This newsletter provides an update on the activities of the Délı̨nę Uranium Team, the group dedicated to researching and restoring the Port Radium region. This year, they worked on an environmental site monitoring program, did contaminants testing in traditional foods, and pursued many other Environment, Health Assessment, and Community Healing activities. A presentation of the Délı̨nę Knowledge Center proposal and workshop is carried in this letter, along with news of the dismantling of removal of the Radium Gilbert, the ship that had been previously grounded near Délı̨nę.

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Available from the Ɂehdzo Got’ı̨nę Gots’ę́ Nákedı archives. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for access and see the Release and User Agreement form on the database home page. 

Délı̨ne Uranium Team. ÉÉÉ Enet’su Sóot’ıneke Sewáahwę, Délı̨ne Uranium Team Newsletter 1, no. 1 (Spring 2003).

This project gathered regional feedback on the Sahtú Land Use Plan. The survey was developed to educate people about land designation and policy options and allow respondents to provide input. Participant data would help define the criteria for multi-use areas under the plan. The team used interviews and workshops (in all Sahtú communities except for Colville Lake) and sampled 15% of the population. Respondents identified important sites in the land, along with concerns about the environment and cultural conservation, and the importance of balanced development.

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This resource was found in the Circumpolar Collection at the University of Alberta Cameron Library, call number E 99 B376 M37 2001.

Blomqvist, Jennifer. Mapping our Future Survey, Report on Community Interviews and Workshops April-May 2001. Fort Good Hope: Sahtú Land Use Planning Board, Sahtú Nek’e Ɂeghálats’eyeda Kesórı́daot’sedéhɂa Ke, 2001.

T’Seleie spent five days in each Sahtú community, speaking with people to create an inventory of existing Scientific and Traditional Ecological Knowledge materials. She provides a chart of community projects to do with land use and traditional knowledge, and adds more detailed notes about relevant workshops and projects in her appendix. Some key examples include the Dene Nation Land Use Mapping Project (1979-83), the Fort Good Hope Language Group (1982-84) formed by Cynthia Chambers and funded by the NWT Language Commission, and the Colville Lake Fort Good Hope Traditional Ecological Knowledge Project (1989-1993).

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A physical copy of this document was accessed in UAlberta Cameron Library, Circumpolar Collection (accessed Jul. 2017). Call number E 78 N79 T79 2000.

T’Seleie, Bella. Land Use Information in the Sahtú Region, A Community Based Inventory. Tulıt’a: Sahtú Renewable Resources Board, 2000.

This detailed document makes a series of observations and recommendations about Sahtú Dene places and their care. Some general recommendations include:

• To establish a Sahtú Cultural Institute to implement many of their suggestions.
• To create an inventory of Sahtú Heritage Sites, along with a traditional trails inventory. Furthermore, an archeological site and burial site inventory could be used to request land use protection.
• To request that more Sahtú Dene placenames be made official.
• That the GNWT and Canada pass legislation with greater protection for burial sites, cultural landscapes, etc.
• That a GIS database, place name research, and Dene Nation Occupancy map be created and/or extended.

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A physical copy of this resource was accessed in July 2017 at the University of Alberta Circumpolar Collection (Cameron Library). Call number FC 4195 S24 S24 2000.

Sahtú Heritage Places and Sites Joint Working Group. Rakekée Gok’é Godı: Places We Take Care Of. Prepared by John T’Seleie, Isadore Yukon, Bella T’Seleie, Ellen Lee, and Tom Andrews, Yellowknife, 2000.

This text documents the results of a traditional environmental knowledge workshop held in a camp on the Mackenzie River near Fort Good Hope. The community of Fort Good Hope helped to coordinate the camp, and the event pertained to the Dene Cultural Institute traditional environmental knowledge project conducted in this region from 1989-1991.

From Foreword: 

In recent years, the value of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, and particularly their traditional environmental knowledge, has been recognized. This has unleashed a flood of research. Some of the research has been undertaken by scientists working alone, but the most innovative responses to this trend have been developed by indigenous researchers working in collaboration with Western scientists. They recognized early on that the main objective was not simply to collect reels of audio or video tape as a form of folklore, but to catalogue this information so that it could be compared from one region and one culture to other regions and other cultures, and, even more, so that it could be brought to bear on policies for sustainable development in remote and typically fragile ecosystems. This book presents the results of a workshop on the documentation and application of traditional environmental knowledge through community-based research. Organized and hosted by the Dene Cultural Institute (DCI) based in Fort Hay, Northwest Territories, Canada, and supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (lDRC), the workshop brought together a small number of teams, each composed of indigenous and nonindigenous researchers from Northern Canada, Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and South America. Their primary goal was to discuss effective methods for documenting the unique environmental knowledge and understanding that characterizes the heritage of all indigenous peoples around the world.

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Read the full PDF from IRDC Canada: https://www.idrc.ca/en/book/lore-capturing-traditional-environmental-knowledge

Johnson, Martha (ed.).LORE: Capturing Traditional Environmental Knowledge. Hay River, Dene Cultural Institute, International Development Research Centre, 1992.

The Working Group on Traditional Knowledge was formed in October 1989 by Dennis Patterson, then Premier of the Northwest Territories, to “define traditional knowledge, examine its current and potential use, and identify obstacles and solutions which will increase its influence in northern society” (1). This plan emerged from the 1988 30th annual meeting of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO in Yellowknife, where the Premier discussed the importance of Traditional Knowledge with the commission.

