Honouring anthropologist Richard J. Preston and his outstanding career with the Crees in northern Quebec, Together We Survive presents new research by Preston's colleagues, former students, and family members who - like him - have established long-term, respectful research partnerships and friendships with Aboriginal communities.

Demonstrating the influential nature of Preston's collaborative approach on anthropologists in Canada and beyond, the essays in Together We Survive explore development and urbanization, material culture, and conflict. Scholars who conducted research in the 1960s with Crees farther to the south broaden the scope of Preston's Cree Narrative (2002). A Cree colleague and friend expands on his study of traditional Cree songs. Other essays widen the geographical, historical, and cultural foci of the book beyond the Quebec Crees, examining the significance of a beaded hood at Red River in 1844, scrutinizing symbols of Anishinaabe identity, and describing the struggle for indigenous human rights at the United Nations.

Building on Preston's pioneering work in cultural anthropology, Together We Survive recounts the ways in which the eastern James Bay Cree and other aboriginal peoples, faced with massive incursions on their lands and lives, have collaborated and formed respectful partnerships as they seek to survive and thrive in peace.

Contributors include Regna Darnell (Western), Harvey A. Feit (McMaster), John S. Long (Nipissing), Stan L. Louttit, Richard T. McCutcheon (Algoma), the late Cath Oberholtzer (Trent), Laura Peers (Oxford), Jennifer Preston, Susan Preston, Adrian Tanner (Memorial) and Cory Willmott (Southern Illinois).

John S. Long is professor emeritus of education at Nipissing University and the author of Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905.

John S. Long's profile page

Jennifer S. H. Brown taught history at the University of Winnipeg for twenty-eight years and held a Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal history from 2004 to 2011. She served as director of the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies, which focuses on Aboriginal peoples and the fur trade of the Hudson Bay watershed, from 1996 to 2010. She is the editor of the Rupert’s Land Record Society documentary series (McGill-Queen’s University Press), which publishes original materials on Aboriginal and fur trade history. She now resides in Denver, Colorado, where she continues her scholarly work.

Jennifer S.H. Brown's profile page