In Northern Quebec, the Cree Nation Teaches Visitors How to Survive—and Enjoy—Winter

It is five degrees below zero in northern Quebec, but for the first time this week the sun is shining. I tilt my chin up toward a beam of light fragmenting through snow-covered pine boughs, then turn to my guide, a Cree trapper named Clifford Neeposh, who is demonstrating how to catch a beaver.

First, he explains, you must look beneath the frozen lake for trails of bubbles suspended in the ice. These will lead you to the den’s entrance where you will set your trap: a pair of steel jaws submerged underwater, anchored by a wood log atop the ice. It’s important that the branch is strong enough to prevent being gnawed through; if the wood is too green, another beaver could break away the trapped carcass. Beavers are known to bury their dead kin in the mud, he says, much like humans do.

This is the first lesson of our trapper hike through the boreal forest along Waconichi Lake in Eeyou Istchee Baie-James, a vast and sparsely populated region in Canada’s Quebec province that is home to 11 Indigenous Cree communities who have been hunting and fishing here for 5,000 years and trading fur like beaver pelts since the 17th century.

As we make our way through deep white snowbanks and evergreen trees, the only sound I hear is the shuffling of snowshoes—but we aren’t alone in the forest. Our tracks leave sunken imprints alongside spiraling trails of dotted rabbit paw prints, some bigger than others. The large hind legs of a snowshoe hare leave two marks ahead of their smaller front feet, forming a letter Y. We follow a set of these to the base of a pine tree, where Neeposh teaches us how to set a snare. As he uses his fingernail to form a wire into a loop—the same way you might use scissors to curl a ribbon—I notice for the first time that his hands have been exposed to the cold for most of the hike.

“Aren’t your fingers freezing?” I ask. In response, he holds out his hands and tells me to feel them, which requires peeling off my two layers of waterproof mittens and fleece-lined touch-screen gloves. Somehow, his skin is warmer than mine.

How to book a winter adventure at Nibiischii

Lodging: Cabins start at $285 per night for up to four people

Getting there: Fly Air Creebec from Montreal to Chibougamau Airport

Included services: Access to the sauna, access to snowshoe and hok ski trails, access to the Sabtuan, snowshoe and hok ski equipment loan, educational activities, Cree cultural workshops

Add-ons: Vacuum-packed locally made meals and microbrewery beer; additional activities and chef-prepared meals can be purchased in advance à la carte

Book by phone only: 418-748-7748

It is not the first or last time on this trip that I am forced to recognize the fragility of my own body, long coddled by the ability to outsource its survival. After just one day in the bush, as the locals call the wilderness here, I have become hyperaware of how quickly the elements could kill me without a phone to call for help or correct wrong turns. To survive, you need to pay attention. Not to a screen but to the location of the sun and the direction of the wind, to beaver bubbles and rabbit tracks, to the hunger in your stomach and the dryness of your socks. One mistake and you could starve or freeze, or both. Of course, none of that is ever a true danger to a visitor like myself, guided by the deft hands of locals like Neeposh, but it is impossible not to feel the threat quietly lurking as the wind bites my nose.

We are halfway through our hour-long hike when we reach a clearing with a cluster of spruce trees that are slightly smaller than the rest, and Neeposh pauses. “This is where my family lived,” he says, explaining that his parents and grandparents used to work at Waconichi Lodge, where we are currently staying, before the land became a wildlife sanctuary in 1985. Tourism here looked much different then: Cree were often told they weren’t allowed to enter, as the land was reserved for paying customers.

The tide began to change in 1975, when the Quebec and Cree governments signed the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, a treaty that gave the Cree ownership and self-governance over certain areas in their traditional territory as well as exclusive hunting and fishing rights. Today, guests visiting the Albanel-Mistassini-Waconichi Wildlife Sanctuary are not allowed to hunt and must apply for fishing rights, which requires them to adhere to community quotas (eight walleye, eight pike, and three lake trout, and 5.5 lb. of brook trout) and daily reporting guidelines, all of which is intended to prevent overfishing.

As negotiations with Quebec continued, the Cree Nation of Mistissini created the Nibiischii Corporation in 2017 to manage the wildlife sanctuary, which includes Waconichi Lodge. Following multiple years of prep and renovations, this is Nibiischii’s first winter season open to tourists. The property now includes 11 rentable cabins, two “floating cabins” on the lake, miles of wooded hiking trails, three saunas, an astronomical observatory, and even an outdoor cinema, where we are transported via snowmobiles one night to watch the documentary The Cree Hunters of Mistassini (1974) from heated igloo huts on top of the lake’s frozen ice.

The official launch of four-season tourism to the region coincides with the historic creation of Nibiischii Park, the first national park to be run by the Cree Nation and the culmination of 20 years of government discussion. It is one of the latest success stories in Canada’s “Land Back” movement, as others (like the Haida) reclaim autonomy over Indigenous territories and resources.

