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Relations to Hunted animals may be comprehended through respect, and even through the notion of spirit marriage. But it is also important to note that some groups see the animals under the control of a transcendent "animal boss," whose task it is to supervise the human-animal relations and to deal with violations of proper dignity.

The Cree and Ojibwa also say that failing to treat wildlife with respect can have even more dire consequences: it may provoke a spirit-boss to punish the offender by inflicting disease on either the transgressor or one of his or her kin (cf. Hallowell 256). Nor is there anything like a "statute of limitations" with respect to implementing such punishments. As one middle-aged Ojibwa hunter recalled,

There's a man and woman in ... [this reserve] whose children arc crippled [with congenital dislocation of the hip]. Everyone knows the reason for this: it's because of something the man did in the past. Before he was married he went hunting and shot a moose in the hindquarters. The moose was crippled but it still had enough strength to wander off in the bush. That man should have followed that moose but he didn't. He didn't. (Driben, Auger et. al. 104)

Hallowell reported that the Berens River Ojibwa felt their notion of animal relationships was different than that found among other Ojibwa:

Such species also occupy a special place in the Indians' cosmology. One of the most salient features of this cosmology is the idea that the animals the Cree and Ojibwa pursue are the "underlings" of animal-bosses-spirit entities whose living manifestations must be treated with respect so as not to offend the spirit entities themselves.

As Hallowell learned during his stay among the Ojibwa:

The traditional attitude of the Berens River Indians towards animal life must be distinguished from our own.... Each species is controlled by a spiritual boss or owner that is of the nature of a transcendental being. Guns and traps are to no avail if this spiritual boss of the species is offended and does not wish human beings to obtain his underlings. Consequently, wild animals as a whole must be treated with respect lest their bosses be offended. (252) (Driben, Auger et. al. 100)

Cree cosmology has similar ideas, especially among the Woods Cree of Northern Ontario, where the belief is that each species of animal has a corresponding "boss", who will become angry if his charges are not properly treated. (Honigmann 223; cf. Fait 171-207). Each hunter has an intimate bond with the whole eco-system of his land, including the animals, so that he feels responsible for the ecological health of the entire region. Speck gives us a glimpse of this notion in discussing the Montagnais of Quebec who are also Algonquian-speaking and culturally similar to the Cree and Ojibwa:

[T]he hunter operates through a certain territory; known as his "hunting ground" (od"tawin), the boundaries determined by a certain river; the drainage of some lake; or the alignment of some ridge. This is his family inheritance; handed down from his ancestors. Here in the same district his father hunted before him and here also his children will gain their living. Despite the continued killing in the tract each year the supply is always replenished by the animals allowed to breed there. There is nothing astonishing in this to the mind of the Indian because the killing is definitely regulated so that only the increase is consumed; enough stock being left each season to insure a supply for the succeeding year. In this manner the game is "farmed" so to speak; and the continued killing through centuries does not affect the stock fundamentally. It can readily be seen that the thoughtless slaughter of game in one season would spoil things for the next and soon bring the proprietor to famine. (293)

One's attitude toward the eco-system may thus have a spiritual dimension to it, but that system is also maintained by hunters whose skills are extraordinary, and whose abilities are dexterous and sensitive. A glimpse of the Cree model of this can be gleaned from this selection:

The forager is adept at steadying a beaver snare with a loop of grass; at aging tracks; at noticing the broken bits of sedge at the mouth of a stream. But proficient application of such techniques is quite demanding. The Cree forager is always learnng about climate; landscape; and animal behavior. Because the environment changes rapidly, in multiple ways, and with significant degrees of statistical unpredictability, the major adaptive skills of the human forager are (1) observational sensitivity to the state of the ecosystem; (2) the ability to evaluate simultaneously many environmental factors which will affect foraging methods and abilities, and (3) flexible responses.

Foraging in the boreal forest is the application of simple rules in a complex and skill-demanding setting. Each Cree forager has a history; built on experience and always engaged with the changes of the moment. (Winterhalder, 236)

Plants, too are understood to have spirits. This adds an entire new layer of meaning to environmental law. What is obvious is that plants, and especially trees are able to express person-like responses:

As we know, plants, like animals, had the power of speech during their former lives. More accurately, perhaps, humans had the power of comprehending this speech, which may yet encode messages. As expressed by an early-twentieth-century Ojibwa, "When [the tree's] leaves shake and murmur, surely they are talking to one another. It is true that we cannot understand them today, but Nanibush, the great hero of old, conversed with them."

Although ordinary mortals may be denied the gift of understanding, Ojibwa shamans have extraordinary hearing and can detect such signals as the wailing of forest trees suffering from ax wounds. Not surprisingly, the old-time Ojibwa, in some communities at least, seldom cut down green or living trees.

Some kinds of plants are strictly under the control of women and they maintain absolute discipline with regard to them because they are regarded as a legacy for the unborn children:

In British Columbia, among the Kwakiutl, women used to manage their privately held clover-root grounds, taking care never to deplete the crop. No one else could touch such grounds, and to sell them or give them away was forbidden, because to do so would be to rob unborn descendants. (Bierhorst 132)

Finally, the environmental ethic embraces an understanding of the place of humans in a linked eco-system that Aldo Leopold developed; that eco-system became the forerunner of contemporary environmental ethics. Callicott writes:

The Ojibwa land ethic, as it might now be rather technically styled, rests on the same general concept as Leopold's. Human beings, plants, and animals, if not soils and waters, are members of a single, tightly integrated economy of nature, or biotic community. Human beings are not properly "conquerors of the land community"; neither ought we to be stewards of it. Rather, we should assume the role, as Leopold would have it, merely of "plain members and citizens" of the land community. In the Ojibwa land ethic, as in Leopold's, human beings ought principally to respect their fellow members of the biotic community. Respect is expressed in the variety of attitudes and behaviors just now indicated. In addition to a respectful attitude, respect for plants and animals is evidenced by giving animals payment for their bodies, taking care not to cause them unnecessary suffering, and carefully disposing of their skeletal remains so that they may return to life; and by neither overharvesting nor wasting plants.

At a minimum, then all of these principles are involved in the Environmental Laws of the Nature’s Laws system.