1 nuhenéné hoghóídi

The story of Wood Buffalo National Park and its impacts on the lives of Dënesųłıné people requires an introduction to the community’s deep and longstanding relations to the lands and waterways taken up by the Park and the region. The Dene title for this chapter, meaning “we watch over/protect our land,” indicates the importance of these relations and of Dene stewardship over the land and water. In many of the oral histories shared in this book, Elders and members focus on the importance of the land and water and the life they support to the lives of the Dene people. Elder Jimmy Deranger’s testimony powerfully communicated the extent and significance of the area that Dënesųłıné people consider their homeland and territories, and the deep connection the Dene have always had to it:

So that land is a huge, huge land, and it was Dënesųłıné land. And the Dënesųłıné people then, wherever they were, when people died, that’s where they buried them, on the land . . . the Elders were saying that the land was made with Dene blood. And so, we asked how? They said, “wherever the Dene were traveling, wherever they died, they buried the people, and that blood went back into the land.” That’s how the Dene land is recognized today. Because it was made by Dene blood wherever the blood went back into the land, all over the land. And [the Elders] were saying that the Dene people, the caribou, and the wolf are one person. And that’s how the Dene people recognize themselves today in Dene lands. That’s why they have a strong attachment to the land.

For the Dënesųłıné, the importance of the land, water, air, and the sentient and non-sentient relatives they sustain is not defined strictly economically, and their many ways of relating to and understanding the physical world are interconnected and must be understood holistically. The colonial natural resource management system imposed in the twentieth century stressed Dene relations to the land and water, divided the environment into categories to be controlled, and dismissed and ignored Dene ways of knowing and being in their territory. Everything ties together in Dene worldviews: Elders and community members discussed the holistic importance of the lands, waters, and all living beings. Free and unimpeded access to homelands sustains people’s health and well-being; supports livelihoods and local economies; provides physical, cultural, social and spiritual nourishment; underlies Dene law and governance; sustains widespread social and kinship relations; ensures the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, language and history; and safeguards cultural continuity. So, the creation, expansion and management of Wood Buffalo National Park had complex and long-term impacts on the Dënesųłıné peoples who had, prior to the Park’s existence, lived and moved freely in their homelands since time immemorial. In this chapter, Elders and members share their memories and their families’ oral histories describing Dënesųłıné relations to their extensive territories, as well as the ways these relations have changed over time.

The Dene people of the Athabasca River, Birch River, Peace River, Slave River and Gull River ¹

The many names of the ancestors of ACFN shed light on the extent and significance of the lands and waterways the community has considered their homelands since time immemorial.² The name Etthen eldeli Dene indicates the vastness of Dene territories, which historically was defined by the migratory patterns of caribou herds. K’ái Tailé Dene translates roughly to the “real people of the land of the willows,” referring to the low, woody shrub vegetation that grows throughout much of the Peace-Athabasca Delta, demonstrates the importance of this environment to Dene identities and lives.³ The language of Treaty 8 clearly indicates that the Dënesųłıné lived, traveled, and depended on the lands in range of all the rivers in the region: commissioners referred in writing to “The Chipewyan Indians of Athabasca River, Birch River, Peace River, Slave River and Gull River.”

The oral history and testimony shared in this chapter tells how Dënesųłıné people lived, moved, harvested, and thrived far and wide. In 1974, one Fort Chipewyan Elder explained:

The people had trapped, hunted and fished around Lake Clair[e] and Mamawi as far back into the interior to the Birch Mountains. The people who lived at Little Rapids had also trapped, hunted and fished around Lake Claire into the interior as far back to the Birch Mountain and Birch River. We lived at Jackfish Creek. We hunted, trapped and fish up to the Caribou Mountains. From Peace Point, we trapped and hunted to the Caribou Mountains.⁴

Mikisew Cree First Nation (MCFN) Elder Mary “Cookie” Simpson, whose family resided at Peace Point for decades before they were forcibly transferred in 1944 to the Cree Band (Chapter 4), explained that when she was in residential school, children used to introduce each other by the names of places where they lived. She recalled Dene students saying they came from Gull River and Peace River. “They had homesteads all over the bush,” she said. One Elder explained to ACFN member and social worker Lori Stevens that the people traveled toward the Peace River along the Embarras River, following the Peace and Slave Rivers to trap beaver. “They all had that portion for where they would hunt beavers and whatnot. . . . they used to go before the Park was created in the ١٩٢٠s . . . that was all the area . . . everybody went there.» Oral histories and ethnohistorical studies tell us that that Dene homelands were not defined by boundaries until after the negotiation of Treaty 8 in 1899 and the establishment of the Park in 1922.⁵

