tactic by Hydro-Quebec, which it was.

2. I use the term ‘hunting leaders’ for the generally elder Cree hunters who are the ‘bosses’ or ‘tallymen’ (see below) of family hunting territories. There are approximately 300 hunting territories in the region, and they range from about 200 to over 1,000 square miles. The territories are a key part of the Cree social and customary legal structures. Several elder and respected hunters or community leaders would also be included among this group of leaders as elders, although they do not have their own hunting territories. The designation is also intended to include spouses and women elders of the community.

3. I take the concept of life projects from Bruno Barras’s chapter (3) and Mario Blaser’s Introduction (Chapter 2) in this volume, but see also Escobar 1995: 212.

4. I am indebted to Wendy Russell for making this clear to me (see Russell, Chapter 8 in this volume).

5. Similarly, in the very nature of the treaty-making process itself the government also acknowledges and acquiesces to some Cree sovereignty by acknowledging the relationship as one that requires treaty-making and agreements, and not just decrees and contracts.

6. The affidavits were prepared by legal counsel for the Cree in preparation for this court case. All were given verbally in Cree and were translated and transcribed into English.

7. He offers them photos if they cannot come because he recently worked with staff of the Grand Council of the Crees to photograph sites that exemplified the changes he was taking about.

8. For similar experiences, see Black 1977.

9. In 2002 the Cree signed a new agreement with Quebec which gave them a new role in forestry management, as well as consenting to new hydroelectric installations (see Craik in this volume).

References

Awashish, Philip (1972a) ‘Report of Philip Awashish. Communications Worker Indians of Quebec Association on the James Bay Development Project. April 10–May 5, 1972’, Huron Village, 11 May 1972.

——— (1972b) ‘Report of Philip Awashish Communications Worker. James Bay Development Project’, Huron Village, 23 June 1972.

Berkes, Fikret (1999) Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management, Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis.

Black, Mary B. (1977) ‘Ojibwe power belief systems’, in R.D. Fogelson and R.M. Adams (eds), The Anthropology of Power, New York: Academic Press, pp. 141–51.

Escobar, Arturo (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Feit, Harvey A. (1985) ‘Legitimation and autonomy in James Bay Cree responses to hydroelectric development’, in Noel Dyck (ed.), Indigenous Peoples and the Nation State: Fourth World Politics in Canada, Australia, and Norway, St John’s: Memorial University, Institute for Social and Economic Research, pp. 27–66.

——— (1994) ‘Hunting and the quest for power, the James Bay Cree and Whitemen in the twentieth century’, in R.B. Morrison and C.R. Wilson (eds), Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience, 2nd edn, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, pp. 181–223.

——— (2004) ‘Contested identities of “Indians” and “Whitemen” at James Bay, or the power of reason, hybridity and agency’, in T. Irimoto and T. Yamada (eds), Ethnicity and Identity in the North, Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.

——— (in press) ‘Co-governance and the uses of co-management’, Anthropologica.

——— and Robert Beaulieu (2001) ‘Voices from a disappearing forest: government, corporate, and Cree participatory forestry management practices’, in C.H. Scott (ed.), Aboriginal Autonomy and Development in Northern Quebec and Labrador, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 119–48.

Francis, Daniel and Toby Morantz (1983) Partners in Furs: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600–1870, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson (eds) (1999) Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Hallowell, A.I. (1955) Culture and Experience, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Ingold, Tim (2000) ‘Culture, nature, environment: steps to an ecology of life’, in Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, London: Routledge, pp. 13–26.

Isacsson, Magnus (dir.) (1996) Power–One River, Two Nations, film, Montreal: Cineflix and the National Film Board of Canada.

LaRusic, Ignatius et al. (1979) Negotiating a Way of Life, Montreal: Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada.

Latour, Bruno (1993) We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Morantz, Toby (2002) The White Man’s Gonna Getcha: The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press.

Preston, Richard (2002 [1975]) Cree Narrative, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press.

Rousseau, Jean (2001) ‘Les nouveaux défis des Cris de la Baie James à l’heure de la globalisation’, Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 73–82.

Salisbury, Richard F. (1976) ‘Transactions or transactors: an economic anthropologist’s view’, in B. Kapferer (ed.) Transaction and Meaning, Philadelphia: Ishi, pp. 41–59.

Scott, Colin H. (1983) ‘The semiotics of material life among the Wemindji Cree hunters’, Ph.D. thesis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University.

——— (1989) ‘Ideology of reciprocity between James Bay Cree and the Whiteman state’, in Peter Skalnik (ed.), Outwitting the State, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, pp. 81–108.

——— (1996) ‘Science for the west, myth for the rest?’, in Laura Nader (ed.), Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge, New York: Routledge, pp. 69–86.

Tanner, A. (1979) Bringing Home Animals. Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters, St John’s: Memorial University, Institute of Social and Economic Research.

——— (1999) ‘Culture, social change, and Cree opposition to the James Bay Hydroelectric Project’, in James F. Hornig (ed.), Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 121–40.

7

Grassroots Transnationalism
and Life Projects of Vermonters
in the Great Whale Campaign

GLENN McRAE

Connections

Jim Higgins was not certain what the result would be when he forwarded a message to the Grand Council of the Crees¹ in the spring of 1989 through the Mohawk nation bordering his home state of Vermont. Jim, an ardent wilderness canoe enthusiast had been running the rivers that flowed east to James Bay or north to Ungava Bay in northern Quebec for a decade. He had watched with concern as survey markers started appearing in wilderness areas, and reports of a great herd of Caribou² being drowned from a surge in dam releases filtered south. What brought him to the point of trying to contact the James Bay Crees was his discovery that Vermont utilities had entered into negotiations to increase their purchase of power from Hydro-Quebec, the provincially owned utility, and that Hydro-Quebec was aggressively marketing power to the northeastern United States in order to guarantee funding for the Great Whale Project, a new massive hydroelectric development on lands claimed by the Crees.

The first journey of Crees coming to Vermont, stimulated by Jim’s message, was the first ripple of a great many circles that would connect James Bay Cree and Vermont communities in a series of exchanges, both personal and political, that continue to the present (McRae 2001). In this examination of grassroots transnationalism, I look at the Great Whale Campaign from viewpoints in Vermont. Numerous accounts of this and other campaigns have been written from the perspective of the Crees, and by the Crees themselves (as in Coon Come’s contribution to this volume, Chapter 9). What I believe to be missing, and what I hope to contribute, is an understanding of these movements that goes beyond the portrayal of them as forging ‘common cause’ between the First World activists and

the empowered activist bodies of the Third and Fourth Worlds (to use an outdated paradigm). I believe that within the framework of a grassroots transnationalism we can observe a range of interests and identities expressed and, in the process of interaction, changed. I contend that interests and identities are not changed in a manner that creates more homogeneity or even shared and common interests or identity. Rather I will advance the idea that what is newly forged is a set of linkages that create a dynamic stream of communication and understanding of the relative socio-political positions.

The Great Whale Campaign as it unfolded in Vermont in the early 1990s is a case study in the initiation of a local Indigenous resistance that grows itself into a translocal movement. I will examine how the homogenous message that initiates the campaign becomes a heterogeneous but connected set of messages based in actions grounded in local landscapes. I will also discuss the expanding critique of globalization, centred on the simple epigram, ‘there is no away’, that is inspiring the growth of a critical localism at the root of both new indigenist, environmental and democratic movements, but that is also reshaping some localism in the form of corporate environmentalism.

Taking Life Projects across the Border

The development of a movement contesting the Hydro-Quebec contracts to sell electricity to the northeastern United States created a ripple effect that confronted thousands of Vermonters with questions about their daily lives and practices and about the democratic principles they valued and how they were applied in their institutions. The expression by the Crees of their special relationship to the land had particular resonance for Vermonters, who see their history as one guided by a tradition of land stewardship and see themselves as particularly successful at managing a variety of forces that might degrade the land in Vermont. This point of connection provided Vermonters with a story and connection to share through their existing affinities and self-identities. The small groups of Vermonters who had direct contact with the Crees took the stories of those contacts, and the resulting new convictions, to others through their personal and organizational networks, whether an association, neighbourhood church, or family. There were many levels at which participants found they could interact with the campaign. This might have included the act of voting against the contracts in a local referendum, or hosting a Cree family when they came to Vermont, or, as in the case of many students, reading a book and acting out a simulated debate as a way of better understanding the various perspectives involved. Each act built on previous actions and stimulated new ones.

The Crees came to Vermont to articulate a message that their way of life was at risk, and that the cause was directly linked to decisions that people in Vermont were making about their lives. Where they were successful they connected to Vermonters’ common themes and questions about their own resistance to or acceptance of development in the last fifty years–years that have evidenced tremendous change in the Vermont way of life (Bryan and McClaughry 1989; Sherman 2000). Yet these actions did not homogenize the Cree or the Vermont experience. They instead forged deft and strong links between two distinctive localities in struggle. The struggles that ensued intersected at numerous points, but also took on independent manifestations. Indeed, despite the mobilization inspired by the Cree intervention, some Vermont activists remained strongly tied to earlier forms of environmental action aimed at working within market institutions and values.

The grassroots surge of support for the Crees, the flow of Vermonters travelling to James Bay and Crees travelling to Vermont, and active questioning of public policy in Vermont over the next five years were the framework for a transnational support network that extended beyond Vermont and were at least partially responsible for the eventual cancellation of the Great Whale Project. This successful conclusion for the Crees was preceded by a marginally successful campaign in Vermont that led to the utilities in the state not increasing the amount of power they purchased from Quebec. While not successful in their aim of cancelling new contracts, activists in Vermont noted that the new contracts, for the same amount of energy that Vermont had previously purchased, could not be used to help leverage financing for new hydro development.

The activism embodied in this effort led some Vermonters to question Vermont’s own development. But it was also compatible with community activism rooted in corporate environmentalism. At least three distinct threads of resistance and protest can be found in these interactions. There was the direct connection of Crees and Vermonters, with Vermonters working to give voice and re-enact the Cree message directly in Vermont. There was also the ongoing corporate environmentalism that argued against contracts with Hydro-Quebec and Vermont having a part in further efforts to import large blocks of power, based on standard economic models and projections that sought to promote energy efficiency and local sources of power as alternatives. Finally, there were the restimulated efforts at addressing some of the incongruities between Vermont’s image of itself as a model of local democracy and government accessibility and the increasingly visible bureaucratic system that guided decision-making in the state. As these three threads make up the larger strand of action during and since the campaign, they provide a fertile ground for analysis of the interactions between Indigenous and other activists.

The literature surrounding the relationships between social justice and environmental activists from the United States, Europe and Canada working to save the environment, and the Indigenous peoples who rely on it, usually presents the relationships as flowing one way. Help is provided to Indigenous peoples to support their struggle and preserve the rainforest (or whatever environment is under threat from development).³ Although, increasingly, the relationships between Indigenous communities and their far-distant supporters are being presented in a more complex manner (Rabben 1998; Gedicks 1993), what has been missing is an analysis of the effects that these interactions have on the First World activists and their communities that step forward to help in Indigenous struggles. The activists, and the organizations they work for or are members of, are often portrayed as coming to the battle fully developed, and leaving wholly unchanged after the outcome.⁴

There were three sectors of transformative action in Vermont affected by these interactions. The first sector encompassed those people in communities where the Crees visited, spoke and interacted with residents. The Crees’ expression of their own disenfranchisement from decisions that affected their lives created room for discussion in Vermont communities concerning just how much control Vermonters still had over decisions affecting how they wanted to live their lives and express themselves.

The second sector involved the hundreds of individuals who actually went to visit the James Bay communities, and returned with that experience. For the most part these individuals came back having experienced both a political and a personal transformation.

This personal and political transformation of individuals in turn impacted on the final sector of transformative action: institutions. Institutional change took place primarily within the environmental and economic justice organizations in the state that had previously worked on energy issues. These institutions sought change within the traditional market-based system; as one environmentalist put it:

We made a conscious campaign choice not to appeal to the emotional arguments about the impact this project would have on the Crees, a kind of ‘save the Indian’ campaign. Instead, we focused on the economic argument that the PSB [Public Service Board] and the utilities were making a bad financial decision for themselves and for Vermont ratepayers. (Cited in McRae 2001)

While the institutional environmental work remained anchored in the existing systems of marketplace economics, the individuals involved often went beyond this thinking in their direct interactions in the community and personal experience with the state’s corporate and political infrastructure.

It is my contention that the conditions for bringing increased attention to a new sense of the local, as a focus for social action, requires a corresponding

level of study of specific local campaigns as they have developed in spaces like Vermont. The strength of Indigenous resistance movements in places such as James Bay and corresponding movements in places like Vermont are interrelated. Resistance to the Hydro-Quebec contracts in Vermont was not simply a matter of ‘saving Great Whale’, but some of it was also part of what Dirlik (1997) proposes as shifting resistance to counter the coercive elements of modernization. The Cree resistance stimulated and strengthened local life projects in Vermont.

