Meating the Social: Sharing atiku-euiash in Sheshatshiu, Labrador By ©Damian Castro A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fu l- fillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology Memorial University of Newfoundland September 2015 St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador Abstract This work examines atiku-euiash (caribou meat) sharing practices in Sheshatshiu, Newfoundland and Labrador, and aims to elucidate an overarching question: how do sharing practices participate in the co-constitution of the Innu ‘social’? The ‘social’ is understood in this work as a descriptor that refers to the emergent properties of the Innu collective. The thesis is that sharing practices participate in the co-constitution of the Innu social and enact its boundaries. Inside these boundaries, atiku-euiash is more than simply a food resource: by realizing Innu values of generosity, respect and autonomy, sharing implicates the associations of human, animal, and animal masters that constitute the Innu world. Sharing is connected with the enskilment of the younger generations by their el- ders, and thus with the reproduction of Innu values through time. The ways of sharing are relevant because changes in such practices affect the constitution of the Innu social. Giv- en Euro-Canadian colonization, the Innu are in a fraught social space in which sharing is interrupted by colonization practices and values. Understanding sharing is necessary to develop policies that do not interrupt the reproduction of the Innu world This work uses several research methods: participant observation, sharing surveys, and interviews. It also uses network analysis as sharing practices leave traces of giving and receiving actions and these traces can be represented as a network of givers, receivers and circulating caribou meat. There are two main ways in which caribou is hunted and shared: household-based hunts and community-based hunts. The household-based hunts are organized by the hunters themselves, who are able and willing to hunt. Community- based hunts are completely organized and funded by the SIFN or the Innu Nation. In or- der to understand the differences in the distribution of the two hunt types, the categories of centrality and clustering are used to show how the flow of atiku-eiuash and its associ- ated realization of values and enskilment correlate with different degrees of centralization inside the sharing clusters. ii Acknowledgements I strongly believe that the production knowledge is a collective endeavor. I was only able to complete this contribution because of the many people and organizations who supported me throughout my program. I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mario Blaser. His deep understanding of the relevant theoretical issues and his extensive and insightful comments were crucial to the completion of this work. I also owe my grati- tude to the members of my supervisory committee, Adrian Tanner and Reade Davis. They provided invaluable comments, without which this work would not have been pos- sible. I am also profoundly indebted to my wife and fellow anthropologist, Carolina Ty- telman, for reading countless drafts and providing inestimable feedback. I am indebted to the scholars who read my drafts and provided indispensable comments and guidance: Andrea Procter, David Natcher, Larry Felt, August Carbonella, Chad Griffins and Alex Ambrosic. Working with the Innu people of Sheshatshiu is the highest honor I ever had and I will always be indebted to them. I am especially thankful to the Andrew brothers: Nikashant, Guy, Patnick and Greg and their families. They welcomed me in their place in nutshimit and gave me the opportunity to acquire priceless experience. I also want to express my gratitude to all the people of the Innu Nation office for the logistical support and count- less conversations that guided me through the Innu world: Paul and Etiene Pone, Antuan Penashue, Guy Playfair, Richard Nuna, Jimmy Nuna, Valery Courtois, Napaen Gregoire, Napes Ashini and Ben Andrew. I am thankful to Miki and Loui Rich who helped me with iii my surveys and interviews. I would also like to thanks Ponas and David Nuke, for taking me to their place in the bush. I will always be grateful to Antony Jenkinson for his incred- ible experience and amazing conversations about the state and direction of our shared world and to Sebastian Piwas and Damian Benuen who helped in my trips to Natuashish. This work would not have been possible without the resources provided by my fund- ing agencies, the Sustainable Forest Management Network, Social Science and Humani- ties Research Council, the Smallwood Foundation and the Labrador Institute. I would like to thank to my family and friends back in Argentina for their support, specially my parents, Veronica and Oscar, my brothers, Luciano and Ramiro, and the members of my academic “family”, Anthropocaos. Finally, this thesis would not have been possible without the support, love, patience and understanding of my wife Carolina and our children Jazmín y Lorenzo. iv Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................... v Table of Figures ......................................................................................... vii Table of Maps ............................................................................................. ix Table of Tables ............................................................................................ x Table of Appendices ................................................................................... xi 1. Introduction: “You give all kinds of caribou meat to anybody” ......... 1 Hunting and sharing practices in Sheshatshiu .............................................................................. 13 Methods ........................................................................................................................................ 19 Chapter Overview ......................................................................................................................... 27 2. The Innu social .................................................................................. 30 Nitassinan ..................................................................................................................................... 31 Previous Scholarship on the Innu ................................................................................................. 38 The Innu social as a heterogeneous collective .............................................................................. 50 Generosity, respect and autonomy ................................................................................................ 60 3. The Innu social in a sociology of associations .................................. 69 Henriksen’s two worlds of the Innu and the constitution of a fraught space ................................ 70 A sociology of associations .......................................................................................................... 78 Enskilment and the ongoing re-enactment of the Innu social ....................................................... 92 4. Sharing Practices ............................................................................. 104 The Value of sharing and distribution patterns ........................................................................... 105 The social economy .................................................................................................................... 111 v Action-Value .............................................................................................................................. 121 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 136 5. The distribution network ................................................................. 138 Household-based and community-based hunts .......................................................................... 142 Sharing and grouping practices .................................................................................................. 155 Realization of values and the role of elders ................................................................................ 163 Elders and enskilment ................................................................................................................ 171 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 178 6. Conclusions ..................................................................................... 184 Ideas for future policies and research ......................................................................................... 190 References ................................................................................................ 196 Appendices .............................................................................................. 221 Appendix A: Methods ................................................................................................................ 221 Appendix B: Network analysis ..................................................................................................