The problem of anthropology, it might be said, is how to conduct a conversation among the differences in the world. We are continually drawn to some common ground upon which such conversation may be possible. I want to propose that this is a problem for all thought, that of Cree hunters – whose relationship with animals is summarized in the epigraph – being no exception. For Cree hunters, obviously, the problem is not confined merely to human trans-cultural differences.

The differences between animistic and secular scientific worldviews have been a matter of long-standing concern for anthropology. My point of departure for this chapter is a questioning, suggested by Cree ontology, of ideas about animism and culture-nature duality in Western thought. In one influential view, Viveiros de Castro (1998a: 470) has counterposed Amerindian “multinaturalism” to Western “multiculturalismi”. The latter assumes the unity of nature founded on the “objective universality of body and substance”, together with the plurality of cultures stemming from the “subjective particularity of spirit and meaning”. The former, in contrast, “would suppose a spiritual unity and a corporeal diversity”, with culture or the subject the form of the universal, and nature or the object the form of the particular.