Cree

Intended Cree collective

Record the evidence identifying the collective intended by a use of Cree and the limits of that interpretation.

1. Does this use of Cree identify peoples collectively, a particular community, or a different kind of referent? definition
2. Which source establishes that interpretation, and what remains ambiguous? provenance

Locally authorised names

Record preferred designations and their relationship to Cree without assuming all names are interchangeable.

1. Which designation does the named community use for itself in this context? definition
2. Who supports the spelling, translation and scope of this designation? provenance
3. When would substituting Cree for that designation lose a distinction the community considers meaningful? boundary

Evidenced collective affiliation

Record community-attributed affiliations without presuming that regional, cultural and political groupings coincide.

1. How does this community describe its relationship to Cree collective identity and any regional grouping? definition
2. Which relationships are cultural, linguistic or political, and where do their scopes differ? boundary

Identity and membership separation

Distinguish attributed self-identification, community recognition and formal membership wherever a task requires those concepts.

1. Which meaning of belonging is relevant to the task, and whose account defines it? definition
2. Would the proposed operation infer a person's Cree identity from language, surname, residence or ancestry? boundary
3. Which relevant community process should receive a recognition question the agent cannot resolve? action

Community language and writing

Record the community's language designation, relevant writing conventions and evidence needed to select language resources.

1. What language or variety name and writing convention does the intended Cree audience request? definition
2. Who can verify that a translation or language resource suits this community and use? action

Community-defined transmission state

Record priorities, observations and indicators for the particular community rather than assigning a general state to all Cree peoples.

1. Which language or cultural transmission priorities has this community identified? provenance
2. What indicator, population, date and method support the reported state? measurement
3. Which comparison would exceed the indicator's scope or misrepresent the community? boundary

Attributed place relationship

Record the community, place, nature of the relationship and permissible level of geographic detail.

1. Which Cree community describes this place relationship, and how does it characterise it? provenance
2. Does the account concern homeland, residence, use, stewardship or another explicitly named relationship? definition
3. May the place name or location be reproduced at the requested precision? action

Place account boundaries

Record the time and purpose of a geographic account and preserve unresolved differences between accounts.

1. What period and purpose does this description or map represent? boundary
2. Which community account supports it, and which differing accounts remain unresolved? provenance
3. Does the proposed use require a separate land or legal model before a decision can be made? action

Bounded representative mandate

Record whom a representative speaks for, on what matters and during which period.

1. Which Cree community or collective does this person or body represent for this matter? boundary
2. What current community-issued evidence establishes the mandate? provenance

Community-specific decision path

Record the decision process relevant to a request and any unresolved authority rather than treating contact as consent.

1. Which process does the affected Cree community specify for this proposed action? action
2. What evidence distinguishes an introduction, consultation, endorsement and authorisation in this case? boundary
3. What must the agent defer while the relevant authority or permission remains unresolved? action

Situated Cree account

Record whether an account is community-issued, individually attributed or externally produced, together with its evidential limits.

1. Who produced this account, when, and in relation to which Cree community? provenance
2. Does the account claim a personal, community, regional or broader perspective? boundary
3. How should a correction or disagreement from the relevant community be recorded and reflected in later use? action

Custodian-defined use

Record applicable custodianship and permissions for disclosure, translation, aggregation and reuse without assuming a universal Cree protocol.

1. Who is identified as the appropriate custodian for this material, and what supports that attribution? provenance
2. Which uses, audiences and transformations are permitted for this material? action
3. What handling is required when permission is unknown, restricted or withdrawn? action

Kinds and varieties

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• Plains Cree (nêhiyawak)
• Woods Cree / Woodland Cree (nîhithaw)
• Swampy Cree (nêhinawak / ininîwak)
• Moose Cree (ililîw)
• East Cree / James Bay Cree (iiyiyiu / iiyuu; Northern and Southern)
• Atikamekw (nehirowisiw; closely related, often treated as a distinct nation)
• Naskapi and Innu (Nêhiraw / Innu; historically grouped with Eastern Cree by linguists, politically distinct)
• Rocky Cree / Rock Cree (asinîskâwiyiniwak)

1. Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance

Identifiers and schemes

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• Wikidata - Q117198 (Cree people); Q33390 (Cree language) - People vs. language are separate items; do not collapse them.
• ISO 639-3 - cre (macrolanguage); crk Plains, cwd Woods, csw Swampy, crm Moose, crl Northern East, crj Southern East; related: atj Atikamekw, nsk Naskapi, moe Innu-Montagnais - ISO 639-1/2 also use cr for the macrolanguage.
• ISO 639-1 / 639-2 - cr / cre - Macrolanguage tags used in library and locale systems.
• Glottolog - cree1271 (Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi) - Language-family node covering the dialect continuum.
• IETF BCP 47 - cr; script subtags Latn or Cans (Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics) - Orthography is a first-class identifier split: Roman vs. syllabics.

1. Which of these identifiers and schemes hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance

Standards and regulation

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• Constitution Act, 1982, s. 35 (Canada) - aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, including Cree First Nations.
• Indian Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-5 (Canada) - legal status of status Indians, bands, and reserves; governs many Cree First Nations that are not under modern self-government.
• Numbered Treaties 1-11 and adhesions (Crown-First Nations, 1871-1921) - several Cree nations are signatories or adherents; treaty text and implementation remain contested.
• James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (1975) and Northeastern Quebec Agreement (1978) - modern treaties of the Eeyou/Eenou (James Bay Cree) and Naskapi; foundational for the Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee.
• Cree Nation Governance Agreement / Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act, S.C. 1984, c. 18 - federal statute implementing James Bay Cree local government, largely displacing the Indian Act in Eeyou Istchee.
• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, S.C. 2021, c. 14 (Canada) - framework for aligning federal law with UNDRIP, including Cree language, land, and self-determination claims.
• Official Languages Act (Quebec) / Charter of the French Language, as modified for Cree and Inuit regions - Cree is an official language of Eeyou Istchee local administration under JBNQA institutions.
• ISO 639-3 (SIL International) and Unicode Standard (Unicode Consortium) - language tagging and Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (U+1400-U+167F) used to write Cree.

1. Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance

Real-world use

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• As a legal and political identity: membership in Cree First Nations, the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee), the Cree Nation Government, and prairie tribal councils; used in treaty, consultation, and impact-benefit agreements.
• As a language of home, school, media, and liturgy: immersion and bilingual programmes (e.g. Maskwacis, Eeyou Istchee), CBC/radio in Cree, Anglican and Catholic syllabic liturgy, and public signage in Cree syllabics.
• As a census and health-admin category in Canada (First Nations identity; Cree as mother tongue / language spoken at home) and, more rarely, as an American Indian tribal affiliation in the U.S. (Rocky Boy, Fort Belknap, and other mixed Cree-Chippewa communities).
• As a land-use and wildlife-management subject: trapline systems, goose and moose harvest, and co-management boards under JBNQA and prairie natural-resource regimes.
• As an ethnolinguistic label in museums, archives, and ISNI/library authorities, often collapsing distinct nations into a single 'Cree' heading.

1. Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance

Typical measurements

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• Population identifying as Cree (Canada, census identity) - about 200,000-250,000 people reporting Cree identity in recent Canadian censuses; First Nations membership rolls are smaller and non-identical - persons
• Mother-tongue / home speakers of Cree languages - on the order of 80,000-100,000 speakers across the macrolanguage in Canada; East Cree, Plains Cree, and Swampy Cree account for most - speakers
• Geographic range - roughly from the Rocky Mountain foothills and northern plains through the boreal forest to James Bay and the Quebec-Labrador peninsula, ~55°-58° N core belt with communities south to the U.S. border - geographic extent
• Number of recognized Cree First Nations / communities - on the order of 100+ bands and Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee communities combined, depending on whether Atikamekw, Naskapi, and U.S. Cree-Chippewa groups are counted - communities
• Dialect / ISO 639-3 inventory size - 1 macrolanguage (cre) plus about 6 core individual codes (crk, cwd, csw, crm, crl, crj), with 2-4 closely related neighbours often excluded politically - language codes

1. Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance

Failure modes and hazards

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• Collapsing the dialect continuum and distinct nations (Eeyou Istchee, Plains, Swampy, Moose, Atikamekw, Naskapi, Innu) into one legal or data subject, producing wrong consultation lists and wrong language resources.
• Confusing Cree people with Cree language, or with Métis communities that speak Michif or Plains Cree - identity, membership, and language are not the same variable.
• Indian Act band lists, treaty lists, and self-identified census counts disagree; using one as a proxy for another misstates rights-holders.
• Residential-school, reserve, and child-welfare policies produced language loss and family disruption; modelling 'Cree' as a stable ethnolinguistic stock without that history will misread vitality data.
• Resource extraction on Cree territories (hydroelectric, mining, forestry, oil sands) without adequate consultation creates legal, environmental, and food-security harm; JBNQA history is the canonical case.
• Syllabics vs. Roman orthography mismatch breaks search, education materials, and Unicode implementations; 'y-dot' and dialect-specific syllabic characters are routinely dropped.
• U.S. vs. Canadian legal frames: some Cree descendants are enrolled in Chippewa-Cree or other U.S. tribes; Canadian 'status' categories do not travel.

1. Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance

Regional variation

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• Autonyms and English exonyms shift by region: nêhiyawak (Plains), nîhithaw (Woods), nêhinawak/ininîwak (Swampy), ililîw (Moose), iiyiyiu/iiyuu (East/James Bay), nehirowisiw (Atikamekw).
• Quebec/Eeyou Istchee Cree operate under modern treaty self-government (JBNQA, Cree Nation Government) with Cree as a working language of local institutions; prairie Cree nations are mostly Indian Act / Numbered Treaty administrations.
• Writing systems: western Cree often uses Roman orthography (SRO, Standard Roman Orthography); James Bay, Swampy, and many church/education contexts use Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, with eastern vs. western pointings.
• U.S. presence is concentrated in Montana (Chippewa-Cree of Rocky Boy) and historically in North Dakota and the northern plains; the American legal category is tribal enrollment, not 'First Nation'.
• Atikamekw, Innu, and Naskapi may be classified with Cree by linguists (Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi continuum) but are distinct nations in Quebec and Labrador politics and in ISO 639-3.
• Y-dialect, th-dialect, n-dialect, l-dialect, r-dialect is the practical linguistic partition used by speakers and teachers; it does not map 1:1 onto political nations.

1. Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance

Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart

Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.

• Ojibwe / Anishinaabe (including Saulteaux) - Also Algonquian and often neighbouring or intermarried; separate language (oji / ojg / ciw etc.), different autonyms, and different treaty/nation lists. Shared 'Nehiyaw-Pwat' / Iron Confederacy history does not make them the same people.
• Métis - A distinct Aboriginal people in Canadian law (s. 35; Powley). Many Métis speak or historically spoke Plains Cree or Michif; Cree ancestry or Cree language use does not make a person Cree for nation-membership or rights purposes.
• Innu (Montagnais) and Naskapi - Eastern end of the same language continuum (ISO moe, nsk) but politically and legally distinct nations in Quebec and Labrador; do not file them under Cree First Nations without their own identifiers.
• Atikamekw - Closely related language (atj) and culture in south-central Quebec; self-identify as a separate nation (Conseil de la Nation Atikamekw), not as Cree.
• Inuit - A different Aboriginal people (Inuit-Yupik-Unangan languages, not Algonquian). Geographic overlap around James Bay / Nunavik requires care in 'northern Indigenous' aggregations.
• Cree Inc. / Wolfspeed (semiconductor and LED firm) - Unrelated U.S. company name; SOC.PER records must not inherit electronics-industry identifiers.
• Cree language (as a catalogue object) - The people and the macrolanguage are different registry things. A speaker of Cree is not necessarily a member of a Cree First Nation; a Cree person may speak English or French only.

1. Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of Cree this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance