What does Cree culture stand for these days? A great interest in exploring and preserving the Cree culture and language has taken root in Eeyou Astchee.
Many Crees, especially the youth, are asking questions about the culture, but the answers are not always easy to find.
A dozen or more different Cree entities have a mandate to promote and advance the Cree culture and language. Each year, hundreds of thousands of dollars of Cree money are spent on this work. But the question is: Is this money being well spent? Is the work headed in the right direction?
Robbie Dick of Whapmagoostui isn’t so sure. “There’s a lot of questions about what our culture stands for these days. On the Cree side, our culture covers a way of life,” he said. “According to what I understand about Cree culture, everything was governed by the laws of nature. All Native cultures are like that.”
Robbie says the main entity involved in Cree culture—the James Bay Cree Cultural Education Centre—needs to be organized along more traditional lines, needs to listen more to the Elders and needs to coordinate the cultural efforts of the Cree Nation. Robbie, who is coordinating the creation of Elders’ Councils in all the communities, doesn’t blame the people who now run the Cultural Centre. The problem goes all the way back to when it was set up— without any involvement from the Elders, the guardians of Cree culture.
“The Elders should have been involved right from the beginning in the organization of the Centre,” said Robbie, a former chief of Whampagoostui. “One of the things I noticed is that everything about how the Centre operates is from another culture. It’s been functioning under another culture.”
As well, the Centre never got a clear mandate on what it should actually do, said Robbie. “The advice needed was lacking with regards to how to. preserve the culture.” And it also never became a coordinating body for Cree cultural efforts. Today, the Cree School Board does its part, the communities do their own thing, the CTA and CRA do something else. “It’s a piecemeal approach,” said Robbie. “It’s difficult as to who is doing what.”
But this is changing. Robbie said Elders are getting organized to keep the Cree culture strong and pass on the knowledge of the past to younger generations. A provisional Cree Nation Elders’ Council has been chosen and Elders’ Councils are established in three communities— Whapmagoostui, Eastmain and Mistissini. O.J. is close to setting up a fourth one.
He said they will be “bringing together the knowledge of the Elders, discussing aspects of the culture and how it relates to the other culture that we are accustomed to, and trying to establish norms, principles and guidelines of how a Native-oriented Cultural Institute should be.”
The Elders need the full support of the Cree Nation to do their job right. Robbie said they got less than half the funds they requested from the Board of Compensation and have yet to get a response to their request for funding from the bands. “But we’re patient,” he said. “In time, we are confident it will work itself out.”
