Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters

264 Pages·18.958 MB·English

by  Adrian Tanner

ADRIAN TANNER
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Bringing Home
Animals
Religious Ideology and
Mode of Production of the
Mistassini Cree Hunters
The Cree Indians of Mistassini, Quebec, live
in the northern boreal forest east of James
Bay. Most of them are hunters and trappers,
depending for their livelihood on their
technical skill, their knowledge of animal
behaviour and their endurance under what
many would consider harsh conditions.
Although they have traded furs with Euro¬
peans for over 300 years and were early
converts to Christianity, they also use a
system of shamanistic rites for influencing,
foretelling and explaining the outcome of
their hunts. Respect is shown towards the
game animals they bring back to their tents;
and by correctly disposing of the remains
they perpetuate a kind of ‘social’ relation¬
ship, which in myths and dream interpreta¬
tion is sometimes likened to sexual love.
Dr. Tanner analyses the symbolism of these
rites, including spatial conceptualization of
the camp, its geographic orientation, and its
symbolic relationship to the surrounding
bush. He shows that in this symbolic
material there is an ideology of hunting, and
relates this ideology to the material and
economic conditions which determine Cree
economic production.
For a note on the Author, see back flap
BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBRARY

BRINGING HOME ANIMALS
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/bringinghomeanimOOtann
Bringing Home
Animals
Religious Ideology and
Mode of Production of the
Mistassini Cree Hunters
Adrian Tanner
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS • NEW YORK
© Adrian Tanner 1979
All rights reserved. For information, write:
St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Printed in Great Britain
First published in the United States of America in 1979
ISBN 0-312-09633-X
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tanner, Adrian.
Bringing home animals.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Mistassini Indians — Hunting. 2. Indians of North
America— Quebec (Province) — Hunting.
3. Mistassini Indians — Rites and ceremonies.
4. Indians of North America — Quebec (Province) —
Rites and ceremonies. I. Title.
E99.M683T36 1979 970’.004’97 79-11612
ISBN 0-312-09633-X
Printed in Great Britain
To the memory of
Alys Ada Tanner
(1902-1977)
and
Herbert Gabriel Tanner
(1899-1971)
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