Cree Culture

The Cree are a hunter-gather society that live mainly in Canada with some residing in the northern United States. They are a group of tribes which have lived in North America before their French encounter in the 1600s. As of now the Cree groups are of mixed heritage and multilinguistic, due to the many different indigenous tribes they are open to and are willing to accept, as long as they maintain their values. Since the 1800s they have become a part of the North American fur trade, so that they may gain the minimal outside resources required for them to live and respect their trade agreements. However, they do have high regard for their cultural values where they won’t sell their land to the modern world nor do they use much modern technology …show more content…
They like to coincide with the natural environment. They have no need or much value of money or the selling of the huge abundance of resources they “own,” by residing on their land. It also isn’t necessary to hoard and keep consuming resources just because there’s an availability of them, instead they only take what they need to survive and nothing more. For example they are not going to constantly hunt and kill bears for food and subtle amounts of resources just because there’s a huge population of them. Instead they will hunt each bear as needed so that they don’t waste the precious life that was given for their purpose. Also, they live along with nature instead of thinking of themselves as different and above all other forms of life. For example the Cree make a point that they do not own the land, instead they tend to it, so it would completely disrespectful to sell it or abuse it for monetary profit. This is the culture that they try to preserve from the outside world. The most they have changed is adding a clean, fuel efficient, chainsaw and small motorboat. Preserving their culture is important to the Cree because it is believed to be the proper way of living life, where people live sustainably and no resource or living creature is exploited and is given proper respect. They fight the easier more destructive exploitation that is given as an alternative in …show more content…
With these values the environment is just considered a very profitable resource that must be maintained and stressed in order to keep benefitting from its components. Research is used to find ways to exploit the environment to its maximum potential so that we gain the most out of it without degenerating it too much, although this occurs very often. For example, the use of GMOs in food production is a way of modifying the food the environment offers so that we can maximize monetary profits. GMOs are used to increase crop yield by making certain crops drought, disease, and/or weather resistant and choosing certain qualities in the plant to show. This way the most amount of food can be produced for the population and sold for monetary gains. An overwhelming amount of food is created through this method, but it comes at the cost of biodiversity and extreme resource usage. Also, Americans have a general belief in owning the land and considering our own property. We also are always in search of ways that can make our jobs quicker and better, through technological advances, which usually comes with environmental degeneration. It is only recently that we have been making changes to our inventions so that we can free up the stress we exert on the environment. Cultures like the Cree are viewed as primitive and sometimes even as savage behavior by Americans. This