Great Whale Campaign through the Local Lens of Vermont

Vermont is situated in a unique geopolitical and historical position for consideration of its role in the Great Whale Campaign. Vermont has a long history of social justice advocacy (from banning slavery in its state constitution upon adoption in 1791, to passing legislation in 2000 creating ‘civil unions’–i.e. same-sex legal unions). Since the 1960s it gained national prominence for its environmental quality (at least in part based on twenty years of tourism promotion of its green mountains, clean air and water, fall foliage, and bucolic rural settings) and environmental activism, particularly the anti-nuclear-power organizing of the 1970s.

When the Crees started their contacts and campaign to stop the Great Whale Project, they employed moral approaches to elicit response and action from people and organizations they encountered in Vermont and other states. From 1989 to 1992, the state of Vermont was the scene of an extensive debate over energy policy and development choices, in the background of which were moral questions. The moral opposition staged by the Crees and interpreted by supporters in Vermont pushed the debate in a direction totally unexpected by the utilities or the regulators. The debate was framed in questions that did not fit into the legislative or regulatory structure, but were clearly associated with strongly held values in Vermont. Vermonters listening to the debate were forced to ask (and were presented with these questions continuously by the media) why there was a separation between their values and the social power structure that they assumed grew out of those values.

Should Vermonters only be concerned with environmental degradation in our own backyard? If so, encouraging the trashing of northern Quebec’s environment would be a good idea because we will get our electricity without ever seeing the direct effects.⁵ Could Vermonters assume that decisions would be made fairly and justly in Canada?⁶ Or should they go beyond these assumptions, as the Crees and Inuit urged, and ensure that these decisions corresponded with their values of fairness and justice? Could

Vermonters justifiably complain about fossil fuel emissions from Midwest power plants that degrade Vermont’s environment, then turn around, get their power from James Bay, and ignore their impact on that environment?⁷ In Vermont, where state government has long prided itself on improving conditions for children, Mayor Sappa Fleming of the Inuit community of Kuujjuaraapik at the mouth of the Great Whale River, asked Governor Kunin of Vermont, what about the future of the children? ‘The lives of everyone’s children up there are at stake.’ To which Kunin is reported to have replied, ‘I have to think about my children’s future.’⁸ The question remained as to why any children anywhere needed to be at risk as a result of decisions made in Vermont.

These questions and the debates that surrounded them were framed by the participation of a variety of interest groups. Some groups were formed in direct response to Cree interventions, but few of these outlived the campaign. Other groups brought their previously informed ethos of environmental and social justice to the campaign activities, and were informed and in many cases strengthened by their interactions with the Crees and the issues that emerged during the campaign. Still other groups working within the environmental and progressive economic development framework they developed in Vermont kept a distance from the Crees and groups working more directly with them. These groups saw benefit in the Cree-inspired actions, but also viewed them as a possible diversion from other agendas. The Crees asked directly that the contracts not be consummated, and that Vermont look to other options. This new effort helped initiate and, in part, direct the tone of how Vermonters debated their future in terms of energy choices and the future shape of its economy, communities and institutions of democracy.

Vermont: The Global in the Local

In setting the stage for this drama to play out, the economic connections have to be considered alongside those of values. Vermont’s geographic location has also placed it in a unique position for relations with Quebec and as a conduit for the export from Quebec of electric power. Vermont’s major population centre is in the north, thirty miles from the Canadian border, and situated on a historical north–south trade route. Upon the untimely death of Governor Snelling in 1991, Lt-Governor Howard Dean came into the governorship. In a letter to the new governor, who had not had much time to evaluate all his responsibilities, former governor Salmon wrote to provide support and strong advice on the need to preserve Vermont’s ‘unique relationship with Quebec’, and to honour the contracts

for purchase of electric power from Hydro-Quebec as a continuation of that unique relationship.

As you know, we have no greater friend in the world than Canada, in general, and the Province of Quebec, in particular. No stone should be left unturned to continue to exploit this sound relationship for the greater good of our mutual societies.

This echoed Governor Snelling’s vision of establishing a long-term foreign trade relationship with Quebec as a strategy for growing the Vermont economy. Salmon also noted in his letter to Dean that the contract with Hydro-Quebec had ‘so much to say about Vermont’s economic future’ (McRae 2001).

In addition to direct trade relations, Vermont is also situated as a conduit for Quebec electricity exports to the United States, a conduit that has great value in the long-range plans of Hydro-Quebec and Quebec economic planners. Although there are other possible routes, the already established Vermont linkages provide an existing infrastructure to be exploited.

The Crees offered the opportunity to link their campaign to a Vermont campaign that changed from being James Bay-centric to a Vermont-centric activity focused on Vermont issues. This was a critical point of connection, strengthened by the continual flow of people-to-people contacts in trips of Crees to Vermont and Vermonters to James Bay. Six years after the conclusion of the campaign, a Cree activist, Matthew Mukash, who had become chief of the Great Whale community, reflected that the ‘neighbour-to-neighbour’ connection was a critical step, but what was just as important was for the Crees to know that Vermonters had and would articulate their own efforts to address conditions in Vermont, so that Vermont would not be a contributor to future problems in Cree territory (McRae 2001).

We also need to get white people to look at themselves, not at us. They need to focus on healing themselves. People should not think to study us except where we can hold a mirror up to them to show them what they need to look at.

During the Great Whale Campaign, the actions by both the Crees and the Vermonters who supported them amounted to more than the visible direct acts that occurred around the courtrooms, corporate boardrooms, government policy meetings, and voting booths. The responses of Vermonters who supported the Crees created an opportunity for personal and social critique. In the end, some Vermonters did more than simply demand a change or restitution from a corporate structure to the Crees; they opened the possibility for social experimentation and reinvention in Vermont.

In responding to the requests and challenges presented by the Crees, Vermonters turned back to institutions they assumed were the embodiment

of values considered to be at the core of their identity as Vermonters. Yet Vermonters found that their institution’s actualization of those values fell short of the rhetoric.

In the Vermont economic sector, rather than emphasizing self-reliance, private-sector initiatives and governmental policy favoured the purchase of large blocks of energy from out-of-state, requiring the export of significant economic resources to obtain guaranteed sources of energy. Activists in Vermont, as well as the Crees, vigorously argued that such a policy diminished Vermont’s self-reliance, by tying it to sources of power that it had little control over, and by exporting significant resources rather than investing those resources locally. These fragile economic relations were indicators of how much Vermont was becoming tied in to global economic systems.

Vermont’s system of government and state administration are regarded by most in Vermont as being more direct and accessible than they are in other states. Unlike other states, a number of local utilities in Vermont were bound by charter to bring the contract decision before town voters. In the campaign, there were some significant successes in direct intervention through grassroots organizing and voting; but, for the most part, direct participation in decision-making was restricted for Vermonters. Activists, environmentalists, and even some significant business interests in Vermont considered the signing of the contracts with Hydro-Quebec a monumental decision, made with little citizen input.⁹ Three successive governors said that there was nothing they could do. Three successive legislative sessions failed to produce legislation requiring a broader overview of such projects. The regulatory bodies responsible for review of the contracts stated clearly that they must abide by the law that restricted what they could consider and how.

Throughout the process, activists and citizens remarked that they felt shut out. They had no viable recourse that made a difference. Bryan and McClaughry (1989) argue that, even at the town-meeting forum, much vaunted in Vermont for its ‘direct democracy’, the survival of local direct democracy as a tradition in Vermont is tied, at least in part, to the fact that the vast majority of its 250 towns have fewer than 2,000 people each. Face-to-face relationships dominate social networks, and over short periods of time it is not uncommon for the majority of citizens in a town to have served in one or more leadership positions. This builds an expectation for all levels of government to work in a similarly responsive and direct manner (Bryan and McClaughry 1989). More often than not, citizens advocating against the contracts were rebuffed. The rise of bureaucratic governmental structures and elite power brokers, and the influence of money, were blamed for the failure of their efforts.¹⁰

The green of Vermont’s hills has often been described in a manner that makes it a reflector for the ‘green’ values of its inhabitants. When George P.

Marsh published his classic tome on environmental stewardship in the 1860s he did not look at green hills, but rather at a denuded landscape threatening an ecological disaster due to overgrazing and deforestation. In the next hundred years, through stewardship, an economic shift that drove sheep farming from the state, and population loss, Vermont’s landscape came to resemble the more pastoral setting people value today. Bryan and McClaughry (1989) call it an environmentalism of use that is maintained by a strong sense of localism. They disparage other environmentalisms as representative of central, undemocratic, elitist controls. Yet Vermont’s green reputation develops from these other environmentalisms: its land-use regulation, its bottle bill, its ban on billboards, and its distinction as being the last state to have a Wal-Mart store and the only state still without a McDonald’s in its capital city. All of these are centralized initiatives.

On the issue of Great Whale, neither the local working environmentalism nor the legislated environmentalisms availed activists, who saw the project as anti-environmental on all levels. The tension between the need for power and the lack of will to meet that need locally is still unresolved. One of the reasons is that environmentalism in Vermont, as elsewhere, has become closely tied to centralized and corporate decision-making and market interests. Nevertheless, the Cree Great Whale Campaign became a process that moved many activists to a clearer awareness of this contradiction.

Joe Sherman (2000), in his commentary on themes in contemporary Vermont history, looks on the 1990s as a ‘decade of concern’. Sherman hypothesizes that there was too much concern, and it left the state fractious and unfocused. It did, however, in his words, identify what he called an ‘undercurrent of morality, fairness’. Vermonters expected that their actions reflected this: ‘This sense of morality . . . nourished much of the public debate, from education spending to affordable housing to condom giveaways to what to do about the garbage. The burning question was, “Are we doing it right?” ’ (Sherman 2000: 179). The lack of justice in the decisions to sign the contracts seemed to bother Vermonters most. It was a theme that the Crees hammered on continually. Could Vermonters, by either action or inaction, actually contribute to the destruction of an environment and a culture just to have cheap electricity? This question was underscored by what the Vermont activist Jim Higgins saw as clear-cut support for the Crees from Vermonters who could identify with either being on the socio-economic margins or who had their identity threatened, like those who still hunted and trapped in Vermont and lived a more subsistence lifestyle.

Poor people in Vermont really understood this. The poorer towns voted in solidarity with the Crees, even with all the hype about higher electric rates. There was some real solidarity built. I would often talk to people about this, and it surprised

me how many knew about it; even the janitor at city hall in Burlington told me he was against the contract. (McRae 2001)

Organizing for this campaign drew on each of these core values in the Vermont identity. In confronting those values, activists felt the strength of having a common and recognized ideal to rally around, but as the campaign continued the clear weaknesses in the ‘reality’ behind the rhetoric appeared to some. Sherman (2000) speaks of Vermont as the ‘late great fairy-tale state’ that came into the twentieth century some sixty years late. Vermont maintained a self-image that translated into a public image yearned after in other regions of the country, but was not able to maintain the structure to support those values as it grew into its modern state role. Vermonters organizing to support the Crees failed to create a collective state action on this issue that matched the values Vermont projected. Perhaps for this reason the desire and need to take personal control and action became such a prominent activity of some of those in the campaign, as exemplified in the journeys going north and the hosting of Crees when they came to Vermont.

Disturbing Dialogues

Grassroots transnationalism creates unexpected changes

These traditions of protest in Vermont intersected with new forms of protest exhibited by an Indigenous activism that is consciously seeking out interfaces with environmental and social activists who are not solely or even primarily focused on Indigenous issues. Activism is starting to share an increasingly similar set of variables across these geographic and cultural borders without creating homogeneity. There is an increase in the study and exchange of techniques and strategies between Indigenous activists and non-Native allies they have affected,¹¹ as well as among themselves. Solidarity visits from representatives of different Indigenous movements to James Bay during the Great Whale Campaign from Guatemala (Rigoberta Menchú) and Brazil (Kayapo leaders) gave substance to the environmental metaphoric connections ‘Arctic to Amazon’. The multiplying and interconnected networks of Indigenous nations and movements make it highly likely that unique attributes that might be found in campaigns like Great Whale will increasingly be reconstructed and reinvented within numerous localities throughout the world, just as they have often been shared through networks of environmental and social justice groups that have operated globally.

Without consciously planning it, the Crees, in the development of their networks, established a framework of transnational activism that has connected them to struggles throughout the world. But these networks changed

them, just as they changed others. Many of the Crees’ connections are based on their ability to identify, isolate, re-create and use, in the context of the Cree discourse, such values as environmentalism and human rights. Neither of these values was intrinsic to the Cree discourse prior to their active opposition to the mega-hydroelectric developments in their territory in the 1970s. In the twenty years prior to the Great Whale Campaign the Crees incorporated these discourses into their own to enable others to better identify and relate to their struggle.

In appropriating and incorporating these values, the Crees effectively separate values such as environmentalism from having an intrinsic attachment to particular persons, kinds of groups or places. The redeployment of local environmental and social values is perhaps best illustrated by the way the Crees used these very values to identify and make visible the externalization of Vermont’s environmental costs.