“We are the land because the land is us” ⁶

Oral histories and testimony tell us that the identities and lives of the Dene people are inextricable from their relations to their homelands. As Elder Alice Rigney eloquently explained, “we are the land because the land is us—that’s how we think of it. We are part of it.” She continues, “Water is life, and Mother Nature is who looks after us, but we have to look after her. And in between that, that’s where the work and the trust is needed.” Alice’s words tell us that Dënesųłıné relations to the land, water, and the life they support have always been marked by movement, active and responsible stewardship, trust, and reciprocity. Historically, Dene people traveled for much of the year in small groups for subsistence purposes and settled seasonally at other times of the year, usually near waterways like the Peace and Birch Rivers and Lakes such as Lake Claire, Lake Mamawi, and House Lake. ACFN member Scott Flett explained that people’s widespread movements on the land and water also kept them closely connected to kin, lands, and resources across vast distances, noting that the land is “all Dene.” He expands, “They just moved around, eh—they didn’t stay in one area. They probably went to . . . places where they could spend the winters and stuff like where there’s food you know, there’s fish, abundance of the wildlife, you know. They moved around, eh? Like they’re all relatives, right?” Trails that ethnographer Laura Peterson and Dene and Cree Elders uncovered in WBNP in 2018 demonstrate that the area that became the Park was part of an extensive network of paths, harvesting grounds, and homelands that supported the seasonal subsistence movements and the kinship networks on which the people depended.⁷

Dene relations to the land and water have always been diverse and adaptive. Members and Elders described berry-picking, medicinal and other plant harvesting, hunting, trapping, fishing, and gardening as critical subsistence practices that have upheld families and the community throughout the centuries. The Dene people historically harvested caribou and other large game like moose and bison, as well as migratory birds and smaller mammals like rabbits and fur-bearing animals like beaver, mink, and muskrat. Beginning in the late-eighteenth and into the mid-twentieth centuries, trapping fur-bearing animals became both a way of life and a living for Dene people. Elder Big John Marcel said that trapping was for him both subsistence and income. From his own experience he recalled: “this area was my bank, eh. When I was young, whenever I was broke, I would hitch up my dogs and I’d go to our reserve and I’d set traps and I’d killed a couple hundred rats. You know, and I’d come back in town and I’d sell it, I’d sell it to buy the stuff that I need. And it was my bank for me.” Elder Jimmy Deranger similarly explained, “When you fly to Fort Chip, look down there. That’s our bank. When you look on the land that you’re flying into Fort Chip, you look all around, as long as your eye can see. That’s our bank. Your bank is Bank of Montreal.” Dene people have also always picked berries, fished on the small lakes, and traded along the rivers. These ways of relating to lands and waters have not only sustained people’s lives but also have kept the community connected across the territories. Many of the oral testimonies in this chapter also suggests that maintaining connections to the land has been key to the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. It upholds Dënesųłıné ways of living, being, and knowing. For example, Elder Alice Rigney said that her grandmother, Ester Piché, was happy and healthy living near Lake Claire, picking berries and medicines, drying fish, and sharing knowledge with her children: “she made her medicines and passed all this knowledge on. And some of that knowledge is passed on to me.”

As Alice’s oral history suggests, the lands and waters are like a pharmacy, where people go to gather medicines—sustaining Dene people’s mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical health and well-being. Elders’ testimony indicates that Dene people harvested salt from the salt flats, gathered birch, and also harvested the medicinal, spiritual, and cultural resources the Delta and surrounding area sustains. Scott Flett explained that the people “had certain areas to get their medicines and stuff, eh. Rat Roots and lavender tea and stuff like that is harvested.” Elder Ed Trippe de Roche and Keltie Paul also described the environment as a place to heal: a “hospital,” a “retreat,” a “spa,” and somewhere to “get away from it all,” and reflect on life. Elders told researcher Laura Peterson in 2018 that they survived the violence and trauma of residential schools by getting out to the land when they returned home.⁸ Edouard Trippe de Roche recalled that when he was a child in residential school, summers spent on the land were a retreat, a time to heal and reconnect: “everybody wanted to get out [of residential school],” he said, “we wanted to go back to the land, you know . . . This was, the life we all wanted, and we were taken away from it. That’s the retreat we’d get after ten months in the residential school.”

