Asinikawithini

Asinikawithini, the Asinikaw Īthiniwak or Rocky Cree, are a Cree people of the boreal forest east and west of the lower Nelson River, in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Their name means people of the rocky land, and they once spoke a distinctive r-dialect of Cree before shifting toward the Woodland Cree th-dialect.

They lived by hunting caribou and moose, fishing, and snaring snowshoe hares, moving between birch-bark wigwams in the southern woods and caribou-hide lodges farther north.

After the Hudson's Bay Company opened posts on the bay from 1670 onward, the Rocky Cree became middlemen between the coastal traders and inland nations, and trade guns let them push west and north alongside other Cree groups during the eighteenth century. Their bands are the forerunners of later Cree nations centered on Nelson House and Lac La Ronge.