Learning that there is no ‘away’

I was asked to speak at a community gathering in Brattleboro. I had to drive down in a raging snowstorm. It was a really crazy trip. The meeting ended up in a church basement with ten people. One of them, a young person, was not hostile but quite challenging, indicating that hydro was the best choice for energy because of air quality issues from other sources. I talked to the group about the fact that the Crees do not have any separate word for ‘air’ and therefore could not address this argument. It might seem crazy to the Crees–as it should to others–to destroy their environment and way of life to improve local ‘air’ conditions elsewhere. (Brian Craik, Cree Embassy, quoted in McRae 2001)

Vermont’s pristine environment, or at least the ascription of pristine environmental conditions to Vermont, plays a key role in the identity of the state and its people both internally and externally. The park-like ambiance of Vermont’s landscape was achieved over the last hundred years via the proactive stewardship of farmers and local communities and the neglect of vast areas that natural forces restored to forest. Beginning in the 1970s, at the same time that the Crees were facing the intrusion of a world-view that segmented the environment into resources and waste, Vermont was establishing a structure of environmental management that segregated and categorized the environment. Air, waste, water, land management, forests, parks, fish and wildlife (game and non-game), and agriculture all became departmentalized approaches to achieving a unified goal of preserving the environment and placing it in the service of Vermonters. Vermont government and citizens focused greater attention on the environment and its ‘quality’ in a new context that clearly designated the environment as a foundation for the economic well-being of the state.¹² The environment

became an attribute of the marketplace. State environmental policy in the last thirty years had followed a path of ‘sending problems away’ if they could not be easily dealt with.¹³

In the last thirty years Vermont’s population, industry and, as a result, impacts on its environment have all grown. Paralleling this growth has been a systematic dismantling of the old infrastructure for self-reliance in producing what it needs, and managing what it produces (e.g. wastes). Currently, almost all energy resources (electricity, oil, gas) consumed in the state are produced elsewhere and transported into the state. Vermont also imports most of its food and other basic necessities. On the output end Vermont has next to no capacity for managing the wastes (ranging from domestic to nuclear) it produces in-state.

Vermont also enacted legislation to restrict any objection to this approach of sending problems ‘away’. At the beginning of its hearings on the Hydro-Quebec contracts, the Public Service Board (PSB) was quite clear that its mandate to consider the environmental or social impacts of importing power ended at Vermont’s border. The Board did have the clout to require evidence that the power was being imported from an area that had a comparable review process. It did not, however, evaluate the implementation of that review process.

In 1991, Larry House, the representative from Chisasibi to the Grand Council of the Crees, provided testimony¹⁴ to the Vermont Senate Committee on the Environment, specifically concerning what the Crees were not allowed to present to the PSB. It was also an appeal to look ‘beyond the borders of Vermont and to establish laws that will address the impacts of the decisions made in Vermont on the environment and on the way of life of those who live outside of your borders’ (cited in McRae 2001).

For the Crees, the idea that Vermont and other localities should own their problems was the core message that they presented in Vermont and throughout their efforts in the United States. The appeal was not to ‘help’ the Crees in Quebec, but to stop those behaviours in Vermont that threatened the Crees directly and indirectly. They desired Vermonters to tend their gardens in a manner that did not harm their neighbours. No Vermonter tolerated a neighbour who constantly sprayed pesticides on their own garden that then drifted over to the next. Currently, Vermonters do not tolerate Midwestern coal plant emissions that create serious air quality problems in Vermont. The Crees were simply requesting that Vermonters apply that standard to themselves in governing their impacts on others.

When House was confronted with challenges that the Crees had already changed and that development was inevitable, he chose not to dispute it, but said:

Our way of life is ancient. It is built upon a respect for the land and for other people. We have ceremonies and traditions that are sacred. We have our own language that is different from that of the people around us. We seek to protect these things and also we seek to develop and adapt our way of life to the changing world. We are not against development. We encourage it. The mega-hydroelectric projects proposed by Hydro-Quebec are not development, they are degradation of the environment and of our way of life. (Cited in McRae 2001)

House puts forth the contradictions inherent in what has been shown to him as being Vermont’s representation of itself: a culture that at its core claims a ‘respect for the land and for other people’ (cited in McRae 2001). In this statement he creates a link between the Crees and Vermonters, and exposes the contradiction. Vermont’s caring for its land is managed by the destruction of other lands, and its responsibility for the effects of its actions is legislated to end at its borders. House, and the Cree narrative in general, invited Vermont to join in the practice of what Dirlik (1997) identifies as a ‘contemporary localism’. In this Dirlik seeks to distinguish a ‘critical localism’ from localism that acts as an ideological articulation of capitalism.

The critique that House provides of Vermont is another lens with which to examine the predicament of the local. If anything, Vermont’s self-representation, and the external representations that have developed around it, define it as ‘local’ in all traditional senses. In his regional analysis of New England, Pierce (1976) coins the phrase (which could have been taken directly from a tourism brochure): ‘Vermont is perhaps the only place in America a stranger can feel homesick for–before he has even left it.’ He also speaks directly to Vermont’s ‘natural inclination for localism and citizen control’. Although it is not comparable to the genocidal ‘localisms’ embodied in the conflicts in Indonesia, the Marshall Islands, or Kosovo, what the Crees are insinuating in their critique of Vermont’s localism is that it was being expropriated by and used as a tool of capitalism and modernity, rather than existing as the narrative articulated by Pierce which invokes a resistance to and repudiation of the meta-narratives of modernization.

Localism, Markets and Decolonization

Critical localism or local criticism?

The attributes of Vermont’s localism, as expressed in the Great Whale Campaign, often aligned themselves against, not with, the ecological consciousness that Dirlik assigns to the emergence of a contemporary localism of liberation. Despite the changes emerging from the joint campaigns of the Crees and Vermont activists, Vermont’s decisions on the Hydro-Quebec

contracts were made on the basis of a scientific and economic rationality that supersedes local knowledge. Most Vermont towns voted in favour of their local utilities signing contracts with Hydro-Quebec. Thus despite a growing self-reflectiveness among a sector of the Vermont activists that encompassed a critical sense of their earlier assumptions about self-sufficiency, environmental responsibilities to others and local democracy, these changes were not pervasive enough within the time frame of the electric supply contract decisions to alter their outcome decisively. Many sectors of the Vermont movement, as well as the Vermont public, remained entrapped in a localism bound to market environmentalism.

Tanner (1999) contends that the environmental and other supporters of the Crees in the United States, although they opened opportunities for Crees to speak, paid little attention to Cree knowledge. These opportunities for the Crees to express themselves were largely staged as events for the media. ‘As a result the main opposition to the project has been couched in Western “environmentalist” terms without the benefits of Cree concepts and perspectives’ (Tanner 1999: 127). While Tanner’s observation may be accurate in a broad survey of Cree interactions in the United States, I believe that the deeper analysis of these interactions in a locale such as Vermont suggests that the reality is more complex. In some ways the Crees contributed to this effect through their incorporation of the human rights and environmental discourses in what became a powerful strategy of forcing the reflection back on both the proponents of these discourses and the social structures that have been established to contain them. In using these tools the Crees may not have been as critical of them as they needed to deepen their support beyond what Tanner points out are superficial levels. However, at least in Vermont the Crees expanded their critique beyond this, pointing out some of the more visible contradictions in Vermont institutions and image. I do, however, agree with Tanner that the Vermont institutional opposition largely sidestepped the ‘Cree voice’, and allowed the Crees to express themselves, but then addressed their arguments within the social, economic and political structures at hand. Few were self-critical in this context.

In correlating localism with a localism at the service of modernization, Dirlik’s thesis¹⁵ also identifies the process of establishing rigid political forms (especially national borders), as opposed to the creation of ‘more porous borderlands’. The Public Service Board’s ruling that they remained bound by Vermont law not to consider any impacts of the contracts that could not be demonstrated within the borders of Vermont is an effective example of this. Less clear, but equally rigid, were other barriers established by many of the Vermont opponents of the contracts. For example, Ben, a Vermont businessperson and an ardent opponent of the Hydro-Quebec contracts,

thought that the environmental and human rights arguments did not work as well as an economic argument.

The issues were always couched as the cultural hippie environmentalists versus the industrial, profit-minded, chamber-of-commerce types. The environmentalists were always marginalized. They were not speaking to the issues most people could listen to, understand and take action on. I wanted to make an economic argument–one that other businesses and most people could respond to because it affected their profits or costs. I took pains to divorce myself from the groups and work that were pursuing this issue based on the human rights side. (Cited in McRae 2001)

Ben spoke from what he articulated as a new discourse of business and capitalism–one that was based on and reinforced a sense of ‘social responsibility’. It also promoted and sustained a construction of localism that excluded the Cree narratives, as well as the ‘local’ discourses of environmentalism and human rights. In Dirlik’s representation of the predicament of localism, he alludes to the evolution of capitalism towards what he terms ‘Global Capitalism’. This is a process of the transnationalization of capitalism in production that is increasingly grounded in localities without concern for past distinctions (First/Third World), and management that by necessity emerges as supranational, leaving the nation-state in a position ‘betwixt and between’. The disassociation embodied in the narrative that Ben proposed guided a significant portion of the Vermont opposition to the Hydro-Quebec contracts. It dismissed a connection to a local voice, and positioned his narrative alongside other competing but relatively homogeneous narratives of a global capitalism.

Localisms and connections, a yet-to-be-fulfilled potential

Gupta and Ferguson (1997), following Foucault, note that any discourse is simply a tactical component that operates in a field of relationships, and that multiple discourses can be hosted under a single strategy.

Practices that are resistant to a particular strategy of power are thus never innocent of or outside power, for they are always capable of being tactically appropriated and redeployed within another strategy of power, always at risk of slipping from resistance against one strategy of power into complicity with another.

This slippage from resistance to complicity is illustrated by Dirlik (1997) in the expropriation of the radical ecological slogan ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ by transnational corporations in a manner that makes them much better practitioners of it than any radical social force. The global thinking of transnational corporations requires them to think locally in a manner so as

to incorporate localities into the service of global capitalism as specific but interconnected sites of production and consumption.

This, then, is the dilemma of linking resistance and protest movements of Indigenous and previously colonized peoples with groups of activists and social movements that have developed in the dominant Western cultures. Apffel-Marglin takes up this dilemma in what she lays out as the ‘operative features of the path for decolonization’ (Apffel-Marglin 1998: 236–7; see also Esteva and Prakash 1998). She indicates that most of the present social movements in the West are not presenting real alternatives to the current mainstream imperialistic social order there. The analysis of most environmental and social action groups does not run deep enough to denounce the ‘aggressive nature of imperialism’, or to move past simple verification of the symptoms of environmental degradation. For the most part, neither individuals nor groups in the West are willing to relinquish their privileged status and the material wealth associated with that in order to advance more harmonious relations with other peoples.

Apffel-Marglin does, however, indicate that there is an undercurrent of new social resistance movements in the privileged West that may be difficult at this time to identify clearly. It is being born of what she identifies as an increasing dissatisfaction–expressed as a failure of the trust of citizens in reason, a disenchantment with progress, a revulsion for continuing environmental degradation, and a rejection of the increasing pace of change for the sake of change (Apffel-Marglin 1998: 237).

The experience of the Crees in Vermont indicates that one way these new social movements emerge is through the links that develop between Indigenous resistance movements and groups and individuals who support them from their location in the dominant social orders. As part of the resulting actions, in seeking to change those dominant social orders their changing processes of control can become clearer. Where the actions of that resistance results in a focus on the local–not just the Indigenous local, but also the local of the supporters–new social forms are being created, people-to-people, organization-to-organization, and locality-to-locality. The Crees nurtured (and continue to nurture) those connections. The evolution of their requests in Vermont indicated a clear learning of how to develop and sustain those connections. Initial appeals focused on the broad and distant values of environmentalism and human rights. As the Crees interacted directly with Vermonters, they shifted into more direct connections and asked Vermonters to be more like Crees, reflecting on what should be shared values and concern for neighbours. Finally, as the Crees came to understand more about Vermont, and as Vermonters began to articulate their own values, history and vision, the message became one of Vermonters really needing just to build on the values and essence of what they believed they were.

The focus on the local, whether by Indigenous resistance movements or the mirrored reflection of a local support community, can, in Dirlik’s (1997) words, sow the seeds of resistance. It is difficult to quantify the level of transformation that might have occurred on the local level as a result of this interaction and the continuing interactions between the Crees and other northern Indigenous communities throughout the rest of the decade. Have Vermont communities and citizens become more closely aligned with the values and identity that are associated with Vermont? Many of the citizen activists who participated in the campaign in Vermont have gone on to work on other local campaigns and to build links with other communities in shared struggle. While many individuals still speak of and point to the transformations that the campaign had in their individual lives, the question remains as to whether these changes extended themselves to change in communities and institutions that would influence future debates similar to Great Whale.

Three indicators might substantiate some institutional change. In the late 1990s Vermont passed a landmark campaign-finance reform bill to reduce the power of special interests and increase government’s connectedness and accountability. In addition, the state created the nation’s first energy-efficiency utility, putting responsibility for conservation in the hands of an entity that had no conflict of interest, with the sole purpose of decreasing the need for finding ever-increasing sources of outside power. Also of note have been the emergence and replication of various community visioning groups, and of networks of ‘healthy community’ initiatives, around the state that have brought citizens together to discuss the values that they hold in common, and to devise strategies to actualize them on a local level. While none of these developments grew directly out of the Great Whale Campaign in Vermont, the community level interactions certainly contributed to them.