Reliant on the land and waterways as they always have been, Dene people have practiced responsible stewardship. Elder Pat Marcel wrote that they “always had the responsibility of living in balance with the natural environment.”⁹ Elders think of the land and water as living and sentient, and of their relations to the land and water not just as “land use” but as kinship. Healthy relations with non-human kin are reciprocal and respectful. The Dënesųłıné engaged in controlled burning, for example, and studied the migration and breeding patterns of game and fowl to determine appropriate harvesting seasons. Until they were outlawed under the settler land management regime in the twentieth century, Dene controlled burning practices and other such relations of care are “part of a holistic system of ecosystem stewardship” which exemplifies how, as Cardinal-Christianson et. al. put it, the Indigenous Peoples of this region have always “understood that humans were not the only agents of change in the boreal forest.”¹⁰ Ethnographic research that Henry Lewis and Theresa Ferguson did with Indigenous harvesters in northern Alberta in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated that Indigenous Peoples of the northern boreal forest, including the Dënesųłıné, deeply understood the “systemic, relational effects of burning . . . [and were] well aware of the highly variable ecological relationships . . . resulting from [both] natural and man-made fires.”¹¹ These seasonal patterns and respectful practices across a vast and rich landscape have ensured that Indigenous Peoples lived healthy lives and maintained social connections and kinship networks throughout the territory from one generation to the next.

Intertwined with these stewardship practices of actively and respectfully tending the environment are Dene laws of sharing. Elders emphasized that Dene people take care of each other and of strangers in times of need by living in respectful relation to the land and water and sharing what they have. ACFN member Leslie Laviolette explained, “You know, the sharing part is: we take what we need, and if we have too much, we go give our Elders that taught us all these tools.” As Dene laws state, sharing “is an umbrella law; under it sit all the other laws. It was of absolute importance that people share what they had long ago for survival. Share all the big game you kill. Share fish if you catch more than you need for yourself and there are others who don’t have any.” Helping flows from this: “Help others cut their wood and other heavy work. Help sick people who are in need; get them firewood if they need it. Visit them and give them food. When you lose someone in death, share your sorrows with the relatives who are also affected by the loss. Help out widows as much as possible and take care of orphaned children.”¹² Dene laws depend on sharing, helping, and living in loving relation with the land and water, and with all human and non-human kin. Under Dene law, living in good relations with the land and water is closely interconnected with living in reciprocal and caring relationships with community and kin.

Dene places taken up by the Park

Oral histories and archaeological evidence point to many places of importance to the Dënesųłıné within what are now the boundaries of the Park. Most frequently in their oral histories, Elders described Dene settlements along the Birch River (near Lake Claire), and at Peace Point on the Peace River, where Dene families resided and harvested for centuries and eventually built permanent settlements in the eighteenth century. As the fur trade grew, Dene seasonal movements shifted to align with a growing emphasis on fur trapping, and to eventually make use of seasonal wage labour opportunities such as commercial fisheries or sawmills. People began to settle more permanently and in larger groups to be closer to the trading centres, including the Hudson’s Bay Company Posts in Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray and the other economic and social opportunities that were arising. For example, oral histories tell us that Dene people lived and harvested near Lake Claire for generations, and it is likely that the settlements expanded in the late 1700s and early 1800s after the Northwest Company built a wintering fur trade post at the mouth of the Birch River. Some Elders indicated that the growing power of the colonial wildlife and resource management system also pushed people to settle more permanently in or near the towns and posts. In the oral testimony shared in this chapter, Elders vividly recall some of those settlements, or what their parents and grandparents told them about it. Their relatives were born there, harvested there, married there, and were buried there.

