Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the elaboration and renewal of indigenous and modern electoral-bureacratic forms of governance pertaining to Cree lands and resources, traces the sources of power involved in this process, and queries its relationship to international discourse of indigenous rights.

Paper long abstract:

The past four decades have seen dramatic institutional elaboration of Cree responsibility for their land and sea territory through regimes of divided and shared jurisdiction negotiated with Québec and Canadian governments. This paper examines the complementarities and contradictions that connect and separate indigenous and modern bureaucratic forms, the intersecting and divergent interests of the parties to negotiated treaty and other arrangements, and the power dynamics involved. One dimension of Cree strategy, oriented in particular to hunters and hunting, is to define and defend local spaces where indigenous institutions may endure as largely self-governing forms. Another dimension is to craft electoral-bureaucratic practices that compete, on a regional scale, for a favourable jurisdictional and beneficiary status alongside state-level entities in the 'sustainable development' of 'natural resources' and civic administration. These strategies involve a multi-scale positioning of indigenous agency, from leadership of family hunting territories to engagement in regional, provincial, federal, and transnational organizational networks. What are the implications of resulting institutional arrangements for the fulfillment, or not, of international indigenous rights standards? How has the discourse around these standards contributed to developments in Eeyou Istchee?