The rapt attention of global capitalism to localities, as it consumes their cultures, can make the local aware of itself in relation to global capitalism, and presents the local as a site of possible resistance. These localities can be in James Bay or in Vermont. How those localities become aware of their potential as sites of resistance relates back to the activities embodied in the core of the Great Whale Campaign in Vermont–a campaign that has become a continuing story of journeys and exchanges. The strength and significance of future local resistance movements will be bound up with the nature and strength of future journeys and exchanges among as yet emerging networks of local movements.

Notes

1. The Grand Council of the Crees now maintains a website (www.gcc.ca) that includes current activities and some history of previous actions. They are much easier to reach than they were in the 1980s.

2. Chronicled in Williams 1985.

3. As in Schmink and Woods’ (1992) extensive account based in Amazonia, or as is found in the documented work of organizations such as Cultural Survival (www.cs.org).

4. Coutin’s study of the US sanctuary movement that provided support for Central American refugees fleeing political terror is a notable exception.

5. Jan Beyea, senior staff scientist of the National Audubon Society, Burlington Free Press, 29 January 1989. Also see Gedicks and Grossman in this volume.

6. George Sterzinger, Commissioner of the Public Service Department, in ‘Cree Strike Out with Kunin’, Vanguard Press, 5 April 1990, pp. 7, 22.

7. Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle quoted in Burke 1990.

8. Quoted from Posluns 1993: 135.

9. Lew Milford, former director of the Conservation Law Foundation’s Vermont office, opposed the contracts and outlined the magnitude of the deal in a conversation with me: ‘We got a US$4 billion deal. That is staggering given the size of Vermont. Vermont is not as big as many cities in the US, and yet it was playing with terms and commitments that were way beyond its means. Vermont’s debt to a foreign country, because we are obligated to the Quebec government that owns Hydro-Quebec, has us in a similar position to what many Third World countries face.’ Personal interview, February 2000.

10. Some campaigners became directly involved in the push for campaign finance reform as a direct result of their experiences on this issue. A reform bill was passed in 1997.

11. See, for example, the activities and work of the Indigenous Environmental Network, Honour the Earth Foundation, Indigenous Women’s Network, and the Seventh Generation Fund. For a review of North American Indigenous resistance and protest efforts in this vein, see also: Gedicks 1993; LaDuke 1999; Lewis 1995; Wadden 1996; Whaley and Bresette 1994.

12. Governor Richard Snelling, in his farewell address after four terms as governor in 1985, laid out the narrative of the fragmented but inseparable nature of Vermont’s environment and economy that presents an ongoing predicament for Vermont policymakers and citizens.

Indeed, we know that part of our economic strength has come from the recognition by others throughout the United States that the quality of life in Vermont will continue to be attractive and enjoyable for the foreseeable future.

The record clearly shows that the economy of the State of Vermont and the economic circumstances of our people have been strengthened by our determination to develop our resources thoughtfully while maintaining vigilance in the protection of our environment. (10 January 1985; recorded in the Journal of the Senate of the State of Vermont Biennial Session)

13. Interview with former Vermont Environmental Agency head (McRae 2001).

14. Extracted from written testimony, 21 February 1991 (House 1991).

15. Dirlik (1997) identifies elements of what he sees as a post-modern consciousness that serve as enabling and producing conditions for a contemporary localism. In addition to the attributes cited above, also included would be ‘the adjustment to nature against the urge to conquer it; heterogeneity over homogeneity; over determination against categorically defined subjectivities; ideology as culture, and culture as daily negotiation;
enlightenment as hegemony; Native sensibilities and spiritualities as a supplement to, if not a substitute for, reason; oral against written culture; and political movements as “politics of differences” and “politics of location” ’ (1997: 89).

References

Apffel-Marglin, Frédérique (ed.) (1998) The Spirit of Regeneration: Andean Culture Confronting Western Notions of Development (compiled with PRATEC), London: Zed Books.

Bryan, Frank, and John McClaughry (1989) The Vermont Papers: Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale, Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green.

Burke, Don (1990) ‘The southern campaign’, Macleans Magazine, 21 May.

Burlington Press, 29 January 1989.

Coutin, Susan Bibler (1993) The Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the US Sanctuary Movement, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Dirlik, Arif (1997) The Post-colonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Esteva, Gustavo, and Madu Suri Prakash (1998) Grassroots Post-modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, London: Zed Books.

Gedicks, Al (1993) The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles against Multinational Corporations, Boston, MA: South End Press.

Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson (1997) ‘Culture, power, place: ethnography at the end of an era’, in Gupta and Ferguson (eds), Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1–32.

House, Larry (1991) ‘Written testimony to Vermont Senate Committee on the Environment’, copy provided by Cree Embassy, Ottawa, Ontario.

LaDuke, Winona (1999) All Our Relations, Boston: South End Press.

Lewis, David Rich (1995) ‘Native Americans and the environment: a survey of twentieth-century issues’, American Indian Quarterly 19, pp. 423–51.

McRae, Glenn (2001) ‘Protest journeys: Vermont encounters in a campaign of translocal solidarity with the James Bay Crees’, Ph.D. thesis, Anthropology Dept, Union Institute and University, Cincinnati.

Peirce, Neal R. (1976) The New England States: People, Politics, and Power in the Six New England States, New York: W. W. Norton.

Posluns, Michael (1993) Voices from the Odeyak, Toronto: NC Press.

Rabben, Linda (1998) Unnatural Selection: The Yanomami, the Kayapo and the Onslaught of Civilization, Seattle: Pluto Press.

Schmink, Marianne, and Charles H. Wood (1992) Contested Frontiers in Amazonia, New York: Columbia University Press.

Sherman, Joe (2000) Fast Land on a Dirt Road, South Royalton, VT: Chelsea Green.

Tanner, Adrian (1999) ‘Culture, social change, and Cree opposition to the James Bay hydroelectric development’, in James F. Hornig (ed.), Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 121–40.

Vanguard Press (1990) ‘Cree strike out with Kunin’, 5 April, pp. 7, 22.

Wadden, Marie (1996) Nitassinan: The Innu Struggle to Reclaim Their Homeland, Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.

Whaley, Rick and Walt Bresette (1994) Walleye Warriors: The Chippewa Treaty Rights Story, Warner, NH: Writer’s Publishing Cooperative.

Williams, Ted (1985) ‘What Killed 10,000 Caribou?’, Audubon, March, pp. 12–17.

8

‘The People Had Discovered
Their Own Approach to Life’:
Politicizing Development Discourse

WENDY RUSSELL

Wendy Russell is Assistant Professor at the Centre for International Studies at Huron University College in London, Ontario. Her current research is into the impact of neoliberal economic policy on local economic practice in the Mushkegowuk community of Fort Albany.

In this chapter, I address what can be called the political economy of economic development in a northern Canadian Indigenous community. I have chosen the term ‘political economy’ to underscore the central place that economic, cultural and political interconnection has in local development analysis in the Fort Albany First Nation settlement, an Indigenous community on the west coast of James Bay in northern Ontario, Canada. Fort Albany’s discourse on the problem of development is parallel to the critiques of development that are being made in a number of other national contexts, discussed below. These critiques have amply demonstrated the need for understanding Indigenous and local responses to economic development through local agency. Local initiatives are continuous with past forms of negotiation with colonial and national opponents, and are not merely momentary, reactionary developments to an immediate threat. These are, instead, acts of building consciousness that are thoroughly tied to the economic conditions through which people reproduce themselves and their society. Most important to my argument here is how the critique of development as global capitalist expansion can also be used to emphasize economic diversity as a condition of life for the economically marginalized, as I show below. I thus begin with a discussion of the necessity of a fully fledged political economy of economic development in Indigenous communities in northern Canada, and then present some of the development discourse from the ‘development frontier’ of Fort Albany, and how it deals with the

problems of local agency, relationships with the nation-state, and the prospect of renewing local autonomy through economic development.

The Persistence of Small-scale Economies and Development Critique

Analysis of the political economy of economic development in the Canadian north consistently details the north’s identity as a resource base for industrial economies in the south (Coates 1985; Coates and Powell 1989). Various studies of economic development and Indigenous communities in Canada document the effects of these boom-and-bust or resource extraction economies on the highly localized small-scale and subsistence economies of Native communities (Gagné 1994; Paine 1977; Rees 1988; Salisbury 1986). While these analyses show the political economy of Canada in international relations, and the subsequent marginalization of Indigenous peoples within the state, there are few reviews of local Indigenous responses to such economic development (Asch 1979; Brody 1988; Niezen 1998). This is especially remarkable given a diverse literature on community responses to development in those regions drawn into development as ‘the undeveloped Third World’. This literature locates the failure of modernization projects in their biases to Western social forms (Boserup 1970) and the consequent invisibility of economic diversity (Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1990). Exploring the hegemony of growth-obsessed and market-oriented forms of capitalism, the literature critical of the hold modernization has over development thinking assumed that the livelihoods of much of the world have been left outside of development. Highly localized, small-scale and subsistence economies, despite successful articulations with capitalism (Lee 1992), are situated in opposition to capitalist development.

It is understandable, then, that ‘struggle’ is now a point of departure for analysing and understanding the situation of ‘undeveloped’ communities during the current era. Small-scale, subsistence or land based economies continue to be linked with capital, but in shifting contexts of wider trends to further capital mobility and pressures to dismantle national services and remove subsidies for the subsistence pursuits of the poor, economically marginal or geographically remote. The continuing crisis of development is not just capitalist advance into new territories, but the creation and re-creation of struggles of those at the new and shifting frontiers of capital to maintain their capacity to reproduce a normal social, economic and ecological context. Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen (1999) suggest the ‘subsistence perspective’ to express the specifics of the crisis facing these economies as they are conquered and dismantled by capitalist appropriation of labour and land, as well as a name for the struggles to maintain the priorities of the

social/environmental webs that are the primary ‘wealth’ of these economies. June Nash similarly argues that the reproduction of small-scale economies is a struggle for survival under the ever-changing, expanding and contracting reach of capital (Nash 2001). Like Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen, Nash conflates informal, domestic and non-market economic activity as ‘subsistence’, arguing that these economic forms are drawn together by the common threat capitalism poses to their security, but most especially by their common struggle ‘to assert the right to live in a world with a diminishing subsistence base’ (1994: 10). As portrayed in these works the struggles for self-determination and self-sufficiency are significantly linked, and it is this tie that I want to emphasize as a means to keep available the possibility of economic diversity.

This ‘diversity’ is discursively relegated to the margins of hegemonic capitalism when we identify it as ‘non-capitalist’, ‘traditional’ or ‘pre-capitalist’ (Gibson-Graham 1996: 6–7). Self-consciously to deny this marginality created by a particular construction of ‘capitalism’ moves subsistence and informal economies from the fringes and portrays them instead as belonging to the plural, unruly and ungovernable set of economic practices that make up ‘capitalism’. Myriad economic forms, especially those that combine subsistence with market-oriented production, are thus not ‘unconquered’ or ‘remnant’ because they contain a traditional component. Thus we are not required to account for the unity of, for example, land-based pursuits and the cash sector in the overall economy, or mistakenly to portray subsistence pursuits as anachronistic fragments at the margins of an otherwise total capitalist economy. Gagné makes this error in an analysis of the economic engagement between the James Bay Crees and their Euro-Canadian partners, and interprets the land-based portion of their mixed economy as fulfilling basic needs resulting from their dependency on mainstream capitalism. She writes: ‘The James Bay Cree are more fortunate than First Nations Citizens residing in urban areas, because they can supplement their employment income by hunting and trapping’ (1994: 62). The primacy attributed to the cash sector here, and in effect one version of economic relations called ‘capitalism’, erases the persistence of Cree localizing economic, social and cultural practices. This local agency is seen to have dissipated under ‘outside’ threat, and local practices remain only as desperate attempts to survive the onslaught of forced economic change, and not as central to engagement in that conflict. These are, after all, conflicts that are regularly renewed as capital’s interest in regions and territories and even neighbourhoods diminishes just as surely as it will again intensify.

Capital’s new frontiers continue to be sites of engagement and negotiation. Newly (re)identified resource and development frontiers are thus always potentially sites of new visions of local autonomy in a globalized world.

J. Peter Brosius (1997) and Dan Jorgensen (1999) argue for Malaysia and New Guinea that the responses of the dispossessed to nationalist development projects are heterogeneous within regions, and are certain to include the manipulation of such projects to meet locally articulated goals. William H. Fisher (1994) argues that these goals need to be understood in part as gaining authority in national and international discourses through devices as diverse as nongovernmental organizations, international, regional and local structures. William F. Fisher, analysing the links between local, national and international action around the Sardar Sarovar dam in India, argues that heeding this flourishing ‘civil society’ shows ‘the extent to which human beings can alter otherwise determinant structures [and] encourages us to consider unexpected possibilities’ (1995: 40). Economic development in the global context is thus best understood as a context for specifically local action (Kean 2000), and one route through which local populations seek meaningful footing in the political and economic relations that connect a locality simultaneously to a region, to the nation-state, and to the international sphere.

