Arctic Domus Gathering February 2014, Fettercairn
Rob Wishart, University of Aberdeen
My research interests and trajectories coincide with what could be called a “cultivation
contradiction” in indigenous/settler relations in North America, which could be characterised
as a shift in understanding the relationships between indigenous communities and the
animals/places the relied upon as cultivated/cultivatable and productive to one of wild
insignificance and a hindrance to settlement. Building on my past research on the positioning
of Gwich’in/Dene as the harvesters of wild resources by the Canadian state, I am working
with both historical documents researched at various archives in Canada and with the
Gwich’in themselves to make two general arguments.
1. That the various agents responsible for the settling of the western Canadian sub-arctic were
dependent upon the Dene ability to cultivate productive relationships with animals. This
research includes work on the fur trade and with Police archives (there is much to do on other
fronts) to discover the rich ways that these agents interacted with the Dene and the animals
and the products afforded through a cultivation of relationships with them. As a start I wrote
an article for Polar Record on how fish and fishing were an important, but largely
underestimated, part of the Canadian fur trade and explaining how fish came to be used by
traders and Gwich’in in an economic system of advances that benefited both parties. This
research has led me to be more keenly interested in the ethnography of the fish camp. My
upcoming fieldwork will be a return to the importance of the fish camp amongst the
Gwich’in. I will be researching the importance of fishing to Gwich’in ideas of sustainability
while attempting to reconcile why fishing and the ethnography of the fish camp has gone
largely unnoticed in most of the academic accounts of Gwich’in human-animal relationships.
Tentatively, I believe that the reason why fishing has been neglected was aided through an
anthropological over-emphasis on Gwich’in relationships with key megafauna which, in
addition to underplaying the importance of fish, missed out on the cultivation of multispecies
relationships. In addition is the fact the Dene of the Mackenzie Valley did not and still do not
catch fish of high importance to the powers of management. Thus, returning to an older
anthropological observation that the fish camp has been central to Gwich’in sensibilities
about social life throughout history because of the relationships that these camps and their
associate activities afford will provide a point of research into the complexities of the
cultivation of relationships with underestimated species. The two photos below are from the
1970’s and the 2000’s and would seem to show a remarkable continuity in Gwich’in practice.
What is not shown are the complexities of the relationships that go into fishing and storing
fish for use as food and fuel. These need further research including participant observation
with the Gwich’in at fish camps, oral history research, and the possible creation of an
experimental history camp dedicated to catching, preparing, and storing the fish that the fur
trade depended upon.
2. I have been particularly interested in how anthropological theorising has positioned
northern indigenous people in Canada as hunter-gatherers which is not a problem until the
implications of understanding these sorts of lifeways to be vestigial and ephemeral. Such a
view has not only helped to inform state and industrial policy on modernising vanishing
cultures but the policy has driven the people to describe their lives in these terms. Part of this
research has been an investigation into wildlife management regimes in the north—how they
were mobilised by an argument of corruption and wanton slaughter, and how they activated
the first concentrated policing of the north on the part of the state. In all these policies and
efforts an assumption was made that the wild animals, plants and fish on which the Dene rely
were not property until the point of capture, and that they remained a de-facto property of the
crown.
I have become interested in alternatives to this sort of crude ownership. What is apparent that
in the treaty negotiations and latter land claims, the Dene have consistently argued that while
it is true that no person, as far as they are concerned, owns the land or the animals there is
still a strong sense of jurisdiction over the cultivation of relationships and this means that as
far as they understand it that they have treaty rights to this particular form of jurisdiction. In
fact they argue that the only reason they signed treaty was because this was the guarantee,
that in exchange for ceding the land to the crown their jurisdiction would be protected from
the settlers. The Dene have been clear that it is through their actions on the land that the socalled wild resources are even there. It is not surprising that they, along with the Cree in
James Bay and many others translate this into metaphors of cultivation. It is their garden. Or
to take the metaphor even further they will translate it into financial terms like a bank or a
store house over which they have title and jurisdiction. In negotiations between Canada and
the Dene, jurisdiction has never been allowed into the conversation. Canada has insisted on
the terms of ownership as it applies to wild animals and not jurisdiction as might apply to
animals which are “kept.” For this reason I, along with a few others working on this problem,
ask if we cannot form a better language of cultivation that would be politically useful for the
settling of claims to both parties.