Dënesųłıné families shared space at Peace Point with the local Mikisew Cree community (which became MCFN) before the forced membership transfer of 1944. Members of the Simpson family, who are of Dënesųłıné heritage, described Isidore Simpson’s homestead at Peace Point. The family built a two-storey home there in the 1920s before they (excepting one daughter, Elizabeth Flett [née Simpson]) were transferred to the Cree Band. One Simpson family member stated that Dënesųłıné people lived throughout Peace Point (along with a few Cree Band members) and had homesteads all the way up the trail to Fort Chipewyan. ACFN Elder Dora Flett recalled that her mother lived at Peace Point but was forced to move to Old Fort after the 1926 Park annex; some of her relatives even moved as far away as Saskatchewan. Dene people also established settlements, lived, traveled, harvested, and tended the land throughout other parts of what became the Park, including at Moose Island (sometimes called Carlson’s Landing), Egg Lake, Lake Mamawi and Dene Lake, and at other places along the Athabasca, Birch, Gull, Peace, and Slave Rivers, along the Caribou Mountains, and as far south as the Birch Mountains, about 80 kilometres from the southeast corner of the Park. Fort McMurray Elder Ray Ladouceur explained, “Oh, they were all over back there, eh? Gull River, up the Peace River, you know. They did well for themselves, them Dene in those days, eh? Surviving on the land.” He continues, “Lake Claire, Lake Mamawi, they’d fish in those areas . . . like way down the bay and all over, you know. Sweetgrass . . . it was good. It was survival, you know.”

Two Dënesųłıné settlement sites were also built southwest of the Birch River Delta, between Lake Claire and House Lake, and along the southern shore of Lake Claire. In 2011, archaeological studies demonstrated that Dene people had settled in two places: “one near Spruce Point on Lake Claire and the other along an intermittent creek close to the north shore of House Lake.”¹³ The area was rich and abundant: “The House Lake settlements at Birch River are located in an area containing variable and plentiful resources, such as water-fowl, fish, abundant fur bearing animals and large mammals.”¹⁴ People built cabins and houses (which were later burned down by park officials) and grew gardens at these settlements. Culturally modified trees, depressions, foundations, refuse pits, and trails are all markers of longstanding Dene presence there.¹⁵ Materials uncovered at the sites included things residents would have used daily, such as lanterns, wash tubs, kitchen wares, tools, gramophones, and other household items.¹⁶ Dene people lived and harvested at these settlements until they were evicted from the Park. Oral histories and some archival sources also indicate that people were living and harvesting there well into the 1930s. For example, Supervising Park Warden M.J. Dempsey wrote in 1930 that there were Dene people still living and working in the Birch River area at that time: “there are frames for drying meat at many places and camping places are numerous.” He also noted signs of beaver, as well as the tracks of moose, deer, bear, fox, mink, and skunk and signs of hawks. The warden recommended increased surveillance because of the presence of Dene people who strongly opposed the possibility of more wardens at their settlements and rich harvesting areas.¹⁷ Some of the oral histories shared in this book relate family stories about the settlements at Birch River. Even though life was hard sometimes, people thrived and lived with joy at their settlements and surrounding homelands.

Some Elders also point to Dene graves and cemeteries throughout and beyond the boundaries of the Park. Leslie Laviolette mentions Dene sites at Moose Island (near Peace Point), and Elder Fredoline Deranger/Djeskelni points to “another small settlement at the Dene Lake, which is west of Birch River, its higher elevation, maybe fifteen, or maybe twenty miles. It’s a small lake, but . . . there’s settlements, there’s graves all over, there’s even tombstones all over the place too.”¹⁸As Djeskelni’s oral testimony implies, graves and cemeteries help keep the Dene people connected to their homelands. The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) undertook an archaeological survey of marked and unmarked gravesites throughout RMWB in 2010. Twenty-one gravesites were identified within the boundaries of the Park.¹⁹ Oral testimony confirms that many of these, including graves located at Lake Claire, along the Birch and Peace Rivers, at Moose Island, Lake Mamawi, and Quatre Fourches are Dene sites. The gravesites are evidence of the widespread and longstanding Dënesųłıné presence in and beyond the lands and waterways that became part of the Park. They also commemorate the devastating history of epidemics and residential schools that ravaged Dene communities in the twentieth century.

