Innini

The Innini are the Eastern Swampy Cree, who call themselves Omaškêkowak, the people of the muskeg, and whose self-name ininîw means a human being. They hold the low, boggy western coasts of James Bay and Hudson Bay in Ontario, from the Albany to the Winisk, and speak the eastern n-dialect of Swampy Cree.

Their first European encounter came when Henry Hudson sailed into James Bay in 1610 and 1611, and after the Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Albany between 1675 and 1679 the coastal bands became known to traders as Homeguard Cree: hunters who supplied goose and caribou meat and manned the posts in winter.

Organized in mobile lodges and bands, they took geese in spring, fished and hunted moose and caribou inland, moving between shore and interior with the seasons as intermediaries between the bay forts and more distant peoples.