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‘We ate lots of fish back then’: the forgotten importance of fishing in Gwich'in country

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2013

Robert P. Wishart
Robert P. Wishart*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, King's College, AB24 3QY (r.p.wishart@abdn.ac.uk)
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Abstract

This article attempts to reconcile the fact that fishing has been and continues to be a large part of the Gwich'in local economy with the fact that fishing has been neglected in both popular and scientific accounts of Gwich'in practice. The article puts forth an explanation for why fishing has been neglected while at the same time documenting the corpus of fishing activities included in the yearly round. It also situates fishing as an important, but largely underestimated, part of the Canadian fur trade and explains how fish came to be used by traders and Gwich'in in a system of advances that benefited both parties. As a so-called secondary activity, fishing is entangled in Gwich'in history and their current way of life, and this article challenges the idea that it can be easily separated from other land based activities.

Type
Northern fisheries
Information
Polar Record , Volume 50 , Issue 4: Northern Fisheries , October 2014 , pp. 343 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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