Colonial changes and shifting relations to the land

Elder Josephine Mercredi lamented in 1998 that people were suffering because they no longer lived freely from the land. “It would be better to live like old times,” she said, “to live off the lake—the land. The children used to listen to you. We used to all pray before bed. If things were the same, my children might have been still alive, better off.”²⁰ ACFN Elder Rene Bruno explained in 2010 that, living off the land as they had always done, people had been healthy, happy and self-sufficient.

Everything was good then—the water, the land. Now everything is polluted. Lots of muskrat in the past—people had lots of money all year round from the winter trapping. Didn’t spend money foolishly. They weren’t lazy, they worked hard . . . 

Years ago, the people lived off the land. They knew everything, how to survive. No one can do things the way people used to do things. Nowadays, people go to the university, but they don’t know anything about the bush life. Long ago, people knew everything, they worked hard.²¹

The changes to the way of life Josephine and Rene pointed to were combined outcomes of the many colonial processes, institutions, and policies taking shape after the signing of Treaty 8, and especially after the establishment of the Park in 1922.

As some Elders emphasized during their interviews, residential schools were central to the changes to Dene ways of life, connections to place, and sense of identity. Because children were forced into residential schools, they were unable to spend as much time on the land; for several generations, the connections to the land and intergenerational transfer of knowledge was severed. Devastating epidemics in the 1920s and 1930s also affected these connections. The decline of the fur trade, the catastrophic effects of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, and the combined effects of extreme extraction in Dene territories have also had significant impacts on the ways that the Dene people relate to the land and water and all life they support. The colonial conservation regime throughout the twentieth century resulted in what Cardinal-Christianson et. al. described as “cultural severance . . . an act, intentional or not, that functionally disrupts relationships between people and the land” by repressing and criminalizing Dene ways of life and stewardship practices.²² As discussed in greater detail in Chapter 7, the convergence of these colonial shifts combined with Park exclusions and policies and the 1944 transfer to the Cree First Nation to radically transform Dene people’s connections to their homelands and knowledge. The way of life and prosperity of the Dënesųłıné people was further interrupted twenty-three years after Treaty 8 was signed, when the Park was created. Yet, even through great change, the Elders maintain that the Dënesųłıné people have always been resourceful and adaptive while maintaining their deep-rooted relations to the land. As Alice Rigney said, “we are very resilient people. We are still here and will still be here.”²³ Despite devastating changes and colonial attempts at eliminating the way of life in Dene territories, people continued to live as they had always done—though, as the chapters that follow will show, their lives were restricted significantly by the Park and wildlife management regulations.

Conclusion

Living seasonally on the land, moving freely throughout a vast and rich territory, adapting to change over time, and sharing and taking care of the land and each other, the Dënesųłıné were affluent, healthy, and happy until the Park was created in 1922.²⁴ Marie Josephine Mercredi explained in 1998, “I barely remember how happy the people used to be, enjoying our livelihood. The babies did not cry. [We] would all get together in one place and tell stories, jokes and have a great time, everyone was happy.”²⁵

Wood Buffalo National Park takes up a substantive area in the massive homelands of the Dënesųłıné. Its boundaries and harvesting rules have impeded Dene people’s ways of life, interrupted relations to the land, water, and stewardship practices, and eroded Dene sovereignty. In addition, evictions from settlements within the Park have had a significant impact on the community. Some Dënesųłıné families residing along the Birch River, at the House Lake and Peace Point settlements, and harvesting elsewhere in the Park, lost access to their family homes, gravesites, spiritual and cultural sites, gardens, and harvesting areas. As Elder Alice Rigney emphasized when reviewing a draft of this book, the Dene people of the Peace-Athabasca Delta region lived a vibrant, healthy, and mobile lifestyle prior to colonization and the Park’s establishment.

The oral histories and testimony shared in this chapter reflect on Dënesųłıné relations to the land, water and sentient and non-sentient relatives, as well as the ways in which these relations have shifted over time. ACFN members and Elders tell about seasonality and stewardship, people’s movements throughout the wider territory, harvesting practices, kinship connections, Dene laws, and senses of belonging and identity. The oral history and testimony shared here underline the importance of maintaining strong and fluid connections to Dene homelands and ways life. They also help us understand the profound implications of Wood Buffalo National Park on those connections, which have been undermined and interrupted through the Park’s creation, expansion, and management.