Bringing Home Animals

Bringing Home Animals Synopsis

Bringing Home Animals is an ethnography detailing what the author learned as a result of travelling and working with Iinuu (Cree) hunters and their families in Northern Quebec. The study was conducted from 1969-1971, and is a rich example of subsistence hunting in an Indigenous territory. The second edition revisits and updates contextual material following the construction of the James Bay hydroelectric project in the region, while preserving the original argument.

Bringing Home Animals explores the way of life of the Mistissini Iinuu hunters, their understanding of and adaptation to the ecology of their hunting grounds, their subsistence-based economy and its relation to market production, their land tenure system, the impact of external agencies on them, and their rich spiritual and symbolic life, particularly the rituals that show respect for the animals before, during, and following the hunt.