Family Territories, Community Territories: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities through Time

Colin Scott

doi:10.3138/anth.60.1.t10

Authors

Colin Scott Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3138/anth.60.1.t10

Keywords:

family territories, band territories, James Bay Crees, customary tenure, land stewardship, rights and responsibilities

Abstract

This article focuses on the somewhat neglected phenomenon of band-level territoriality and its implications for understanding the much more extensively debated family hunting territory system. The organisational levels of the family and the band are part and parcel of a customary tenure system that has endured the proliferating entanglements of fur trade history and the modern industrial period through a dynamic balancing of the rights and interests of families within those of the larger band – and more recently of the regional nation. It is through participation in larger collectivities that families' prerogatives are recognised and reproduced.

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