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4 FISH CONSUMPTION, RABBIT USES, AND CARIBOU HUNTING AMONG THE DOGRIBS This chapter first expands on the uses of two Northern Dene resources, fish and rabbits, that were touched on in the preceding chapter on the yearly round at the Slavey community of Jean Marie River. The setting here is the Dogrib bush community of Wha Ti, then Lac la Martre, as Nancy Lurie and I documented fish and rabbit use in 1959. The last part of the chapter presents depictions of caribou hunting from the early 1960s back to the 1820s with a fast forward to 1999. fish consumption With the introduction of netting twine, fish became a staple in human and dog diet. In fact, in the twentieth century the dog teams of trappers’ households could only be sustained by intensive fish production. At Lac la Martre, as elsewhere in Dene country, the gill net is the prime device for taking fish. Whitefish and trout are the primary food fish, with jackfish, sucker, and loche caught in fewer numbers and less prized. The fishing season begins roughly from the beginning of breakup, variously designated by locals as March, April, or May, and lasts until just after Christmas. It is generally agreed that hardly any fishing is done during January, February, and March because the ice is too thick and ‘‘the fish leave the lake.’’ Lac la Martre village is not ideally situated for year-round fishing as it is on a shallow bay of the lake proper, and even where the ice may not freeze to the bottom the fish seek deeper water for more oxygen. According to one person, white- fish leave first, and even at the entrance to the river, where nets can be placed late in the season, only trout are caught. For periods in December and in June only suckers are caught in abundance. The people at Lac la Martre make close to 100 percent utilization of fish caught as possible. Only rarely and for very short periods are fish excluded from the daily diet. A minimum estimate of human consumption is two fish daily for a family of two adults and four children, or a total of 730 fish a year. Dogs consume more fish than do people during the year. An average household has a team of five dogs. During the winter season when the dogs are working, each dog is fed one fish per day. Thus, a five-dog team requires some 1,050 fish during the period of about 210 winter days, that is, from October through April. They are fed far less during the 155 nonworking days of summer, the entire team being fed only two or three fish per day—at two per day, a total of 310 fish for the team. Over the course of a year, then, a five dog team may consume about 1,360 fish. The dogs actually eat more fish than this since they are given all entrails, heads, tails, and bones not consumed by human beings. [Unlike at Jean Marie River, the households at Lac la Martre do not have to buy ‘‘dog rice’’ or other supplemental food to keep their teams from starving.] Observations during several months at Lac la Martre in 1959 indicated that the fish in high frequency averaged eighteen inches and two and a half pounds. (Occasionally, huge trout weighing upward of twenty pounds are caught.) Calculating the 730 fish consumed by human beings and the 1,360 fish consumed by dogs at two and a half pounds each, the grand total for a household as described comes to at least 5,225 pounds of fish consumed per year, or over two and a half tons. The eighteen households at Lac la Martre therefore consume over forty-seven tons of fish per year. This estimate probably errs on the conservative side, since some households possess more than a single team of dogs. However, for periods of a week to a month some families are occasionally able to live on caribou or moose, which reduces fish consumption. Despite this fact, the estimate may still be somewhat too low. from Helm and Lurie, The Subsistence Economy of the Dogrib Indians of Lac la Martre, 1961 rabbits Throughout the subarctic, Indians say, ‘‘You can starve on rabbits.’’ Yet ‘‘rabbits’’ had a role in keeping Dene fed and warm, as shown in these passages. Nancy Lurie especially pursued the question of rabbit-skin cordage and clothing, as presented here. Gah...

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