Cree

The Cree, numbering over 350,000, form one of the largest First Nations macro-communities in Canada, with homelands covering most of eastern and central Canada from Eeyou Istchee in Quebec across Ontario and the Prairies to British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, plus Montana communities in the United States. Plains, Woodland, Rocky, Swampy, Moose and East Cree, with Atikamekw, Innu, Naskapi and Oji-Cree kin, speak Algonquian languages and live by traditions tuned to each country: bison pounds on the plains, moose and beaver in the woods, geese camps in the muskeg. The fur trade made Cree middlemen of an interior empire, and the Numbered Treaties then mapped their lands into reserves. Cree syllabics carry one of the great Indigenous literatures; powwow, round dance and the shaking tent continue. Eeyou self-government in James Bay and prairie urban communities alike show a people who never ceded the centre of the northern map, and the Numbered Treaties covering Cree homelands still bind Crown payments and hunting rights today.