Cree. The Cree are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of that country's largest First Nations. In Canada, over 350,000 people are Cree or have Cree ancestry. The major proportion of Cree in Canada live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. About 27,000 live in Quebec. In the United States, Cree people historically lived from Lake Superior westward. Today, they live mostly in Montana, where they share the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation with Ojibwe people. The documented westward migration over time has been strongly associated with their roles as traders and hunters in the North American fur trade. The Cree are generally divided into eight groups based on dialect and region. These divisions do not necessarily represent ethnic sub-divisions within the larger ethnic group: Naskapi and Montagnais are inhabitants of an area they refer to as Nitassinan. Their territories comprise most of the present-day political jurisdictions of eastern Quebec and Labrador. Their cultures are differentiated, as some of the Naskapi are still caribou hunters and more nomadic than many of the Montagnais. The Montagnais have more settlements. The total population of the two groups in 2003 was about 18,000 people, of which 15,000 lived in Quebec. Their dialects and languages are the most distinct from the Cree spoken by the groups west of Lake Superior. Atikamekw are inhabitants of the area they refer to as Nitaskinan, in the upper St. Maurice River valley of Quebec. Their population is around 8,000. East Cree-Grand Council of the Crees; approximately 18,000 Cree of Eeyou Istchee and Nunavik regions of Northern Quebec. Moose Cree-Moose Factory in the Northeastern Ontario; this group lives on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River, at the southern end of James Bay. Swampy Cree-this group lives in northern Manitoba along the Hudson Bay coast and adjacent inland areas to the south and west, and in Ontario along the coast of Hudson Bay and James Bay. Some also live in eastern Saskatchewan around Cumberland House. Their dialect has 4,500 speakers. Woods Cree-a group in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Plains Cree-a total of 34,000 people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Montana. Due to the many dialects of the Cree language, the people have no modern collective autonym. Moose Cree, East Cree, Naskapi, and Montagnais all refer to themselves using modern dialectal forms of the historical iriniw, meaning 'man.' Moose Cree use the form ililiw, coastal East Cree and Naskapi use iyiyiw, inland East Cree use iyiniw, and Montagnais use ilnu and innu, depending on dialect. The Cree use Cree, cri, Naskapi, or montagnais to refer to their people only when speaking French or English. As hunter-gatherers, the basic unit of organization for Cree peoples was the lodge, a group of perhaps eight or a dozen people, usually the families of two separate but related married couples, who lived together in the same wigwam or tipi, and the band, a group of lodges who moved and hunted together. In the case of disagreement, lodges could leave bands and bands could be formed and dissolved with relative ease. However, as there is safety in numbers, all families would want to be part of some band, and banishment was considered a very serious punishment. Bands would usually have strong ties to their neighbours through intermarriage and would assemble together at different parts of the year to hunt and socialize together. Besides these regional gatherings, there was no higher-level formal structure, and decisions of war and peace were made by consensus with allied bands meeting together in council. People could be identified by their clan, which is a group of people claiming descent from the same common ancestor; each clan would have a representative and a vote in all important councils held by the band. Each band remained independent of each other. However, Cree-speaking bands tended to work together and with their neighbours against outside enemies.