Well, my name is Stan Louttit; I’m a writer and researcher I have lived all my life in the small, island community of Moose Factory, at the bottom tip of James Bay, in Northern Ontario.

Moose Factory Island

My father was a Mushkegowuk (Western James Bay Cree) person from the Albany Band (now the Fort Albany First Nation), Northwestern Ontario and my mother is from the Eeyou (Eastern James Bay Cree) Nation of Eastmain, Northern Quebec.

In this way, I am both a Muskegowuk and Eeyou person who has family roots on both the Western and Eastern shores of James Bay. My grandfather was Mushkegowuk but also had Scottish blood. He came from a long line of Scottish/Mushkegowuk "mixed bloods", like his father, and his grandfather, who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) fur traders. Men like my grandfather and other Mushkegowuk/Scottish Cree worked as post hunters, mail deliverers, clerks, blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, or as general laborers for the HBC fur traders. Indeed, my grandfather himself was a cooper, but also a translator, fur grader and general store clerk who like many Company men before him married a Mushkegowuk woman.

At the time of the treaty signing in 1905, my grandfather, who was probably known as a "mixed blood" locally, was signed into and included in the James Bay Treaty list of Indians at Albany (HBC post). My father explained once that because my grandfather was a Company servant, married to a Mushkegowuk woman, followed the traditions and spoke the Mushkegowuk language, he was likely considered important by the Albany Indian headmen (leaders). So, at the treaty signing, important Albany headmen to the Treaty may have wanted certain "mixed blood" families such as my grandfather’s family, to be included under Treaty No. Nine. Thus, my grandfather’s family was listed, like others, at Albany, to receive treaty and to benefit from its terms (Long 185: 143).

Before sharing with you the oral understanding and the Mushkegowuk perspective on Treaty No. Nine, I would like to give you a sense of who the Mushkegowuk and Anishiinawbe Peoples were in 1905 and how they got to be in the position they were in at that time in our history.