The process of demanding authority within these interconnections often posits a local, territorially and historically grounded collective identity that explicitly contrasts with national identity and both the political and the economic practices of the state (Tsing 1993; Nash 1997; Watts 1999). Within such regional historical politics, assertions of collectivity can serve as the foundation of appeals for social change, as Gustavo Esteva (1999) argues for the post-democracy discourse of the Zapatistas. The growing global phenomenon of Indigenous and local resistance to poverty happens through movements for gaining real autonomy, and signals the necessity of a fully realized political economy of development. How does economic development pose not just a threat but a potential for gaining real authority in economic relations without necessarily resorting to the same economic forms pursued in national and industrial schemes?

The struggle that has been brought to life and reproduced through capitalist development for Indigenous communities in the Canadian north is common to the global Fourth World, especially in the recurring loss of land and livelihood to national progress. Indigenous communities in the north have seen their economies and territories decimated by national resource extraction economies, such as hydroelectric development and mining (RCAP 1996a: 467–91). National projects directed to Canada’s ‘remote’ regions and underserviced Indigenous communities have served the same kinds of national ‘development’ goals as they have in the Third World, while the north has been a resource-rich or strategically important hinterland, much like the global Fourth World (LaDuke 1994: xiii). Militarization has had significant impacts in northern regions, as military bases near or in

Indigenous communities left behind varying levels of contamination; while these bases have been closed for decades they are only recently being investigated (Environmental Sciences Group 1999; Katapatuc and Associates 1999). And even in this context of national significance, social development for Indigenous northerners has been very similar in practical ways to that provided to the majority of the population in the Third World. In the Canadian case, as elsewhere in the world working within restricted development budgets, these very services have been chronically underfunded parallel to the earliest United Nations-sponsored development in the Third World (Kaufert et al. 1993; Milloy 1999; Sargent 1982). Indigenous communities in Canada have had their autonomy sacrificed to national projects such as modernizing health care and providing education.

In the Canadian north, national projects have supplanted local development processes. As the mainstream economy has prospered, the economies of Indigenous communities have been brought ‘to the point of impoverishment’ (RCAP 1996b: 777) by the interference of government through programmes and policies directed specifically to assimilating Indigenous people, while only superficial action was ever taken to strengthen their local economies. Development thus enters communities in the Canadian north as an institutionalized and apolitical response to problems that are disguised by its seemingly natural and mutual goals. The global localization of economies, or the liberation movements that are seeking local forms of economic stability and autonomy, all disclose the uneven benefits and unwanted consequences of development. It is one local analysis of the problems and promise of economic development that is the focus of this chapter.

The overriding interpretation in Fort Albany of Indigenous peoples’ place in the Canadian north’s economic history is that strategic government interference has combined with government neglect, thus eroding local social and economic autonomy. In this discourse, investment in infrastructure and public services was reserved for mid-northern Ontario urban centres while Fort Albany received economic development solely through the interventions of a state-sponsored religious mission. This differential access to economic improvements was a direct result of the village’s identity as an Aboriginal community under federal policy. The federal government regularly fulfilled its obligations in treaty territories through various surrogates, most famously religious missions but also in federal hospitals, schools and police outposts, always at the expense of local autonomy. In local discourse, the practices of neglect and interference have steadily diminished the strength of the village’s economy relative to its non-Native and urban neighbours. The net economic result of this history is that today the cash incomes of Fort Albany households form a stable income base whose spending benefits enterprises centred in the mid-north or elsewhere in the industrial south, even while

the community is now tasked with performing economic development. The process of formulating economic development for the community under these conditions has required politicizing the very practice of development itself and of reflecting on the history of the conditions under which it occurs in Fort Albany. But beyond this political economy of economic development in the Canadian north, development planning in Fort Albany is a site of social action through imagining a different future in which the economic values and practices, social and cultural norms indigenous to the region can be renewed by gaining some power in regional economic relationships. As I describe below, economic development is both an inadequate model for pursuing community needs and a process that continues to generate models for analysis of the ongoing conflict over ‘development’.

Fort Albany First Nation and Underdevelopment

Fort Albany First Nation is an Inninowuk¹ community located on the Albany River near its confluence with James Bay in northern Ontario. The settlement has a band-list population of over 1,200, and the settlement is home to around 800 people, the majority Cree speakers. Even a fairly straightforward history demonstrates some of the complexity of the settlement’s place in history and within the wider region formed by that history. This passage marks how the settlement was carved out of a wider territory by federal administration more than two hundred years after the fur trade first brought Crees into relationships with Europeans:

Families of the Fort Albany First Nation have lived on lands along the Albany River, its tributaries, and along the adjoining James Bay Coast for hundreds of years. The Fort Albany reserve was established in 1905, when some area families signed Treaty Number 9.

The community is located about 120 kilometres north of Moosonee (or 580 km north of Timmins), 10 kilometres upstream from James Bay on the Albany River, in northeastern Ontario. Fort Albany is situated about 52 degrees latitude, and 81 degrees longitude. (Fort Albany Band Economic Development Office 1993)

Treaty 9 assigned a negligible segment of Cree territory to the official category ‘Reserve’, adding a layer of definition within a region that had been mapped and remapped in Cree use since before colonization, which began in this region in the 1680s with the fur trade.

The territory around the contemporary settlement of Fort Albany was part of a regional economy before the fur trade where Crees camped together, harvested and preserved food. In the immediate area of the present

settlement people came to the lake on the mainland to harvest fish and berries, and spent some of the spring and fall in goose camps near the flats where the Albany River meets James Bay. The existing regional economy proved especially important to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which depended on Cree people’s skills to bring the region’s resources into their trading post, while Crees adapted European goods to their own purposes. Crees integrated trapping, trading and labour at the post into the existing land-based economy. This mixed economy remained a regional economy because the trading post was only one point in Cree maps that included pathways for travel between harvesting areas and to other trading posts. The settlement was the location through which this region became part of an international (and later national) economy.

Roman Catholic missionaries to the Crees in the region around Fort Albany ended forty years of itinerant missions in 1892 when they set up permanent residence alongside the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post. Like the traders, the missionaries participated in the mixed economy by hiring Cree families as seasonal labourers and harvesters, activities crucial to sustaining the practices of the mission. The difference between the trading post and the mission’s settlement, however, was scale: the missionaries envisioned a town, and in 1903 created a ‘new’ settlement for Catholic Crees. The mission’s settlement was the locus of Euro-Canadian attempts to control the economic, cultural and spiritual life of Cree people through its own economy, residential education and religious evangelism. But the mixed economy, Cree language and culture persisted. The Fort Albany settlement has developed through its role as one point on a larger map of cultural, economic, social and political links within the region, and between the region and international and national interests.

Local linkages continue to serve as a meaningful context for settlements throughout the north, as described in the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples:

The northern Aboriginal community is not just a collection of buildings. It extends beyond dwelling places to include land for fishing, gathering, visiting, trapping and hunting, and memorable places where important events occurred. Northern Aboriginal peoples’ tenure in the settled communities of today is relatively recent; they have lived in more mobile, family-centred communities for centuries. In modern times, the attachment to the land and the strong sense of collectivity remains. (RCAP 1996c: 400)

Settlement does not imply a complete isolation from the region or loss of its specific values in Indigenous practice and imagination. Contemporary patterns of harvesting² in Fort Albany reflect this continuous relationship.

For participants in the mixed economy today, like their ancestors, the settlement is one part of a larger territory. Interconnection throughout the region today remains much as it has throughout the past three centuries for Crees, in that their own territorial uses are accomplished by the blend of technological innovations with detailed knowledge of the territory, both processes part of the heritage of Cree people here. But residents of the village also find interconnection the source of local subordination to mainstream, Euro-Canadian ideas, interests and economic practices.

The regional position of Fort Albany is both materially and socio-politically the role of an isolated outpost, an identity made real in various ways for residents pursuing a livelihood today: people frequently travel to mid-northern urban centres to shop, attend secondary and post-secondary school, or visit children attending high school. Every encounter village residents have with the mainstream economy is inflected by their isolation as well. The extremely high prices of basic goods in the village’s Northern Store are attributed to costs added by shipping into a fly-in community. Getting cash, cashing cheques or depositing cheques into personal bank accounts are all complicated by the village’s isolation from the nearest bank in Moosonee, and all of the solutions to the problem have costs attached, whether it is service charges for using point-of-purchase debit or (for people with bank accounts) the automatic teller machine. Cashing pay, personal and income-subsidy cheques at the Northern Store remains the only option for the large number of people who do not have bank accounts, to the store’s benefit. An entire industry of expediters (enterprises which organize shipment of goods) and charter air services thrives in mid-northern towns and cities, facilitated by the spatial relations of this region. In official inside/outside relations members of the village are incorporated into federal and provincial policy through received social welfare, employment and education programmes at the same time that villagers’ cash incomes derived from those programmes are leaked out of the local economy by the Northern Store providing basic food and goods.

In quantitative terms, roughly 75 per cent of household incomes are in cash; 25 per cent in land-based resources. Given existing economic forces throughout the region, these figures show that about 75 per cent of the value of Cree incomes ends up generating sustainability for businesses from outside of the community: the telephone company, the Northern Store and other suppliers of goods and services. The local economy fails to capture and build profit from cash exchanges. In comparison with the mainstream economy, Fort Albany’s economy is simply ‘underdeveloped’, a condition that could just as easily be resolved through the provision of federal development aid. This aid brings with it the bundle of social, political and economic patterns that are embodied in the process of ‘development’, while

it also constantly disguises the traditions of economic marginalization that make today’s exploitation possible.

Arturo Escobar’s post-development critique argues that engaging in development transforms the consciousness of those parties to be developed, inculcating a self-consciousness of underdevelopment simultaneous with the highly specific socio-economic practices that promise progress (Escobar 1995). Esteva argues that this process appropriates the agency of those to be developed, as this moment of engaging development ‘converts participation into a manipulative trick to involve people in struggles for getting what the powerful want to impose on them’ (1996: 8). These appropriations of consciousness and agency are precisely the dynamics that are contested in the local discourse about development that has emerged in Fort Albany, along with a vital commentary on the causes of Fort Albany’s poverty today. Despite the substantiation of ‘development’ in the band’s Economic Development Office, an institutional ‘body’ that enacts the typical development work of proposal writing and planning, the actual practice of these formalities generates a critique of development’s goals and its ahistorical, apolitical assumptions, while pressing forward the vision of distinctive local forms of development made possible by everyday life in Fort Albany.

The Problem with Development

Formal discourse on development in Fort Albany emphasizes the community’s position within social, political and economic relationships throughout the region and discloses their historical foundations. This link between current and historical dynamics evokes a comparison between colonial and ‘development’ strategies for interfering in Cree life, and posits local economic practice as distinct from both. Fort Albany’s community development plan for 1995–96 opens with a clear articulation of a long-standing conflict between Indigenous and imposed economic forms:

Families of the Fort Albany First Nation have pursued their ways and their livelihood on lands along the Albany River, its tributaries, and along the adjoining James Bay Coast for thousands and thousands of years. The people had discovered their own approach to life that was entirely different from and thus strange compared to the practices of the business-oriented Europeans. (Fort Albany Band Economic Development Office 1995: 4, emphasis added)

By equating the fur trade economy with ‘business’, this passage roots today’s economic problems in colonial relations, indicating that both the economic exploitation of Fort Albany’s cash incomes and the pressure to ‘develop’ are signs of deep conflict. ‘Economic development’ itself presents a crisis parallel

to the crisis of economic underdevelopment, in that both are generated by an alien and inappropriate model of social and economic relations. The passage continues to argue that underdevelopment today has in fact been caused by economic development:

In the 1600s, the area was reconditioned as a major trading post by the strangers from overseas and it was such a success, being in a strategic location, that even today the Northern Store still exists and still retains a profit. However at the end of the fur trade, nothing was left–animal life was depleted, people were lost, nothing had been gained for the people. No profits were received or shared, no infrastructure built or inherited, hence no progress for the people. (Fort Albany Band Economic Development Office 1995: 4)

As a commentary on development generally, this passage shows that the seemingly natural solutions presented by development serve to mask the causes of the condition of underdevelopment, here the very specific relations between inside and outside that still characterize the village’s place in the mainstream economy. As an expression of community goals, the formal plan identifies the reality of the economic crisis facing Fort Albany (economic exploitation and marginalization) without acquiescing to the socio-economic norms of development, as ‘the people had discovered their own approach to life’.

Within the fuller historical context provided in the planning document, the following account of the village’s economic situation is explicitly a consequence, and not a neutral condition of ‘underdevelopment’:

We are hindered in our quest for economic development in that the First Nation has no revenue/funds of its own and is totally dependent on government grants. They say we have no land except the reserve land, they say it is incumbent for the office to create wealth. Wealth is looked at in the sense that the community has more–more healthy people, more resources, more tools, more infrastructure, and in the end, more funds and revenue. As it is now, the First Nation has none of these and if they are available, then the machines, the tools, the buildings are outdated or substandard. (Fort Albany Band Economic Development Office 1995: 4)

The situation of the village today is thus an accumulation of past actions even while the village’s capacity to gain some power in the mainstream economy steadily diminishes. Economic development in Fort Albany can only be achieved if the habits of exploitation and marginalization, past and present, are addressed. These passages from formal development discourse echo commonly articulated understandings of both the crisis facing Fort Albany today and its roots. I turn now to a discussion of the distinctions made between appropriate and inappropriate economic relations in everyday discourse.