Cree language terms

Waconichi:  ᐧᐋᐦᑯᓇᒌᐤ ᓵᑲᐦᐃᑲᓐ (“Mountain of Lichen”)

Nibiischii: ᓂᐲᔅᒌ ᐊᑐᔅᒉᐧᐃᓐ (“Land of Water”)

Mistissini: ᒥᔅᑕᓯᓃᐤ ᓵᑲᐦᐃᑲᓐ (“Big Rock”)

Together with the wildlife sanctuary, the Cree Nation now administers over 10,000 square miles of pristine rural land located just over a one-hour flight from Montreal. Historically, the area’s peak tourist season has been the summer months, when the Waconichi Lodge is filled with fishermen in search of trout and pike in the four surrounding lakes.

However, visiting the destination during the winter allows for an especially unique cultural experience, says Mireille Gravel, executive director of the Nibiischii Corporation, as it allows visitors to become immersed in the community’s knowledge of how to survive, and enjoy, the coldest months of the year. I agree.

Each and every skill required to survive winter in the bush—whether it’s catching a beaver or building a pair of snowshoes—is the result of generations of ancestral knowledge primarily passed down through oral storytelling; to become a part of that link as an outsider is a rare privilege. Plus, snowshoe and backcountry ski lovers won’t find better conditions anywhere else in North America: “It’s weird to say, but we’re probably one of the last real winter destinations,” says Gravel, who notes that warming global temperatures have led to less snowfall in many places—but not here.

So far, the majority of winter guests have come from the community itself, including local women’s groups and health retreats. To Gravel, this represents the ultimate “proof of trust” in the authenticity of the experience, though all travelers are warmly welcomed. “This is our first winter and we’re completely full with groups from the Cree Nation entities,” she says. “So I think we’re actually answering the need of a gathering place where people can feel comfortable.”

Regardless of the season, Nibiischii’s tourism programming emphasizes immersive education from members of the Cree communities. Throughout my four-day stay with a group of seven other non-Indigenous travelers from the US, Canada, and France, this takes the form of organized trapping demonstrations and craft workshops—but it is during impromptu storytelling from Cree leaders that the most impactful lessons are shared. Often, these stories unfold while participants warm up up inside the Sabtuan, a traditional tentlike structure and cultural gathering place.

Mario Lord, a 57-year-old Cree tallyman (a person who is responsible for supervising activities on traditional Cree territories known as traplines) and Nibiischii’s cultural development officer, can be frequently found here roasting freshly caught game over a fire, the air scented with pine from the layers of needles blanketing the floor. He built the Sabtuan by hand—a multiple-month process of cutting trees and sewing together the tarp cover—just some of the innumerable skills he learned from the winters he spent in the bush with his grandparents, from age nine to 19. It is from him that we learn how to ice fish, tan moose hide, bake bannock, and stitch a pouch, each activity requiring detailed instructions that are often communicated through, or alongside, personal stories from his life.

One afternoon, as we weave together tamarack branches to make a duck hunting decoy, he tells me how after struggling with depression, he walked himself into the woods and didn’t come out until three months later. He took no food with him, and lived off the land. Surviving in the bush, I begin to realize, means not just knowing all the different ways the land can kill you but also how it can heal you.

Lord strives to teach the benefits of living in harmony with the land to younger members of the Cree community, many of whom are dealing with generational trauma that has estranged them from their ancestral knowledge, he says. This broken link first began during the 1800s, when First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation children were separated from their families and communities and forced to attend government-sponsored residential schools over a period of 150 years. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) concluded the system’s intent was “cultural genocide” and estimates that more than 6,000 children died at residential schools—resulting in the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history, in 2006. (This was not unique to Canada; Native children in the US were forcibly sent to hundreds of similar government-funded “Indian boarding schools” in the 19th and 20th centuries.)

Irene Otter, a Cree Elder from Waswanipi and residential school survivor, spent a night with us at the lodge and similarly spoke of her belief in the land’s healing power. She experienced it leading group winter walking journeys through the bush for Cree Nation members to raise awareness around issues like the growing epidemic of diabetes in Canada’s Indigenous communities.

“There’s four seasons in the calendar, but we have six seasons,” she says. The extra two are known as “freeze-up” (mikiskaw) and “break-up” (sikwan), describing the periods when the rivers and lakes begin turning to ice and when they begin to thaw, respectively. “Each season you’re supposed to do different things, different activities. That’s what we're trying to bring back to our youth: healing, our culture, when to do things and how to do things—how to live a good life.”

As the Cree Nation begins to promote year-round tourism to Waconichi Lodge and the new Nibiischii National Park, the hope is to create more jobs and opportunity for Indigenous people to reconnect with the land and their culture. “It seems like the perfect job, because it fits the values one hundred percent and the love of the land and the knowledge of the land,” says Gravel.

For John Matoush, deputy chief of the Cree Nation of Mistissini, Indigenous-led tourism is an important vessel for preserving both the community’s culture and the natural environment. “This is where the younger generation comes in,” he says. “They’re able to benefit from both being able to understand and learn the [traditional] skills, and at the same time they’re out on the land.” And for Indigenous and non-Indigenous visitors alike, there’s never been a better opportunity to experience the true depths of winter in the bush, where human nature and Mother Nature are both in their rawest form.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler