Defending the Land: Sovereignty and Forest Life in James Bay Cree Society
ISBN: 9781315664354
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Social Sciences; Anthropology - Soc Sci; Environmental Anthropology; Indigenous Peoples; Social & Cultural Anthropology;

Suitable for both introductory anthropology and upper-division courses in cultural anthropology


The campaign of the Cree people to protect their forest culture from the impact of hydro-electric development in northern Quebec has been widely-documented. Few have heard in any detail about this campaign's outcome and impact upon indigenous societies' futures. This text gives equal attention to the Cree leadership's successful strategies for dealing with major social and environmental pressures with the forces of acculturation and native communities' social destruction.


The titles in the Cultural Survival Studies in Ethnicity and Change series, edited by David Maybury-Lewis and Theodore Macdonald, Jr. of Cultural Survival, Inc., Harvard University, focus on key issues affecting indigenous and ethnic groups worldwide. Each ethnography builds on introductory material by going further in-depth and allowing students to explore, virtually first-hand, a particular issue and its impact on a culture.

Ronald Niezen is Professor of Anthropology at McGill University. His research interested include political/legal anthropology, indigenous peoples and human rights, the social study of new media, history of anthropology/social theory, and social change in Africa.

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