Missionary Development

The distinction made between business-oriented and Cree socio-economic relations that is apparent in the document cited above is revealed even more sharply in daily life in Fort Albany. In common narratives of community history, people comment on the conflict between appropriate and inappropriate economic relations and how they have shaped the village. In this process of narration, a local knowledge of events at this place and the groups brought together here is reproduced across generations.

This local knowledge is often inscribed in the landscape, so that the territory and features of the settlement can act as reminders of specific patterns of relationships between identified groups of people, usually missionaries, and local people. In this way, the land and its features act as cues capable of evoking entire interpretive frameworks. And as Cruikshank (1998) and Santos-Granero (1998) demonstrate in comparable Indigenous territories, it is not only a primordial landscape, but also the changing, colonized landscape that is recorded by colonized peoples in such local narratives. In Fort Albany, most people know the sites that are relics of mission enterprise in the village, such as the barn, and the heap of broken concrete partially blocking a stream that flows through the village, which was the mission’s hydroelectric dam. People know where the various buildings in the village have come from, and distinguish between those built with local materials, those scavenged from the derelict radar base, and prefabs supplied by the federal government through Indian Affairs. Commonplace narratives communicate a wide variety of themes central to community life, including disruptions in the use of the land base caused by building, patterns of exploitation of labour necessary to the mission’s enterprise and social institutions (such as the radar base) which caused social disruption. Alongside this everyday knowledge, the location of the Old Post, where both Anglican and Roman Catholic missions functioned beside the Hudson’s Bay Company, is the home of an annual Cree cultural gathering, during which the site is reanimated as a regional centre and not as a fur-trade or mission post. At this gathering, Cree people are made central to the history of the region, their presence predating and outlasting any other interest in the region.

These commonly known and understood sites all mark process and interconnection, each site used to represent the practical shape of the links among Indigenous people and between Cree people and the various visitors who have shared interest in this region. Though the mission’s agricultural developments at the present village site have disappeared (most of the buildings have been torn down and the farm itself was converted to an airstrip), detailed stories about the functioning of the farm and local people’s tenure as workers are commonplace, told in reference to or in the presence of specific sites.

The landscape of the village itself is used as corroboration in these narratives, as during interviews and conversations people would point out specific sites (such as the hydroelectric dam), or would use the large treeless area of the village as evidence of the enormity of the mission’s economy, and as a symbol of the extent of Cree participation in that enterprise.

The last examples show that remembering the mission’s enterprises is an interpretive act, often an act of highlighting specific qualities of the mission’s relationship to local people, and most often a means of characterizing the mission’s economy as inappropriate, as in the following circumstance. On a summer day in 1995 I noticed the boys’ team of high-school students employed for the summer through the band economic development office working at the missionary residence under the direction of the two elderly Jesuit Brothers. Shortly after I met with one of my community advisers, and because our conversations had frequently turned to the mission’s working arrangements in Fort Albany I asked about the project.

My adviser began his response by reminding me, as many had before, that between 1950 and 1952 Cree people had constructed the building in which we were sitting, the mission-run St Anne’s Residential School, made from cement blocks manufactured on site. He then told me that the formula for cement devised by the mission from local materials was never shared with the workers, and thus was held back from the community as a whole. Since building materials for housing, town services and private household needs are rendered extremely expensive by shipping costs, this formula for cement represents a valuable innovation for the community as it pursues development today. My adviser’s insistence that the formula for cement was held back echoes the report I quoted above that there was ‘no progress for the people’ in the economic relations dominated by outside interests at the settlement. This lack of ‘progress’ is further underscored in another commonly known account that when the mission finally gave up its control over village life in 1974, it sold the school and contents to the federal government for C$400,000. The school itself is used as a symbolic reminder of the hierarchical material and social relationship between local people and missionaries, through which the mission habitually appropriates Cree agency to its own purposes. On that day, the boys’ work was being taken ‘dishonestly’, replicating old exploitations. The added element of the formula for cement, however, makes this exploitation symbolize the even more brutal sacrifice of the village’s future for the simple economic benefit of a powerful, detached institution.

A related feature of narratives about the school is that the mission’s workers on this and other projects were paid with rations and what is called ‘mission money’, an innovation through which Cree workers further subsidized the mission’s prosperity. After its largest economic and territorial expansion

in the 1930s, the Roman Catholic mission to Fort Albany began to mint this currency in order to hire Cree labourers to build and rebuild the mission’s hospital, residential school and staff residences. The mission required labour to clear land, work on their farms³ and provide food for the missionaries. For the mission, its initiative of hiring Cree workers converted subsistence hunter–gatherers into honest workers, leading them ‘unconsciously’ to ‘civilization’ through the discipline of labour. The transformation the mission sought on the economic front was comprehensive of gender and kin relations as well, and so their practices focused on wage-earning heads of nuclear families who would provide for their dependants. The mission sought to normalize this nuclear family by re-creating the capitalist division of labour among its workers, streaming men and women, boys and girls, into jobs considered gender-appropriate.⁴ At the core of their enterprises, mission money was central to the project of repatterning Cree lives, and serves as a special symbol of the mission’s project in local discourse. In particular, it is described as a way of isolating local people from the ‘real’ economy, as the money was only redeemable at the mission store.

Mission money is best known, however, for the lengths to which the mission went to have it destroyed when it was replaced in about 1965 by pensions and baby-bonus payments made in cash to individuals. Practically, this change spelled the end of the mission’s settlement economy. Mission staff collected the money and had it dropped into the water at a northern river where it would be washed away in the spring break-up. This event is recounted as a clear attempt to conceal the existence of mission money because it was used to exploit workers for the benefit of the mission, and not the community. The secrecy attributed to the attempt to destroy the money has also elicited questions about the pact between the federal government and the mission through which the mission was partially funded, especially whether or not the mission channelled money intended for residents of the village to its own use through the mission money system. The refusal to comply with the concealment of the money represents a questioning of the appropriateness of the entire mission project among Cree people.

Symbols such as the residential school and mission money serve as interpretive frameworks for novel events, as expressed in the conversation cited above, and act as reminders of how economic exploitation remains rooted in the colonial relations of the past. Such narratives are acts of disclosing the social, cultural and political specificity of inappropriate economic relations, but they also reproduce and communicate the possibility that appropriate economic relations can be renewed. Rejecting the forms of exploitation that seem so particular to the cash economy does not imply an outright rejection of economic development, however, but instead emphasizes the need for a revolution in the inside/outside relationships that take place here every day.

To illustrate how locally appropriate forms of development anticipate this revolution, I now turn to a discussion of the appropriate forms of economic relations that are alive in the village every day, and how these are applied to the work of economic development.

Politicizing Development

In 1994 Fort Albany was included in the regional government’s Entrepreneurship Training Program (ETP), a typical training programme designed, staffed and monitored by the regional development coordinator. The region’s Band Economic Development Officers were responsible for coordinating the programme delivery within each community, finding participants and assisting the hired trainers with local logistics. Trainers provided classes five days a week and individual consulting on business plans in the afternoons and evenings. The course content covered a description of entrepreneurship, the demands on the entrepreneur, and training in the skills required to create a business proposal that would satisfy a granting agency or a bank manager reviewing a loan application.

The ETP was popular in Fort Albany, and attracted a fairly wide variety of male and female students with an equally varied set of proposals, from a bakery to a small, home-based retail business. In my interviews with part of this group in the wake of the formal programme, it was clear that the popularity of the programme was owed almost exclusively to a long tradition of entrepreneurship within the community. Entrepreneurship is a feature of community life in Fort Albany, and new entrepreneurship was made consistent with this tradition in this passage I recorded in 1994:

It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do, I’ve always wanted to run a business of my own. I used to admire my uncle, he used to run a business, I used to look at him and say, maybe that’s what I want to do. . . . That’s what gave me the idea. From him that’s where I get to know that’s what I want to do. More or less determined to do it, not to fall from grace, I don’t want my business to go down, I always keep it going. (Anonymous 1994a)

The tradition of entrepreneurship in Fort Albany predates the formal development promise of small enterprise and owes its existence to the settlement’s mixed economy. Blending subsistence pursuits with limited market-oriented production (of fur, fuel and food), the mixed economy is sustained today by the combination of harvesting, wage labour and formal income subsidies, much as it has been for three hundred years. Entrepreneurship represents another innovation consistent with the requirements of the mixed economy: it is small in scale, flexible, requires small investments and has

always been combined with other pursuits in providing for the household. But the mixed economy continues to generate much more than ‘incomes’,⁵ as it is a framework that reproduces crucial aspects of social and cultural life.

The mixed economy is a route through which individuals demonstrate their competence in necessary, highly valued skills, skills which individuals combine in the process of providing for their families. Traditional skills, those learned in family networks and which tie people to the resources of the land, are especially valued, and commonly remarked upon. And entrepreneurs demonstrate this pattern: the most established entrepreneurs in the village are also among those who have demonstrated their competence in traditional skills, as tanners, sewers and harvesters. One entrepreneur commented that ‘keeping’ these skills was among his accomplishments, as in another case during my research period a woman combined a cottage industry (based on exceptional sewing skills) with running a small business outside of the home to provide income for her extended family. Cottage industry based on producing and selling goods using traditional materials, methods and skills is well established in Fort Albany.

Individual competence is proven only in relation to collective interests, as it is in providing for household self-sufficiency that competence is achieved. Each household participates in the mutual obligation and support networks of an extended family, a collective that is made secure through sharing work, resources and tools. At the heart of these redistributive and reciprocal exchanges in Fort Albany is an ethic of ‘sharing’ that is recognizable in this speaker’s opposition to accumulation in a manner that would deprive others of a similar status:

If I was really into money, I guess I’d be open all day. But I try not to make big money. If I made a lot of money, I’d be living in a big mansion, in a new building, but I don’t do that. I try to stay the way people are in Fort Albany. I’m not trying to be, like I’m better, whatever. I try to be the same, like other community members, the way they’re living, so I don’t have any high standards, no limos and all of that. That’s what I believe in, I’m not really into that at all, being a big guy, I just opened it because the community, maybe they’re bored with TV, that’s the only reason why I opened this kind of business I guess. (Anonymous 1994a)

The practice of entrepreneurship as it has developed in Fort Albany is consistent with the fundamental values of the mixed economy. It was in fact this form of entrepreneurship that was the template for students who joined the ETP.

The gaps between the local and the ETP form of entrepreneurship are fairly obvious: collective versus individual orientations in economic relations, individual competence versus individual economic power, redistribu-

tion versus individual accumulation. However, it was not this dissonance between two systems that led to what I consider the failure of the ETP. The programme was, in fact, hijacked by community values, as participants proposed to develop businesses to support their families and that involved their available kin. Participants made proposals to provide improved and necessary community services (e.g. a translation service), and to undermine the power of the Northern Store in the village economy (by opening a hardware store that would compete with Northern’s hardware department). In local interpretation, the ETP was made consistent with the traditional form of entrepreneurship in the community, and was thus grasped as an opportunity to address common grievances about economic exploitation, material poverty and the experience of underdevelopment.

The failure of the ETP can instead be attributed to the ahistorical analysis of the problems in the village economy. The ETP was justified by the most straightforward understanding of this economy as ‘underdeveloped’, defined conventionally through measures of income and employment levels, both figures demonstrating the failure of the local economy to provide for and integrate the entire local population. Income subsidies and unemployment levels are consequently high when evaluated against the assumed ‘norm’ of the mainstream capitalist urban economy. The remedy to this problem just as typically implies both a particular constellation of exchange relations and a specific set of social roles that must be fulfilled, most obviously in the ETP in the role of ‘employed worker’. But the programme never took into account the decades of federal neglect of village infrastructure, which in 1994 meant that very few homes had running water, that there were too few buildings to accommodate even official services, and that there were too few houses for the village as a whole. The ETP’s version of economic development, therefore, did not acknowledge either these realities or their historical basis. This failing was not lost on participants either, who were left with business plans but little hope that they could overcome the pre-existing constraints on their plans. The ETP provided small investments in individual villagers, but was not contained within a comprehensive plan for redressing the marginalization of the entire community. Such individual investments, like the missionary economy and income subsidies before them, signal the inadequacy of governmental response to the real needs of developing northern economies.

