Doctorate--Philosophy--Stockholm, 1962. / Bibliogr. p. 273-277. Index.

This doctoral thesis explores the uniqueness of Cree spirituality and law, based in part on oral histories and on Euro-Canadian literal evidence, specifically the multi-volumes of the Jesuit Relations and the thousands of Hudson’s Bay Company manuscripts that re-enforce insights into this Aboriginal governing system. Taken together, the oral and literal primary evidences will define how spirituality and law pre-existed colonisation and are manifested within self-governing institutions currently pursued by First Nations. The purpose is to understand better Cree spirituality and law as captured in Cree self-government models. This Aboriginal legal history contains and studies a plan of action for future self-governance based on inherent Aboriginal legal traditions and jurisprudence.

This thesis is about Cree people who many refer to themselves as Ininew and whose original language is Ininewin. The main focus of this thesis is to generate dialogue on the colonial legacies that affect the Ininewak at Pimicikamak today in the area of community governance and the community’s creative responses to colonialism. First this paper provides a synopsis of the colonial history of Pimicikamak, making reference to the First Written Law (Pimicikamak Okimawin Onasowewin) and how this is a step forward to decolonization. Pimicikamak Nation`s government is recently new. It empowers the four councils: the Elders Council, Women’s Council, Youth Council, and Executive Council to make and amend laws as direction from its citizens. Modern written Pimicikamak customary law is subject to acceptance by consensus of a general assembly of the Pimicikamak public. This thesis will also discuss methods of the current colonial-derived governance system to provide a critique of the mechanisms that continue to raise havoc on Indigenous peoples. As well, this thesis will discuss the concepts of self-governance and suggest that in order to decolonize and liberate Indigenous people from the colonial entrapment that binds them to a governance system foreign to their own, there must be a committed, intellectual awareness and comprehension of the roots that continue to undermine Indigenous peoples, including Pimicikamak. This awareness is needed to visualize and comprehend centuries of systematic displacement and to acknowledge that the current colonial system still represents its history.

This thesis is about Cree people who many refer to themselves as Ininew and whose original language is Ininewin. The main focus of this thesis is to generate dialogue on the colonial legacies that affect the Ininewak at Pimicikamak today in the area of community governance and the community’s creative responses to colonialism. First this paper provides a synopsis of the colonial history of Pimicikamak, making reference to the First Written Law (Pimicikamak Okimawin Onasowewin) and how this is a step forward to decolonization. Pimicikamak Nation`s government is recently new. It empowers the four councils: the Elders Council, Women’s Council, Youth Council, and Executive Council to make and amend laws as direction from its citizens. Modern written Pimicikamak customary law is subject to acceptance by consensus of a general assembly of the Pimicikamak public. This thesis will also discuss methods of the current colonial-derived governance system to provide a critique of the mechanisms that continue to raise havoc on Indigenous peoples. As well, this thesis will discuss the concepts of self-governance and suggest that in order to decolonize and liberate Indigenous people from the colonial entrapment that binds them to a governance system foreign to their own, there must be a committed, intellectual awareness and comprehension of the roots that continue to undermine Indigenous peoples, including Pimicikamak. This awareness is needed to visualize and comprehend centuries of systematic displacement and to acknowledge that the current colonial system still represents its history.

