Bear Stories in the Berry Patch: Caring for Boreal Forest Fire Cycles of Respect

This chapter is inspired by the storytelling that people from both Fort McKay First Nation and Bigstone Cree Nation engaged in while in berry patches during the summer of 2016, the year of the massive fires in the Fort McMurray area. I rely mostly on sakâwiyiniwak (Northern Bush Cree) observations of, and experiences with, a landscape that is central to their identity and survival. I explain how my research collaborators, in spite of living in an extractive sacrifice zone where their traditional fire management practices have been suppressed, tend to relationships with the boreal forest through berry picking and respectful speech, behaviour, hunting, butchering, and ceremonies regarding bears. Bears and berries gift themselves with agency and decide whether or not humans can encounter, harvest, and share their substance. From a post-humanist perspective, I discuss how "more-than humans" experience and respond to disturbances in cycles of ecology, relations, respect, reciprocity, and reincarnation that result from settler-colonial activities in the land.