Even more generally, the ahistorical underpinnings of economic development schemes such as the ETP serve to perform a kind of violence to local knowledge by precluding a radically different kind of future. The assumption that Fort Albany’s economy is simply an incomplete version of the mainstream economy, and not a unique economy in itself, assumes that the histories of places as different as Fort Albany and Timmins are similar enough

to project a similar destiny. And it is the assumption that these communities have developed and will develop along similar courses that is most contested by local people, and that most obscures the ‘causes’ of Fort Albany’s poverty today: Fort Albany, like Indigenous communities throughout the north, has not received the same supports and basic infrastructure development found in the larger urban and mainstream communities, the same places which draw on Fort Albany as a market. And so while ‘economic development’ is accepted as necessary to improve the future of the village, the current constellation of common sense, the hegemonic discourses of poverty and dependency, perpetuate thinking and practice at odds with Fort Albany’s needs, and may even further undermine its interests. Each development or training project which receives mixed reviews within the community is potentially seen as a failure; without a context in which such failures can be interpreted as the result of inappropriate and misdirected development planning, the presupposition of local deficiency is confirmed and the proposed remedy is normalized. The validation of a local, historically grounded political economy of development is ruled out and the future that might be imagined in this thinking is unrecognizable.

Conclusion

The ETP served as an opportunity for community members to politicize the development process, just as the ‘trainees’ consistently demonstrated an acute awareness of the history of the weaknesses in the settlement economy today. Common understanding of the history of the settlement was pressed into service as an interpretive framework for the ETP, just as economic development is interpreted locally in terms of the appropriate economic relations that are alive in daily life in the village. The reality of a collective as the basic unit of economic exchanges in village life was reproduced through trainees’ plans to assist their own extended families and to reorient the entire settlement’s relationship to the mainstream economy. The ETP promoted investment in individuals, rather than in this collective, bound by social and kin networks, and by their shared history in this region. The collective goals of development expressed by entrepreneurs are echoed in this passage from the formal development plan for 1995–96:

The underlying philosophy of including everyone in our actions and activities was developed and refined by our elders thousands and thousands of years ago. We call the system the ‘wholistic⁶ approach’. . . . The wholistic approach preaches inclusion of all people in all actions and in all activities. No one is to be left behind. This is the aim of the Band Development Office–to provide equal and fair opportunities for everyone to help him/herself. (Fort Albany Band Economic Development Office 1995)

Reimagined within the daily life of the village, development can be faithful to the values of the mixed economy in which individuals are given the opportunity to demonstrate their competence. This is not a concession to individualism, but an expression of the core of collectivity that is ideally generated in the practices of the mixed economy.

As a ‘development frontier’, Fort Albany is a rich social, political and historical context in which economic development has been reinvented as the process of investing economic relations with the collective goals of renewing local autonomy on the community’s own terms. As a locally specific political economy of development, Fort Albany’s discourse provides new critiques of development’s apolitical and ahistorical foundations. This local analysis thus finds that the real limitations to economic development are rooted in the old habits of exploitation and marginalization. Fort Albany’s discourse on development is an appeal for change in the inside–outside relations that normalize these habits, and thus seeks change through participation in civil society. Local elements of this civil society are emerging in the social agencies, such as the Band Economic Development Office, within which local priorities are consolidated and communicated to other agencies, regional and national. It is such formal elements of social life, along with informal structures of community, kin group and family, through which change will be made. Such community-based development proposes a new era of cooperation among Indigenous communities in the region and between Fort Albany and those partners in the local economy that have grown accustomed to having access to the village’s incomes. For people from Fort Albany, negotiating this cooperation will be continuous with three centuries of engagement with ‘outside’ interests, an engagement that has only relatively recently seen a drastic decline in their local economic authority.

Notes

1. Also known in anthropological literature as Swampy Cree, and in some local and regional usage as Omushkego. The term ‘Cree’ was in common usage in the region during my field research, and I use it here in that manner to refer to the descendants of the earliest inhabitants of the region.

2. I use the term ‘harvesting’ throughout to refer to all activities that make land-based resources available for consumption by individuals, family groups and communities. ‘Harvesting’ thus includes subsistence hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering.

3. Children worked as farm labour as well in the residential school, which was partially funded by the federal government from 1905 to 1974.

4. Neither extended families nor the Cree division of labour submitted to the European division of labour, however, as both patterns are maintained in village life today.

5. The mixed economy is vital to the reproduction of people’s relationships to one another and to the region, as harvesting is made possible by access to cash incomes with which necessary equipment is purchased.

6. This is a neologism that the author of this document, Alex Metatawabin, uses to emphasize the role of completeness in community action, associating this word with the English word ‘whole’.

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PART II
Strategies:
States, Markets and Civil Society

9

Survival in the Context of Mega-Resource
Development: Experiences of the
James Bay Crees and the
First Nations of Canada

MATTHEW COON COME

Matthew Coon Come was the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Canada, the organization that represents ‘Indian’ peoples of Canada, from 2000 to 2003. Matthew entered politics, becoming the Chief of Mistissini from 1981 to 1986. From 1987 to 1999 he was the Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees.

I want to begin with a story. I remember my mother taking me in 1995 to a place where my grandmother had stood (my grandmother was 94 years old then):

This is where Gookam [Grandma] stood, and I’ll remind you of what she said. As she looked to the lake she said: ‘One of these days they will come and they will block our rivers. They will make them flow backwards.’ Then she looked to the mountains, and she said, ‘I see something eating the trees.’ And then she said, ‘Even the very water that you drink, someday you will have to pay for it.’

I have seen that vision come to pass. I have stood where the big dams have been built. I have seen where the rivers have been made to flow backwards. And every spring I am told in Mistissini that I cannot drink that water because it is contaminated, and I have to pay so that I can drink water. So what my grandmother and her generation have prophesied is true, because they are one with the land.

My people identify themselves with the land as hunters, as fishermen and as trappers. I am talking about my father, who never went to school. I am talking about my grandfather, who is 103 years old and is still out on that land. It’s not in a museum, it’s not in a textbook. Our people and their way of life are still thriving; they are flourishing. We have learned to live with the animals. We have maintained some of our traditions and customs, but we have survived because we have adapted. A fancy word used

by anthropologists is that we have ‘acculturated’. I am very familiar with some of their work, because I am one of the Crees who really read some of the meticulous research that they have done.

We have survived because we have adapted. When I went with my dad there were no snowmobiles, there were no airplanes. We walked on the land with snowshoes. We paddled up there. Now when I go, I use a snowmobile to go out on the land. It is easier, it is faster, we adapt. That is how we have survived, and we call our land ‘Eeyou Istchee’ (the people’s land). We have governed and occupied this land and have managed the resources so as to allow us to continue that Cree way of life.

When the Europeans came to our land, we saw that they arrived in boats. These boats were made of curiously carved and shaped wood and so, to this day, we call them ‘Wemistigoosheeyiw’ (the shaped-wood people). You have heard of a wooden Indian? Well, we called them something like that first.

We had no idea that they had come because a king across the sea had scratched on a piece of paper saying that he ‘gave’ our lands to his cousin Prince Rupert. Similarly, in 1873 when the same lands, our lands, were ceded to Canada by the Hudson’s Bay Company, this was not of significance to us. We were not asked or told, and we continued to live as usual. Once again in 1898 and 1912, when our lands were transferred by Canada to the Province of Quebec, we did not know about this. We continued to pursue our way of life, and also we fed and clothed the small number of Wemistigoosheeyiwits who were living among us.

In a way, we developed along with the Europeans in a symbiotic if not always mutually beneficial relationship, which continued until the middle of the last century. When the Europeans first contacted our society it was primarily for trade purposes. For more than three hundred years of our relationship, the Crees continued to occupy the land as we had always done. This is how it was through centuries of colonial dealings with our lands.

In the 1950s certain government services began to be available to the Crees, including some limited health services, some educational opportunities, and monthly old-age pensions, which led to increasing settlement of the Crees around the former trading posts. Until that time our society had been organized around the extended family unit and the ouchimau, or family head. It was also at this time that this leadership was supplemented, and somewhat replaced, by a system of government based on chiefs and band councils that the Canadian government encouraged us to adopt. I can tell you stories about how we used to mock that, because it was foreign to us.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s our lands were increasingly targeted by forestry and mining companies and Hydro-Quebec, the provincial electricity utility. At first forestry and mining provided supplementary income to some Crees who combined subsistence hunting with part-time employment in

forestry or sometimes in mining and mining exploration. However, these activities also led to increased social tensions on the territory as the people who were the original inhabitants were increasingly treated as squatters in their own lands.

Our communities of Nemaska, Waswanipi and Ouje-Bougoumou are prime examples of this. All these communities were closed as a result of so-called development activities. Those Crees seeking to participate in the wage economy built shack towns on the outskirts of the company communities that grew up around these development activities. The community of Ouje-Bougoumou, for example, while it tried to stay together, was relocated many times to accommodate the wishes of the developers. Gradually it disintegrated into approximately five settlements, mostly groupings of shacks along the sides of the roads.

In 1972 I was a young student in Hull, and I read in the newspaper one day about Quebec’s ‘hydroelectric project of the century’. I looked at a map and saw that my community’s lands at Mistissini were to be submerged because they were going to use Lake Mistissini as a reservoir. It was then that our people realized that the plans of Hydro-Quebec to dam and divert more than a dozen rivers in our territory would spell an end to our way of life. For the Cree people, the land is part of us. My people still live off the land. We are sustained by what it provides; I guess we can say that we are the land.

Eeyou Istchee, although it is vast, is a familiar place to us. Every bend in the river is known and named. A Cree map of our vast lands is crowded with place names. The footsteps of my people are everywhere. When I go with my dad to the hunting ground, he tells me, ‘That’s where grandpa killed his first moose. That’s where we buried someone. That’s where there was a lot of game. That’s where the fish spawning grounds are.’ We do not have to move a hundred yards and he has a story to tell.

A Cree person is not an adult until he or she is familiar with life on the land. From infancy we are taught to respect the land and to take only what we need. We have a traditional system of family territories where we manage the resources, rotating our use from one year to the next, to allow the resources to replenish. This has been our practice for several millennia.

Then a 400-mile road was built, and next, at Matahonansheesh (the spring gathering place), they began construction of the LG-2 dam, a massive twenty-storey dam to block the La Grande River. We reacted by going to court. After six months of testimony, we won an injunction. This was a historic ruling: the court affirmed that my people had certain ‘undefined’ rights to our lands. But when a city wants to build a new airport or highway, does it declare that the rights of those who live there are ‘undefined’? It appears

that only Aboriginal peoples who have lived in a place since time immemorial get this dubious honour.

The court’s injunction did not last. Three judges of the Quebec Court of Appeals disposed of our rights in less than six hours of deliberations: first suspending the ruling recognizing some rights, and then later ruling that we were squatters in our own lands. The judges said our rights in and to our lands had all been extinguished, because in 1670 King Charles II had ‘given’ the Hudson’s Bay watershed to his cousin Prince Rupert and the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Now, as the Quebec government proceeded with its plans to dam and divert the La Grande, Eastmain, Caniapiscau, Little Whale, Boutin, Great Whale, Coates, Nottaway, Broadback, and Rupert rivers, we were finally aware of the significance of what had been going on all those years after 1670 when King Charles had signed that piece of parchment far away in England. How on earth could this be, we wondered. We have always been here. We were put here as a people by the Creator, to live in and take care of this land.

This is the law of the country, our leaders were told. Your territory was terra nullius, or land belonging to no one, when King Charles made his grant in 1670. Your society has no concept of ownership or jurisdiction over land. And so, according to our laws, your rights were extinguished, and Rupert’s land became Crown land (government land).

We knew that the La Grande Project, which was already under way, would be complete before our case could be heard at the Supreme Court, and that it was also possible that we would not get a favourable ruling. So we decided to negotiate an agreement. Canada refused to intervene on our behalf, and Hydro-Quebec held a gun to our heads–the destruction of our lands and rivers continued daily while we negotiated. Thus it was that on 11 November 1975 we signed the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA).

Cree hunters on their hunting territories could see the power of the ‘Whitemen’, as we call non-Aboriginal people in English. They were moving whole mountains and turning a whole river around so it would flow away from the sea and down another river. This we knew we could not stop. So my people put their hopes in the new relationship we were promised: in return for permitting one project, we were promised health care, education and other benefits, and protection for our hunting, fishing and trapping way of life.

Over the last nearly thirty years since signing the JBNQA we have learned the many ways that this was not a good agreement. We have been in and out of courts since 1975 to get the governments to implement it. They still refuse and delay, and many of the benefits we were promised have failed to

materialize. These benefits are things that all who live in Canada enjoy as a right. My people had to bargain for clean water supplies and sanitation, for clinics and schools, for our rights and our way of life.

There is something fundamentally wrong that needs to be identified here. At the same time that these negotiations concerning the JBNQA were taking place, Canada had signed and was participating in the development of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights at the United Nations. Article 1 of both of these covenants provides that: ‘Under no circumstances shall a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.’ Yet this is precisely what had just been done to us, as the waters of the La Grande hydroelectric mega-project rose around us and flooded our ancestors’ graves. I believe that the governments knew then what they were doing: depriving the Cree people of our own means of subsistence in violation of our fundamental human rights.

The evidence is in the JBNQA itself, and in its implementation. In the agreement the simple promise was made: in response to this damage to your lands, your economy, and your way of life, we will ensure that we assist your people. We will assist you in the transformation you will undergo. We will ensure that the opportunities for your hunters are maintained and enhanced. We will ensure that your people get trained to be involved in new activities and economic development and that, when they are trained, they will gain employment. We will ensure that your communities are serviced, have infrastructure, and are viable. Sadly, while we have received some benefits, many of these promises in the agreement have never materialized. It is an ongoing battle, in the courts, in the court of public opinion, and around the table with the governments, to try to get them to live up to their obligations.

