Defining Land Use in a Context of Proximity: Politics of Community Recognition and Identity Dynamics in Washaw Sibi

In the mid-2000s, in the Upper Harricana River drainage area, the Abitibiwinni and Washaw Sibi groups may be said to have “overlapping claims.” This article presents a historical overview of the area, emphasising interactions between groups and the way group identities were arbitrarily assigned by colonisers and gradually associated with residence. Ethnographic data underlines how family hunting territories played a pivotal social role for the subsistence of marginalised families. The idea that the claims of these groups “overlap” emerged recently, despite documented historical forms of coexistence, kinship ties and hunting partnerships between the Abitibiwinnik and Cree.