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Winter with the Cree – Immerse in the Indigenous Culture of Northern Quebec
February 16 @ 5:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Winter with the Cree – Cultural Immersion in Northern Quebec
February 16 – 25 2024
$3,500 | ($500 deposit due upon registration)
Includes all lodging, transportation, and food
Guide: Naomi Heindel
Travel north to Eeyou Istchee, The People’s Land, for 10 days immersed in the lands and livelihoods of the James Bay Cree, our First Nations neighbors in northern Quebec.
We will explore the boreal forest landscape – tall black spruce trees; glacial lakes and rivers; wide expanses of snow, sky, forest, and bog; thriving populations of caribou, moose, bear, and beaver – through the lens of the Indigenous people who live there. We will seek to understand land and natural resource use for this hunting and fishing First Nation; explore cultural, resource-based, and political tensions and issues; and experience the everyday life of a Cree winter camp. We’ll discover the ways our lives, as New Englanders, are linked to the lives and lands of the James Bay Cree, and will, undoubtedly, come away looking at the boreal forest, and thinking about our connection to the natural world, in a whole new light.
Led by NBNC Executive Director Naomi Heindel, and Blue Hill Heritage Trust Executive Director Hans Carlson, this trip will focus on important environmental and cultural issues mainly through hands-on “bush” living. Naomi and Hans have both traveled, researched, and worked extensively in James Bay and have collaborated on projects and guided trips together for over a decade. Our Cree hosts, Anna and David Bosum, and their warm extended family, run Nuuhchimi Wiinuu Cree Culture Tours based in Ouje Bougoumou, Quebec, and are highly regarded guides and community elders. Possible activities while we’re with the Bosums include setting rabbit snares, trapping beaver, setting an under-ice fish net, collecting fir boughs for tent floors, making snowshoes and other tools, tanning moosehide, baking and cooking, preparing fish and meat, sewing, and sharing songs and stories over tea and bannock. We will camp in comfortable, canvas wall tents heated by woodstoves; travel by snowshoe and moccasin; eat a wide range of boreal game, from birds to mammals to fish; and experience Indigenous stewardship and connection to the land.
