Officially dedicated by Elders on Tuesday, November 15th, Aanischaaukamikw, the Cree Cultural Institute, is now officially OPEN!  To get your first glimpse, explore the collection, and learn how to visit Aanischaaukamikw in person and virtually, click here.

We suggest that you put this new link in your Favourites or Bookmarks bar – and we invite you to visit the Aanischaaukamikw site often!

What’s a museum without exhibit cases, panels, texts and labels? It’s a museum getting ready for the public! Now the process is moving forward at an unprecedented pace, and we’re beginning to see just how spectacular Aanischaaukamikw is going to look. We were all very excited  last week as we watched an 18 wheeler  back into the new loading dock, not with construction materials, but with a fifty-three foot trailer full of the things we need to build one of the most extensive and informative exhibitions ever created about the James Bay Cree.

Next week the objects and artifacts will begin to arrive, and then the AV equipment to deliver the images and words of the elders as they describe the use of the objects on display. Weaving this all together will take all the skills and efforts of a large team of specialists, and they feel privileged to be here, to help assemble this story, and to play a part in the realization of this dream.

Keep your eyes on this site for news of our upcoming opening!

Toboggans were used and discarded regularly in Northern Ontario and Quebec, and have not traditionally been the kind of thing to catch caught the eye of collectors. However, the toboggan is an invention of First Nations of North Eastern Canada, and we know that it has been critical to survival in winter for centuries. Any hunter who killed a large animal miles from his winter camp, would have had no way to transport it back without some sort of device that could displace the weight, “float” on top of the snow, and allow the precious kill to be transported efficiently in the same way that snowshoes make it possible for the hunter himself to get around.

It’s likely that Henry Hudson himself might have seen toboggans in use by the people of the coast of James Bay, where he spent the winter in 1611. The toboggan, with its Algonquin language family name still attached, was eventually “borrowed” by all Canadians, and became a staple of winter sports. In fact, when I was little boy growing up in Vancouver, many families in the neighbourhood had toboggans they’d bought at the sports department of Eaton’s or Hudson’s Bay. We slid down hills of our town on those rare occasions when it snowed, or took it up to the local mountains in winter.

A Cree version of the word for this device, utabaan, is still used commonly to refer also to a pickup truck, a nod to the humble sled that made life possible in the bush in winter.

We have acquired a pair of toboggans attributed to the Mistissini area, and we’re excited to include them in Aanischaaukamikw’s collection. Along with canoes and snowshoes, there is no better example of how native technology underlay the European settlement of Canada and then became part of its recreational life.

The two ubagaan are important additions to the collection because:

• They help us to document the history of Cree material culture back into the 19th century
• They help us to visualize and interpret an important aspect of Cree economy – hunting and trapping
• They help us to document change (many Cree today use plastic sheets for the same purpose); and
• They help us connect native technology with broader Canadian experience.

This purchase was made possible by a grant from the Acquisition Fund of the Aanischaaukamikw Foundation.

Stephen Inglis

Aanischaaukamikw was honoured to receive a visit on May 17^th from Québec Premier Jean Charest, Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come and several other Québec and Cree dignitaries, including Pierre Arcand, Minister of Sustainable Development, the Environment and Parks, Geoffrey Kelley, Minister responsible for Native Affairs, Oujé-Bougoumou Chief Louise Wapachee and Abel Bosum, Chief Negotiator for Cree-Québec Relations.

This group was in Oujé-Bougoumou that day to announce the creation of the Assinica National Park Reserve.  Following the announcement ceremony the attendees walked to the Aanischaaukamikw construction site for a brief tour of the nearly finished building with explanations from project architects Douglas Cardinal and Stephen Rotman, and Aanischaaukamikw executive director Stephen Inglis.

Aanischaaukamikw looks forward to inviting everyone to visit when the building is complete and we open our doors to the public next fall.

(front row – left to right: Douglas Cardinal, Stephen Rotman, Geoffrey Kelley, Premier Charest, Pierre Arcand, Grand Chief Coon Come, Stephen Inglis)

Architects typically have a strong vision of what their designs represent, but the responses of residents or visitors often turn out to be both diverse and unanticipated.