This thesis is based mainly upon field work among the Cree community at Rupert House, Quebec, in the summer of 1961. I have documented the present range in the composition and activity of production and consumption groups and indicated change over the last sixty years. This description is set in the frame of major changes that have occurred in the habitat and the external social environment. The nature of the transitional taiga-tundra biome is delineated. Changes in the manner and extent of its exploitation are described. Certain changes in the plant community have led to the replacement of herd caribou by solitary moose; this in conjunction with new tools has allowed for decrease in the size of trapping-hunting groups. Nevertheless, trapping-groups have remained larger, on the average, than the nuclear family. This is due to the still desirable aid and cooperation of more than one adult man while trapping. Country foods are shown to play a major role in consumption despite the decline in the utilization of certain resources. It is suggested that the importance of country food has been underestimated by some writers who have not fully appreciated the use of fur animals for food. The Rupert House community retains the features of a trapping society despite the fact that this source provides the smallest proportion of community income. The reason for this is that trapping still is the major source of income for close to half of the commensal groups. This situation serves to emphasise the unequal distribution of wage labour and the differential income within the community. Yet, even those families which do receive significant amounts of wage income are dependent upon trapping for necessary additional increments. Furthermore, by far the largest amount of country food and nearly all of the strategic meat is taken while trapping. During late fall and winter, trapping is the only important productive activity that can be undertaken. There are two features which characterise Rupert House social groups today: 1. the smallness of consumption groups, which ideally and most usually are limited to a nuclear family, and 2. the relative fluidity in membership of trapping groups. The effects and demands of ecology are not uniformly reflected in all facets of community life or social organization. The organization of production groups shows the necessary adjustment to the economy and environment much more clearly than does the organization of consumption groups. A third distinct grouping intermediate to commensal and productive groups exists in the form of spring and summer residential units. These units arise when people are most free to arrange themselves as they wish and not as it is economically necessary to. Summer residence units show more clearly than any other the extra commensal arrangements which families would like to maintain. A few extensions through post marital residence or through sibling coresidence does not affect the basically nuclear character of even summer residential groups. The establishment of virtual band endogamy from an earlier condition of a 20%+ rate of inter band marriage is traced through parish records. It is suggested that the seeming unimportance and disappearance of extended kin relations at Rupert House today may be an adjustment to endogamy. No findings were made in the mechanisms or adaptive advantage in the establishment of endogamy. A very marked difference in the income and standard of living of Rupert House commensal groups was found to exist. A common administrative belief that some sort of parity between such groups is established by the variable exploitation of different resources and through extensive sharing was found to be untrue. The overall picture of local social organization is one of marked simplification during the last forty years due to new productive techniques and new Hudson's Bay Company transport and operation policies. A former elaborate social hierarchy of White Hudson's Bay Company officers, Metis artisans and intermediaries, Indian workers, and trappers has given way to a clear-cut division of White administrators and Indian trappers. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

This thesis provides an analysis of wh-questions in Nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree). The study is done within the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1995). I argue that Nêhiyawêwin wh-words like awfna 'who' are not generated in argument position and do not undergo A-bar movement to Spec CP (Chapter 3). Rather, they are licensed as the predicate of a nominal clause, and respect the same syntactic constraints as other nominal clauses: they are strictly predicatê-initial; obey a referentiality hierarchy; and display agreement for number, animacy and obviation (chapter 4). I analyze Nêhiyawêwin nominal clauses as IP with a null Infl head in which the predicate fronts to Spec CP. The clausê-initial position of the wh-word is thus part of a more general process of predicatefronting. The nominal clause analysis of wh-words accounts for the absence of wh-movement per se in the language, as well as for the absence of wh in situ. However, based on their interpretive properties, wh-questions must contain an operator-variable chain. I argue that the operator-variable relation arises when the subject of the nominal clause links to an A-position in a subordinate clause. This occurs in one of two ways: by means of the kâ-complementizer or the ê-complementizer (Chapter 5). If the subordinate clause has kâ-, the resulting structure is a relative clause which restricts the reference of the subject. This yields a cleft construction: Who is it[sub i] that Mary likes t[sub i] ? If the subordinate clause has ê-, the clauses are conjoined, and null-operator movement in the subordinate clause forces an anaphoric relation between the wh-word and the A-position in the ê- clause: Who is he[sub i] & OP[sub i] Mary likes him[sub i]. Having shown how Nêhiyawêwin wh-words are associated with an operator-variable chain, I then consider the consequences of the proposed analysis (Chapter 6). A defining property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to island effects. Consistent with this, there is an argument/adjunct asymmetry in Nêhiyawêwin, which in turn bears on the question of where overt arguments are positioned in a polysynthetic language. I argue that complement clauses are basê-generated in an A-position, unlike overt DPs which are in an A'-position (adjoined to IP). This explains why long-distance extraction is possible from complement clauses, while extraction from adjunct clauses is ungrammatical. Another property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to Weak Crossover (WCO). WCO effects are absent in Nêhiyawêwin wh-questions. I argue that WCO may be avoided because there is no movement of a truly quantificational operator in the sense of Lasnik and Stowell (1991), but rather movement of a null operator. I then propose a Weakest Crossover analysis for the absence of WCO, following Demirdache (1997).