The authors note that while it is difficult to assess the current use of traditional knowledge given their resources, many NWT departments have begun incorporating it into their work, though there is more to be done in this regard. They recommend greater involvement of elders, communities as holders of knowledge, higher status/influence for traditional knowledge within the territorial government, more traditional knowledge in education, social services, and the justice system, and more documentation of traditional knowledge. This being said, they also emphasize that preservation is best achieved through use, and that the oral tradition should be maintained as a reliable source of information and knowledge.

Obstacles to traditional knowledge use include lack of resources, lack of support and coordination between organizations, and inappropriate uses of traditional knowledge. The authors call for a Declaration of Recognition and Support for Traditional Knowledge, in addition to a detailed list of recommendations for best practices for departments, employees, and legislation.

Abstract:

Tabled document no, . 127-91-(1) tabled on Jul 04 1991 (Northwest Territories). This report from the Traditional Knowledge Working Group defines traditional knowledge as Knowledge deriving from, or rooted in, the traditional way of life of aboriginal people and discusses ways and means of integrating it into laws, policies, programs and services. Includes references.

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This book is available in several Canadian university libraries, ISBN 9780770838720.

Legat, Allice (ed.). Report of the Traditional Knowledge Working Group. Yellowknife: Department of Culture and Communications, Government of the Northwest Territories, 1991.

Thesis Abstract:

Ascribing a cash value to the products of the bush activities of the Dene of the Northwest Territories of Canada resulted from a need to demonstrate the significance of these activities in the face of increased northern development. The majority of research in valuation studies occurred during the 1970s and was brought on by proposed large-scale development projects such as the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline and the James Bay Hydroelectric Project. Utilizing techniques such as the calculation of the cash value of locally available food products that could substitute for food acquired through hunting, fishing, and gathering, researchers were successful in establishing the importance and viability of subsistence production. However, most researches cautioned that the precise results obtained were exceedingly general and approximate, and did not actually represent the total value of bush products to the people using them. 

With the change in the nature of northern development in the 1980s toward the situation where industry is conducted alongside bush-subsistence activities, the objectives of describing the value of bush production altered. Protection of the ability to undertake these activities, often through compensation or mitigative measures, has required detailed descriptions of the nature of the resources in question. Techniques used during the 1970s to arrive at general cash-equivalent values over large areas were inappripriate for compensation purposes, and, importantly, the factors that could not be included in previous calculation ("intangibles" such as cultural and spiritual value, independence, and teaching children bush skills) required inclusion in any scheme seeking to protect bush activities. Some of these values are described in the context of Dene production activities conducted in the spring and summer of 1984. 

An alternative framework for assessing the significance of the bush-subsistence sector of the Dene economy is propsoed in the form of a political economy/mode of production analysis. The merits of this approach are that it enables the inclusion of aspects that were designated as intangibles in previous studies through its attention to the social relations of production; it is concerned in part with the historical background and thus affords a broader perspective than the limited view of previous valuation studies; and it is possible to analytically separate the cash-market sector from the subsistence sector of the Dene economy, in order to examine the interrelationships between the two. 

Finally, the ability of compensative and mitigative measures to ensure the continued ability of the Dene to conduct their way of life is questionable. Due to the tendency of compensative measures to deal only with specific, fxed, and finite assets, compensation is inappropriate for protecting the fluctuating, systemic, and social resoruces at stake in subsitence production. Ultimately, it is only through the political power to control land-use activites on the land that they require that the Dene way of life, along with their ability to guide and change it, may be protected. 

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Available from the University of Alberta.

Smith, Shirleen. Value and compensation: subsistence production in the Dene economy, Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories. MA Thesis, Anthropology, University of Alberta, 1986. 

Asch et. al provide context for the Dene/Métis mapping project, initiated in the 1970s when the Dene Nation began a traditional land use and occupancy study that was to be used in land claims and other negotiations. The mapping project began with the recorded knowledge of approximately 600 trappers, and began computerizing data in 1981.

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Search for Anthropology in Praxis in a local or University library. 

Asch, Michael, Thomas D. Andrews, and Shirleen Smith. “The Dene Mapping Project on Land Use and Occupancy: An Introduction.” In Anthropology in Praxis, edited by Phillip Spaulding, 36-43. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1986.

In this text, Rushforth drew from fieldwork in the 1970s to focus on harvesting.

Rushforth's chapter is a part of The Colony Within, which has its own entry in this catalogue. 

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Borrow the full book online.

ISBN: 9780802063151

Rushforth, Scott. “Country Food.” In Dene Nation: The colony within, edited by Mel Watkins, 32-46. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.

This document is part of a study done for the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories for Submission to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. It forms part of an overall effort to document traditional land use and occupancy during the 1970s.

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This document was an unpublished paper prepared for presentation to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. It is archived by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada: http://science-catalogue.canada.ca/record=3994070~S6

Find the Hard Copy in DFO Sidney, BC - Room 2616 - Monographs.  HD 319 .N7 R42 1976 .

Rushforth, Scott. “The Dene and Their Land.” In Recent Land-Use by the Great Bear Lake Indians, Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories volume 3, part 2 (1976): 1-65.