摘要：Accounts of the adaptive responses of northern aboriginal peoples include examples ofpurposive modification and management of ecologically favorable areas to increase resource productivity.Practices include clearing of trees, burning of berry patches and construction of fish weirs. This paperexamines the adaptive capacity of the northern aboriginal community of Wemindji, east coast James Bay,in relation to long term landscape changes induced by coastal uplift processes. Associated changes arenoticeable within a human lifetime and include the infilling of bays, the merger of islands with the mainland,as well as shifts in vegetative and wildlife communities. In response, generations of Cree hunters haveactively modified the landscape using a variety of practices that include the construction of mud dykes andthe cutting of tuuhiikaan, which are corridors in the coastal forest, to retain and enhance desirable conditionsfor goose hunting. We provide an account of the history, construction, and design of these features as wellas the motivations and social learning that inform them. We reveal a complex and underappreciated dynamicbetween human resistance and adaptation to environmental change. While landscape modifications aremotivated by a desire to increase resource productivity and predictability, they also reflect anintergenerational commitment to the maintenance of established hunting places as important connectionswith the past. Our findings support a revised perspective on aboriginal human agency in northern landscapemodification and an enhanced role for aboriginal communities in adaptive planning for environmentalchange
