American Indian Environmental Relationships::

Northeastern and Subarctic Hunters

The environment of the Ojibwa or Chippewa of the Northeastern culture region is lush and diverse. Before relative confinement on reservations, the Ojibwa gathered in fishing villages in spring and summer, planted fields of corn, squash and beans, and gathered wild fruit, nuts, berries and roots. In the winter, Ojibwa families scattered into the dense forest and hunted migrating waterfowl and game such as deer, and trapped beaver.

During the long winter evenings, elders told stories which recounted the origins of the world, which taught social values and norms, or which simply made people laugh. In common with most of Native North America, the majority of Ojibwa myths have natural elements at their core. The Ojibwa culture hero and trickster figure is Nanabushu, the Great Hare, who teaches the people social values through the mischief he gets up to. Animals and plants in Ojibwa mythology are not portrayed as impersonal objects but as sentient, nonhuman beings living in family units and societies of their own. In mythology, marriage frequently occurs between humans and animals, and people easily transform themselves into beavers or bears and vice versa.

In Ojibwa belief, all animals, for example, are endowed with reasoning power and faculties. They also have spiritual natures, glossed as 'souls', which go to the same place as human souls after death. Ojibwa still speak of bears and other animals as 'relatives', 'grandfathers', 'brothers', and so on. Like their human relatives, animals also pray to the four directions.

Animals, humans and plants are seen to be partners in survival. A concept of mutual assistance and dependence exists in human-plant relations. If farmers or gardeners treat plant life with respect, if they do not overharvest or waste, then plant life will return in abundance year after year.

The concept of mutual assistance and dependence extends into human-animal relations also. One scholar has written that, for the Ojibwa, "the animal has the same right to life that man has. It is necessary to use the animal for the subsistence of man, but the animal is sacrificed regretfully for this purpose". Game and human hunters are each bound by corresponding obligations. For example, if the bones of slain animals are not returned to the earth or to the water from whence they came, they will not return to life. Each species has its own spiritual warden. In the case of the animals hunted by the Ojibwa, these 'keepers of the game' make sure that humans treat the game they hunt with respect. This means that if a hunter breaks a rule of the inter-species relationship - for example, by neglecting to treat the bones of the slain with due respect - then the keeper can either withhold further animals from the offender, or visit harsher reprisals upon him. For its part, an animal is obliged to surrender itself to a hunter's weapons if that hunter has extended to it all the appropriate courtesies and tokens of exchange. The anthropologist, Frank Speck sums up:

"The hunter's virtue lies in respecting the souls of the animals necessarily killed, in treating their remains in prescribed manner, and in particular making as much use of the carcass as is possible. […] The animals slain under the proper conditions and treated with the consideration due them return to life again and again. They furthermore indicate their whereabouts to the 'good' hunter in dreams, resigning themselves to his weapons in a free spirit of self-sacrifice."

In another article, Speck describes a similar relationship existing between game and Naskapi hunters of the Subarctic. He states that the mutual and intertwined relationship must be seen in the context of creation:

"The difference between man and animals, they believe, lies chiefly in outward form. In the beginning of the world, before humans were formed, all animals existed grouped under 'tribes' of their kinds who could talk like men, and were even covered with the same protection. When addressing animals in a spiritual way in his songs, or using the drum, the conjuror uses the expression . . . 'you and I wear the same covering and have the same mind and spiritual strength.' This statement was explained as meaning not that men had fur, not that animals wore garments, but that their equality was spiritual and embraced or eclipsed the physical."