Hydro development has not provided long-term opportunity for Cree employment. The La Grande Project currently has approximately 750 permanent employees. For the most part these employees are flown in from southern Quebec on shifts that last a couple of weeks at a time. The number of Cree employees hired by Hydro-Quebec has never been more than five people, or less than 1 per cent of those employed at any one time. While the Crees managed to get some employment during the construction phase of these projects, during the operations phase there has been very little access to employment. Can you imagine a company from Ontario building a large hydro project in front of Quebec City, flooding the Old City and the Plains of Abraham, and then not even hiring any of the local people? Can you imagine such an employer not even putting in place programmes to bring local workers into full-time employment? This is our situation.

The La Grande experience, a nightmare for us, has taught us a great deal. The project flooded natural habitats over an area more than half the size of the state of Vermont. The water in the reservoirs is managed on an unnatural cycle, which builds up the reservoir’s water levels from spring until winter, only to release it through the dams in the coldest months, when the electrical heating demand in southern Quebec is the greatest.

We have realized that programmes to build hunters’ campsites beside the reservoirs are not worthwhile, because the animals do not live there. One hunter discovered a beaver lodge twenty feet high on the edge of a reservoir. The beavers had kept building higher to keep ahead of the rising water all summer. When the winter came, the water was drawn down and the beavers froze. We have discovered that the boat access ramps are useless in areas where the trees are left standing underwater, because the trees block boat access to the shore. Furthermore, the fish are highly contaminated by mercury leaching out of the rotting vegetation; if we eat the fish, one of our staples, we get methylmercury poisoning. We have discovered that beaver and lynx relocated by helicopter from the areas to be flooded very often die from the shock of the move. We have discovered that the engineers’ promises that they could manage the flows appropriately were untrue, when 10,000 caribou drowned trying to follow their traditional migration paths.

We have discovered that people who have lost their family lands are at great risk of losing their traditions and values. The activities and knowledge that bind a family become a painful memory when the land is gone. We have discovered that our way of life, our economy, our relationship to the land, our system of knowledge, and our manner of governance are an interlinked whole. Remove us from the land, and you destroy it all. We are then left with social disruption, suicide, epidemics of disease and violence, and loss of hope.

So, reluctantly, we have also learned to fight, peacefully. In 1989, Hydro-Quebec announced that it would proceed with C$62 billion worth of further hydro mega-projects, including James Bay Phase II on the Great Whale River. We decided, at a general assembly of my people, to oppose these new projects. We could see, after fifteen years of experience with the first phase of the James Bay Project, that it would not benefit our people.

We are only 13,000 people, so we decided to take our story of the impacts of these projects upon us to the Canadian and American peoples. We took two messages. First, in spite of a provision in the JBNQA that says we may not oppose future hydro projects on sociological grounds in official hearings, we helped the people who had already lost their lands to tell the media and the wider public of the social and environmental impacts.

Second, we were also sure that there were other ways to make energy that did not entail destruction of the land. So we also talked about the alterna-

tives in energy conservation, wind energy and co-generation projects. We undertook studies about the effect of electricity subsidies for the aluminum and magnesium industries in Quebec on the rates ordinary consumers pay for their electricity. We researched the impacts on future electricity rates of building these projects and of the impacts in US states buying the energy. We studied and publicized co-generation and conservation potentials. We participated in formal hearings on the export contracts in Canada and in Vermont, New York and Massachusetts and intervened before international tribunals in Europe.

We Crees became the environmental and economic conscience that the Quebec government did not have. Hydro-Quebec and the government of Quebec led a media campaign against us. When we said that cheaper alternatives were available, that the impacts on the land were catastrophic, they accused us of spreading lies, of leading a smear campaign. When in 1990 the president of Hydro-Quebec stated that Quebeckers could run short of electricity if there were delays for environmental review, nobody questioned the accuracy of his statements except the Crees. The Quebec minister of energy actually warned Quebeckers they would freeze by candlelight if the Great Whale Project was delayed. Just one or two years later, all jurisdictions in the northeastern part of North America had huge energy surpluses.

As a result of our campaign in the United States and Europe, through our legal efforts in the courts, and through our participation in the first phases of the environmental assessment of the Great Whale Project, it became clear that the project was not viable, and it was abandoned by Quebec premier, Jacques Parizeau, in November 1994. So the threat of the Great Whale Project was removed from over my people’s heads. The rivers of the Great Whale watershed still flow free and towards the sea.

Now a few years have passed since the project was cancelled, our people can now see that little or nothing has changed. Our rate of unemployment continues to rise, and our housing shortage remains acute. The land and wildlife continue to be degraded around us, as multinational forestry corporations clear-cut the boreal forests around our communities. The permits for this destruction were issued by the government of Quebec in the late 1980s and early 1990s in contravention of many of the provisions of the JBNQA. And yet the cutting continues, and the federal government stands by and is silent or conspires with Quebec to permit the destruction. Many of the laws and the provisions of the agreement relating to environmental protection continue to be ignored.

Our treaty is often referred to as the first modern land-claims agreement in Canada. It is very long and very detailed, but we are learning that it is actually not very new. It is true that since we entered into our agreement with Canada and Quebec, things have improved socially for the James Bay

Crees. We have obtained schools, clinics, local administrations, and certain programmes and services. But these are things that all other peoples in Canada take for granted. The reality is that our treaty is built on the same structure as all the treaties that went before it. Its foundation is the extinguishing of our Aboriginal rights. Consider this: on the one hand, Aboriginal rights are now guaranteed and affirmed in the Constitution of Canada. At the same time, the federal government still insists, as a condition of reaching agreements with Aboriginal peoples, that these rights be extinguished or given up. This is not consistent with any civilized view of fundamental rights. Our experience with the implementation of our treaty is that, while the governments now insist that we deliver to them all our obligations with respect to the land and to the extinguishing of our Aboriginal rights, at the same time they twist the meaning of their obligations and minimize or deny the promises they made to us.

It is thirty years since the hydroelectric mega-projects came to our lands. At the beginning, and for the fifty previous years, it was very much the case that we Crees were ‘in the way’ of development. Various means were used to get us out of the way, such as forced relocation, treating us as squatters, and flooding and clear-cutting. The legal techniques that have been applied against us when we have been ‘in the way’ of development are actually more diabolical than the flooding and relocation. These are the doctrines of extinguishment and terra nullius. One does not have to be an Aboriginal person to understand that any dispossession of our legal status and fundamental rights is a root cause of our ongoing social disadvantage and underdevelopment.

The link between the denial of our fundamental rights and our political and economic exclusion is not abstract. Taking our lands and resources has resulted in mass dislocation and the involuntary resettlement of hundreds of thousands of First Nations people (‘First Nations’ is a general term that many ‘Indian’ Aboriginal peoples of Canada use to refer to themselves). It has resulted in great damage to the social and economic fabric of our communities and societies. It has also resulted, as in the case of the Crees, in the removal of billions of dollars of resources from our lands each year, while we are forced to seek annual handouts to govern and administer our communities.

Thankfully, the news is not all bad. Our people and our societies have been patient and resilient in the face of these policies and practices of dispossession and discrimination. Our people’s identities, economies and ways of life have survived, and our societies are developing in important ways. All the credit is due to the courage and spirit of our elders and our women and our youth.

However, as pointed out by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), Aboriginal peoples remain at the top of the scale on all indexes of social distress in Canada. In our Cree communities in James Bay, for example, our people face a critical shortage of housing. We live in seriously overcrowded conditions, with the result that there are outbreaks of infectious disease. The ability of our young people to form new families is being hindered. Many of our communities still lack adequate sanitation, safe water and other essential infrastructure.

We Crees are aware that many other Aboriginal peoples in Canada are in worse shape than we are. Both levels of government frequently point this out to us when we attempt to get them to implement their treaty and other obligations to us. But we are not willing to permit comparisons to the lowest denominator. Rather, we believe that the correct approach is to compare our socioeconomic and other conditions with those of non-Aboriginal communities. When these objective comparisons are made, there is considerable socio-economic work to be done.

For the first time in Canadian history, a concerted exercise was recently undertaken by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples to examine relations with Aboriginal peoples within Canada. The Royal Commission’s work was conducted over a period of five years. In hearings across the country it heard thousands of witnesses and received thousands of briefs. It consulted hundreds of experts, corporations, governments and individuals, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. The Commission process was really an exercise of the wisdom in the counsel of many.

It has been argued by some that the Royal Commission was too costly, that it took too long, and that its recommendations were too numerous and too far-reaching in terms of political or legal change. Some of these criticisms have even been echoed by prominent First Nations leaders, who have apparently said that some of the Commission’s recommendations are too broad and not supportable. But not dealing with these recommendations and not addressing the plight of the First Nations is a social time bomb.

Of course the work and approach of the Commission was broad. I believe firmly that nothing less will do in the face of the challenges to address meaningfully the effects of centuries of discrimination, oppression and dispossession carried out against more than a million Aboriginal people in Canada. I believe that the burden is still on governments to show, with respect to each recommendation, why it should not be implemented.

This status quo of social and economical exclusion is the root cause of our dependence on governments. For example, the terms of the Cree nation’s agreement with Canada and Quebec were, for all intents and purposes, imposed on us in 1975. It is clear, from the way governments are now inter-

preting the agreement, that it does not provide any substantial foundation for a sustainable Cree economy or Cree self-sufficiency.

On the contrary, governments, Crown corporations and multinationals are now removing resources to the value of over C$5 billion from our traditional lands each year. The federal and Quebec governments spend a small fraction of this sum on the Crees. These expenditures, per capita, now amount to little more than average per capita expenditures on all other Canadians, and much less than is spent per capita in the Northwest Territories, a similarly remote and costly region of the country.

Thousands of jobs have been created for non-Aboriginal Quebeckers as a result of the extraction of resources from our traditional lands. In contrast, as I have indicated, few jobs have gone directly to Crees, in spite of treaty promises that we would have priority for these positions and for contracts in Eeyou Istchee.

Possibly the single most important finding of the Royal Commission is that Aboriginal peoples are confined on a fraction of the lands that would be required for even a small measure of economic self-sufficiency. The Commission recommended that there must be a meaningful redistribution of lands and resources in favour of Aboriginal peoples in this country.

This is a simple choice for the rest of the country: do we want Aboriginal peoples to be dependent wards of the state forever, or do we want them to be socio-economically viable? If the latter option is preferred, plain economics dictates that the present formula of distribution of lands and resources away from Aboriginal peoples must be reversed. It must be accepted, in the words of the commissioners, that ‘Federal, provincial and territorial governments, through negotiation, provide Aboriginal nations with lands that are sufficient in size and quality to foster Aboriginal economic self-reliance and cultural and political autonomy’ (RCAP 1996: Recommendation 2.4.2). It is also necessary to ‘ensure that Aboriginal Nations . . . have . . . exclusive or preferential access to certain renewable and non-renewable resources, . . . [and a] guaranteed share of the revenues flowing from resources development’ (Recommendation 2.4.3). In addition, the commissioners recommended that Aboriginal nations should receive substantial financial transfers for the benefit of their people, as do the provinces under present federal arrangements.

By any measure, whether it is justice, fairness or economics, the present formulas and arrangements do not work. With respect to the necessary conditions for socio-economic success, a key factor identified by the Royal Commission is the requirement for full recognition of our status and rights as peoples, including our right to self-determination and self-government. At present, in my opinion, First Nations do not exercise self-government. We exercise a form of self-management, because as long as we are receiving

government handouts we are administrating the policies of the government. In other words, we are forced to become administrators of our own poverty.

Numerous studies in the United States have demonstrated that the only North American Indian tribes that have thrived and developed are those that, in addition to adequate land and resource bases, have the highest levels of sovereignty, jurisdiction and control over their lands, resources and various institutions. The universal Aboriginal experience in Canada is that federal and provincial governments are permanent opponents of full recognition and development of the inherent rights we have as Aboriginal peoples.

The Royal Commissioners recommended that ‘All governments in Canada recognize that Aboriginal peoples are nations vested with the right of self-determination’ (Recommendation 2.3.2), and that

Self-determination entitles Aboriginal peoples to negotiate the terms of their relationship with Canada and to establish governmental structures that they consider appropriate for their needs . . . in practice there is a need for the federal and provincial governments actively to . . . implement [Aboriginal nations’] right of self-determination. (RCAP 1996: ‘Self-Determination and Self-Government: Overview’)

The Royal Commission stressed that this recognition would pose no threat to Canada or its political and territorial integrity. We have always sought coexistence, cooperation and harmony in our relations with other peoples. We want to find our rightful place as partners in the Canadian federation. There was a 97 per cent ‘no’ vote in our own Cree Special Referendum of October 1995 concerning Quebec secession. There can be no clearer proof that we are seeking full and meaningful inclusion in Canada and Quebec, and all that such an involvement has to offer.

The Royal Commission also said, and I agree, that if what Aboriginal peoples thought we had won had been delivered–a reasonab