Walking the Land, Feeding the Fire: Knowledge and Stewardship Among the Tlicho Dene

Chapter Four: Experiencing Kweèt' ı̨į̀: Traders, Miners, and Bureaucrats

100 chapter four Experiencing Kweèt’ı ̨ì ̨ Traders, Miners, and Bureaucrats We did not conceive that they did not see the world as we do. The Dene had no experience of a people who would try to control us, or who would say that somehow they owned the land that we always lived on. —stephen kakfwi, in dene nation, Denendeh: A Dene Celebration On 23 July 2002, Madelaine Drybone died at the age of ninety-seven. Madelaine was one of four elders who initiated the traditional-governance research in 1993 in the conviction that continually listening to and sharing stories are vital to the survival of her descendants as well as of the entire Tłı̨chǫ people. Madelaine was the last of the four to die. Upon her death, Georgina Chocolate, whose son is married to Madelaine’s daughter’s daughter, said to me, “She is pulling everything in.” Georgina’s statement reinforced how philosophical and strategic the Tłı̨chǫ are about epistemological matters. The Land Claim Agreement-in-Principle had been initialed with the federal and territorial governments concerning the Tłı̨chǫ’s land claims and self-government. For Madelaine, her descendants would be living under a new agreement. She and the other elders had left their stories, and now it was up to their descendants to use those stories and the elders’ experience to think about how to live life under the Tłı̨chǫ Agreement. In this chapter, I move back through time to consider the relationships between Tłı̨chǫ and Kweèt’ı̨į̀, with a focus on exploration and government. This relationship is an important part of the context within which the oldest elders initiated the first traditional-governance project and how they directed the Tłı̨chǫ Knowledge Program. It is also key to understanding why the elders and leaders decided on negotiating a regional land claim. In the consideration of events from the past, the importance of remembering what has occurred becomes clear. I draw mainly on written sources wherein Tłı̨chǫ elders remember and share many occurrences through Kweèt’ı ̨ì ̨: Traders, Miners, and Bureaucrats · 101 stories about their own and their predecessors’ experiences with Kweèt’ı̨į̀. For the Tłı̨chǫ with whom I worked, remembering the past and using the stories to think with are basic to finding solutions to problems and ensuring that harmony is maintained in the present. Julie Cruikshank emphasizes how in the telling of events through oral narratives or in written texts, some aspects are suppressed, whereas others are highlighted (1998, 1–24). I have selected events that demonstrate how Kweèt’ı̨į̀ increasingly took control of the land for resource development, while Tłı̨chǫ individuals and their chiefs—along with other Dene and Métis leaders—attempted to reestablish and maintain personal autonomy, group sociability, and self-determination. Kweèt’ı̨į̀ involved with exploration and government have historically considered northern Canada as a frontier of wild empty spaces containing resources for the taking and as a land to be feared until managed and controlled . Henry Sharp describes the fear and loathing the white population have of the land of the Chipewyan. Referring to Margaret Atwood’s (1995) study of the image of the North in Canadian literature, Sharp shows how the dominant population’s attitudes are shaped by the idea of a nature that is to be feared (2001, 42–43). The ideas of emptiness and of the need to control nature while building a safe cultural landscape are widespread in Canada, as revealed in a poem published in The Beaver: A Journal of Progress: empire builders Earth’s empty spaces call them where the mind is free to roam, And build its phantom cities near the grey wolf’s distant home. They see the prairie waving with the yet unplanted grain, And hear the silence echoing the harvest Song’s refrain. For them rocky wastes pour forth rich treasures still unmined, They bind the mighty rivers to the service of mankind. Their railways feed the valleys, cross the mountains, span the streams— Till the wilderness is conquered through these empire-builders’ dreams. (“Empire Builders” 1920, 20) 102 · Kweèt’ı ̨ì ̨: Traders, Miners, and Bureaucrats The Tłı̨chǫ view is very different. They consider the dè to be fully inhabited . The dè is not to be managed, controlled, or changed but to be lived in and respected so that harmonious relations can be established and maintained. Many others have written about various aspects...