The campaign of the Cree people to protect their forest way of life from the impact of hydro-electric development in northern Quebec has been widely-documented. Few have heard in any detail the outcome of this campaign and what it means for the indigenous societies' futures. This text gives equal attention to the Cree leadership's successful strategies for addressing major social and environmental pressures, with the forces of acculturation and native communities' social destruction.

The titles in the Cultural Survival Studies in Ethnicity and Change series, edited by David Maybury-Lewis and Theodore Macdonald, Jr. of Cultural Survival, Inc., Harvard University, focus on key issues affecting indigenous and ethnic groups worldwide.  Each ethnography builds on introductory material by going further in-depth and allowing students to explore, virtually first-hand, a particular issue and its impact on a culture.