I live in the ancestral land (a reserve) belonging to the First Nations Indigenous People – York Landing, Northern Manitoba. The traditional language found here is Cree Language. They are widely known as the Cree Indigenous people and refer themselves as such. My local environment is relatively new, and it replaced a small island of bushes and trees surrounded by a big lake. According to Wikipedia, it is located along the Eastern bank of the Nelson River, roughly halfway between Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay. Also, it is estimated to be 116 kilometers away from Thompson, Manitoba.[1] The community was built in 1957 when the Indigenous people were relocated from York Factory to York Landing  after the Hudson’s Bay Company’s York Factory location was closed down.[2]The Government of Canada transferred 9.674 km² (2,390.5 acres) of reserve lands at York Landing to the First Nation. York Landing received official reserve status in 1989 covered by treaty 5.[3]

From Kiinawin Kawindomowin website we learn that York Factory was the operational headquarters of the powerful Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) which is in northern Manitoba (where the Hayes River meets the Hudson’s Bay). The Hudson’s Bay Company opened its regional office in York Factory in 1684 as a fur trading post. The regional environment was very conducive to both white traders and the Indigenous people of Swampy Cree, today known as the York Factory First Nation. In its early years, the Swampy Cree environment was vital to the Hudson’s Bay Company survival and economic activities, providing York Factory with furs and other goods while also acting as hunters, guides, packers, and couriers. In other words, it depicted an environmental history filled with a series of economic activities, directly or indirectly, connected with fur trade.[4]

Moreover, it is necessary to note that the local Swampy Cree called York Factory Kihciwaskahihan means “the great house.” It is a name given to the community environment by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Story Nations writing has it that York Factory was the administrative center of Rupert’s Land in the mid-nineteenth century. Also, the Hudson’s Bay Company appropriated a vast territorial holding that comprised the entire Hudson Bay drainage basin, or a third of what is now modern Canada. The Hudson Bay Company built over fifty houses at the environment and hired a vast workforce of white people and Swampy Cree peoples. Many of the Indigenous people who worked at and around York Factory were traders, provisioners, wage laborers and consumers. One might view it as economic downturn when the Hudson’s Bay Company began to restrict its employment of Indigenous peoples to manual labor jobs, the Swampy Cree peoples at York Factory were demoted to lowest level of the labor hierarchy. However, the Indigenous peoples persevered and gradually over time succeeded in establishing seasonal communities around York Factory and developed a more permanent settlement at the Factory environment. In other words, the community environment and their economic prospects were dominated by, and intricately connected with the rise and fall of the Hudson’s Bay Company.[5]

Furthermore, it is remarkable to learn that when the fur trade ended (and the business on animal skins was no longer a vital economy), the Hudson’s Bay Company closed its location at York Factory in 1957. According to the environmental historian and a research scholar Robert Coutts, the introduction of the railway system made York Factory not to be a vital port any longer, and the settlement environment and its surrounding Indigenous communities declined rapidly in size. This led to the closing of the settlement and the relocation of the York Factory First Nation to the area of York Landing, roughly halfway between the Hudson’s Bay and Lake Winnipeg. Some Cree Elders present during the relocation still remember today how they were forced to leave their homes and go to less desirable land. Some still occasionally visit the old location and home of their childhood and heritage. The old York Factory environment is now operated by Parks Canada.[6]

With the relocation of the Indigenous people to York Landing (and signing the treaty 5), the government of Canada initially thought the land in northern Manitoba to be of negligible agricultural value and therefore not worth including under the already existing Treaty 5, and thus prevented many northern Manitoban Indigenous peoples from signing it. However, the Canadian government took a new interest in northern Manitoba environment and its Indigenous inhabitants due to the discovery of oil in the region.[7] By implication, the economic interests by the Canadian government make the Indigenous environment very valuable and relevant.

Also, the ecological history of this physical environment further revealed their inherent communal lifestyle seen from the way their cabins and trailers are clustered together in the settlement. The environment is a rural area (far away from urban area or urban development), a Northern Manitoba reserve with no brick houses; the building types are cabins and trailers made of wood and pan. There is the forest reserve area for dumping the refuse and waste materials serving as the composting facility. Around the composting facility, one could easily see wildlife like black bears, and birds of different species; further into the thick forest, one could see – beaver, wolves, moose, and caribou. The economic values of the environment lie in activities like hunting, fishing (ice-fishing), and subsistence farming.

Lastly, there is increasing ecological awareness in the recent years to preserve the environment – the lands, waterways, forests, species of birds and wildlife, and fishing and hunting restrictions. Hence, the community chief Leroy Constant said: “Water is the foundation of life. Our ancestors knew this, and it still is. Our ancestors have always been keepers of the land. Destruction was never part of it”.[8] The environment has a neighborhood store by North West Company (NWC). I also noticed that some individuals in the community privately do some retails of edible food items from their homes like snacks, fish, meats from animals, fruits, and vegetables. Thus, my physical environment depicts the ecological history of a people who are enterprising, industrious and gravitate toward production and consumption of edible goods and food items.

[1] York Factory First Nation. Retrieved 18th March 2022: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Factory_First_Nation

[2] Our history – York Factory First Nation. Retrieved 18th March 2022: http://www.yffn.ca/kawechiwasik/our-history/

[3] Our Lands – York Factory First Nation. Retrieved 18th March 2022: http://www.yffn.ca/kawechiwasik/our-lands/

[4] York Factory. Kiinawin Kawindomowin Story Nations. Retrieved 18th March 2022: https://storynations.utoronto.ca/index.php/york-factory/

[5] Ibid.

[6] Robert Coutts. “York Factory as a Native Community: Public History Research Commemoration and the Challenge to Interpretation.” Prairie Forum 17, no 2 (1992): 275.

[7] Robert Coutts and Flora Beardy. “Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree stories from York Factory”. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 5.

[8] Leroy Constant. York Factory First Nation. Retrieved 18th March 2022, https://keeyask.com/the-partnership/york-factory-first-nation/