Structural analysis of Australian hunter-gatherer societies and a critical assessment of Northern Algonkian literature suggested to the authors the possibility that the social organization of the Cree may have been premised on something other than the nuclear family and institution of cross-cousin marriage. Indeed, data collected from Shamattawa, a Swampy Cree community in northern Manitoba, indicates that the social structure operates on four distinct, yet productively undifferentiated, levels reflected both in relationship terms and ideology. This resulted in a revised model of band society. Published in English.