Tracing Trails with Teetł’it Gwich’in: Poetics, Land, Memory, and Well-Being in the Circumpolar North

Jan Peter Laurens Loovers, MSc, MRes, PhD

The Royal Anthropological Institute
Goldsmiths University of London
University of Aberdeen
&
Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute

Thursday 21 June at 5pm

ABSTRACT

Tracing Trails with Teetł’it Gwich’in discusses the lives of the Teetł’it Gwich’in - aboriginal people who live in the far north-northwest corner of the Canadian mainland. Amidst significant changes in the last century, and current resource development initiatives in their traditional lands, the Teetł’it Gwich’in have continued important facets of their tradition based on hunting, fishing, trapping, and travelling. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I will discuss the changes and continuities in their lives by focusing on, and bringing together, poetics (song and language), land (namely Peel River Watershed), memory, and well-being. I conclude that the land is pivotal for language revitalisation and the Gwich’in way of knowing and being. 

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