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

Chapter Six: Following Those Who Know

150 chapter six Following Those Who Know In 2004, I was talking with an employee of one of the diamond companies about the company’s traditional environmental knowledge research with aboriginal communities in northern Canada. During this conversation, he made a passing comment that the Inuit are much easier to work with because “Inuit elders tend to defer to younger people,” unlike the Dene, whose elders guide those younger by sharing stories and by advising how they would like to see tasks done. He felt that the ever-present tension between generations created difficulties for industry. Although I, too, have noticed tension between generations, I have also noticed the manner in which agreement is achieved and tension dissolved, which is the focus of this chapter. Several anthropologists have written on the institutionalized conflict, tension, and anxiety of northern Dene—the associated withdrawal and controlled release of tension in their interpersonal relations. Joan Ryan (1995) suggests that increased tension in the communities is the result of Euro-Canadian influence. Michael Asch (1988) describes a Slavey community where people who would not have resided together in the bush are now living in close proximity. Asch argues that this contemporary community coincides with the regional bands of the past that gathered together only periodically to feast and celebrate and to meet potential marriage partners (1988, 35). According to Asch, each cluster of households in the Slavey fly-in bush community corresponds with the local band. This arrangement brings marriageable individuals into close proximity, which is ideologically discouraged among Dene because it is not appropriate to marry someone Following Those Who Know · 151 with whom one resides (36). Asch says that Dene have tried to solve the problem by creating kin out of close allies (37). Nevertheless, the situation has created chronic disputes between households, and members of clusters avoid each other during daily activities. The most difficult of these conflicts, Asch explains, are those between people of the same sex and the same age (55). Jean-Guy Goulet describes the tension caused by alcohol in a community of Dene Tha Slavey in northern Alberta (2000, 55–57). He focuses on how drunken behavior allows individuals to infringe on others ’ autonomy, which would otherwise be socially unacceptable. This chapter adds to the anthropological literature on institutionalized tension, in particular on how tension arises between generations when considering who is the most knowledgeable. The idea of following the most capable and skilled hunter has been well documented in the subarctic literature, including the work of Georg Henriksen (1973) among the Naskapi of Labrador; June Helm (Helm 2000; Helm and Damas 1963, 17; née MacNeish 1956) among the Dehcho Slavey and Tłı̨chǫ in the NWT; Richard Slobodin (1969) among the Peel River Gwich’in, whose territory encompasses lands in both the NWT and the Yukon Territory; and David Smith among the Chipewyan of Fort Resolution (1982, 36). In Gamètì, people similarly considered whom to follow—the person most capable to accomplish the tasks necessary to maintain personal autonomy and self-determination. To focus this discussion, I describe a situation that took place in Gamètì during the first several weeks of the traditional-governance project in the early 1990s. Though the tension in Gamètì focused on the project, its roots lay in different ideas about how to achieve and enhance harmony during a time of unrest between the various Dene people as well as between Dene and the federal and territorial governments. At the center of the tension were the elders’ k’àowo and the elected chief. As events were unfolding in the project and individuals were considering whom to follow, avoidance between the leaders—the k’àowo and the elected chief—and their respective followers was apparent. In this account , I consider the relationships between being knowledgeable, tension, and gaining a following. The Context In 1991, the elders in Gamètì, led by Jean Wetrade and Andrew Gon, both in their eighties, asked Chief Peter Arrowmaker for a project to 152 · Following Those Who Know document traditional governance. By December 1992, when funding had been secured to start the project, the Dogrib Treaty 11 Council was formed with a mandate to negotiate land claims and self-government. The Tłı̨chǫ negotiators had completed their community visits to determine how community members wished to proceed with the land-claim process and were currently traveling to the communities to explain their...