This thesis outlines a syntactic analysis of Noun Incorporation in Cree. In this construction, certain morphemes, 'medials', that appear as the nominal root of an external NP can alternatively appear within a verb. This thesis extends previous analyses of Algonquian medials by utilizing the theory of Incorporation developed in Baker (1988b). Within this theory of grammar, medials are base-generated as nouns within an 'object' NP and then optionally adjoined to the verb stem as a result of head (X$ sp{ rm o}$) movement. Established restrictions on head movement can account for many properties of NI, including paraphrasing, doubling, bare modifiers, possible thematic relations, and differences between NI and compounds. The efficacy of the syntactic approach validates a modular account of polysynthetic word formation. In addition, the distribution of Cree NI validates several putatively universal principles of theta-role assignment.

This thesis provides an analysis of wh-questions in Nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree). The study is done within the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1995). I argue that Nêhiyawêwin wh-words like awfna 'who' are not generated in argument position and do not undergo A-bar movement to Spec CP (Chapter 3). Rather, they are licensed as the predicate of a nominal clause, and respect the same syntactic constraints as other nominal clauses: they are strictly predicatê-initial; obey a referentiality hierarchy; and display agreement for number, animacy and obviation (chapter 4). I analyze Nêhiyawêwin nominal clauses as IP with a null Infl head in which the predicate fronts to Spec CP. The clausê-initial position of the wh-word is thus part of a more general process of predicatefronting. The nominal clause analysis of wh-words accounts for the absence of wh-movement per se in the language, as well as for the absence of wh in situ. However, based on their interpretive properties, wh-questions must contain an operator-variable chain. I argue that the operator-variable relation arises when the subject of the nominal clause links to an A-position in a subordinate clause. This occurs in one of two ways: by means of the kâ-complementizer or the ê-complementizer (Chapter 5). If the subordinate clause has kâ-, the resulting structure is a relative clause which restricts the reference of the subject. This yields a cleft construction: Who is it[sub i] that Mary likes t[sub i] ? If the subordinate clause has ê-, the clauses are conjoined, and null-operator movement in the subordinate clause forces an anaphoric relation between the wh-word and the A-position in the ê- clause: Who is he[sub i] & OP[sub i] Mary likes him[sub i]. Having shown how Nêhiyawêwin wh-words are associated with an operator-variable chain, I then consider the consequences of the proposed analysis (Chapter 6). A defining property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to island effects. Consistent with this, there is an argument/adjunct asymmetry in Nêhiyawêwin, which in turn bears on the question of where overt arguments are positioned in a polysynthetic language. I argue that complement clauses are basê-generated in an A-position, unlike overt DPs which are in an A'-position (adjoined to IP). This explains why long-distance extraction is possible from complement clauses, while extraction from adjunct clauses is ungrammatical. Another property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to Weak Crossover (WCO). WCO effects are absent in Nêhiyawêwin wh-questions. I argue that WCO may be avoided because there is no movement of a truly quantificational operator in the sense of Lasnik and Stowell (1991), but rather movement of a null operator. I then propose a Weakest Crossover analysis for the absence of WCO, following Demirdache (1997). / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Through a review of literature and a qualitative inquiry of Cree language practitioners and knowledge keepers, this study explores traditional concepts related to Cree worldview specifically through the lens of nîhiyawîwin, the Cree language. Avoiding standard dictionary approaches to translations, it provides inside views and perspectives to provide broader translations of key terms related to Cree values and principles, Cree philosophy, Cree cosmology, Cree spirituality, and Cree ceremonialism. It argues the importance of providing connotative, denotative, implied meanings and etymology of key terms to broaden the understanding of nîhiyaw tâpisinowin and the need for an encyclopaedic approach to understanding these key terms. It explores the interrelatedness of nîhiyawîwin with nîhiyaw tâpisinowin and the need to recognize them both as part of a Cree holistic paradigm. / Graduate / 0290 / 0515 / artnapoleon@yahoo.ca