Douglas Cardinal talks of traditional Cree dwellings like the astchiaukamikw and sabtuan as the inspiration for his design and the relationship of the new building to the snow-bound canvas and pole tent house in Oujé-Bougoumou’s “cultural village” shown here, seem to fit. Nonetheless, Aanischaaukamikw President, Dianne Ottereyes Reid, spoke recently of elders who also described the beams of the building as the interior of a canoe, and alternatively as the ribcage of an animal. A longtime resident of Oujé-Bougoumou told me recently that he had overheard locals comparing the beams to those of Noah’s ark. Their question was, “when is the flood coming?”

What is brilliant is the fact that both Doug Cardinal and Stephen Rotman, who have both worked so hard in designing this building, would be delighted to know that there is a range of interpretations, each as unique as the perspective of the “beholder”, and all indicative that Aanischaaukamikw is striking a resonant, fundamental chord with those who have come in contact with it.

We look forward with great anticipation to sharing this remarkable building, and all that it represents, with thousands more people, and to hearing (and recording!) the many more interpretations that the space will evoke over time.

Stephen Inglis

The Aanischaaukamikw construction project is moving ahead quickly.  The office spaces will be finished and equipped by March, and the Aanischaaukamikw staff and those of our tenants and partners will move in shortly thereafter.  The last of the roofing and exterior details will be completed this spring as soon as the snow melts, and the landscaping will be done this summer.

And this fall, Aanischaaukamikw will be open to the public and will inaugurate its permanent exhibit on the history and traditions of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee (central and northern Quebec).

All of this progress is the result of an extraordinary partnership by the Crees, the private sector, and the Quebec and federal governments to support the development of Aanischaaukamikw and our efforts to protect and study our culture and language and to share these with the world.

Aanischaaukamikw is very grateful for this support and will acknowledge the contributions of all of its supporters in a donor wall to be erected in the Aanischaaukamikw building.  At this time I would like to underline our particular gratitude to the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) and Hydro Québec for their leadership in establishing and supporting the Aanischaaukamikw fundraising campaign.

Your vision and generosity will help us to show the world the true value and richness of our culture.

Abel Bosum, President
Aanischaaukamikw Foundation

This exquisitely decorated woman’s hood, made by someone in one of the coastal communities of the James Bay Cree around 1850, is the first purchase of a historical artefact for the permanent collection of Aanischaaukamikw. It is a testament to the skill of Cree seamstresses, to their complex and dynamic design sense, and to an evolution of local and international material and influences. The historical photo, taken inMoose Factory or Fort Albany in the 1850’s illustrates how the hoods were worn.

Museums build their exhibitions and programmes around collections and for a new institution like Aanischaaukamikw, it’s essential to assemble artefacts, films, photos, and information that will make up the collections.

This purchase was made possible by a grant from the Acquisition Fund of the Aanischaaukamikw Foundation.

Stephen Inglis

One of the most striking features of the architecture of the new building are the great wooden beams that form the structure. Visitors to the site are astonished to learn that these beams are made of millions of small pieces of the local Black Spruce, laminated and bent in the Nordic factory in Chibougoumou. The beautiful golden colour of the beams wherever they are exposed will be one of the design elements that create the personality of the building. This is one feature that relates back to the inspiration for Douglas Cardinal’s architectural design, a traditional Cree dwelling, a “sabtuan”.

When the roof beams with their distinctive curve were first delivered to the site, they were stacked on one side of the building structure in two sets. Local excitement was immediately apparent. Had the “golden arches” finally come to Ouje?

Stephen Inglis

It’s exciting to see the structural shape of the building for Aanischaaukamikw, Cree Cultural Institute in Oujé-Bougoumou start to emerge, to walk the newly poured concrete floors and to measure out in your mind the work rooms and public spaces.

But it was even more intriguing, during a recent visit, to see two dogs wander onto the site, one with what appeared to be a stick in his mouth. He carried it to an interior wall and carefully placed it in a corner, leaning up against the wall. After the dogs left, we moved closer to find that the “stick” was a moose leg, from about the knee down to the hoof.

Whether a gift, a way of “burying” his prize for later, or just playing around, this was the kind of experience that puts this project squarely in the North, in a place where people, and animals, still gather much of their food from the land.

Stephen Inglis