Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes to look at the relationships between a Dene community and caribou herds in the Canadian subarctic, and how reciprocal relationships and mobilities of those communities have been endangered by settler state's practices.

Paper long abstract:

Caribou have been historically central to Canadian subarctic Dene livelihood. Dene Elders remember a time when Barren-grounds caribou crossed their community on their migration route in winter, “as many as ants on a hill.” The relationships between caribou herds and Dene are anchored in reciprocal respect and mutual help (Beaulieu, 2012; Anderson, 2014). Those relations became endangered by settlers’ hunting and land management practices, which eventually drove caribou herds away. The loss of this crucial relationship with caribou at a local level generated the need to travel further away to hunt caribou herds. How were caribou movements reshaped by settlers’ practices? What does it reveal about caribou herds’ agency in their relations to human communities? How do Dene hunters and communities renegotiate caribou herds’ mobilities and their own?

This paper draws on a 15-months fieldwork with a Dene First Nation and community members of the town for my PhD studies. In conversations with local Dene and Cree members, this paper proposes to explore the agency attributed by Dene communities to caribou herds in their mobility; and how Dene communities renegotiate their own movement on the land, problematising governments' restrictions (Sandlos, 2007) that marginalise both caribou herds and Dene communities.