The nature of food: indigenous Dene foodways and ontologies in the era of climate change

• Main Author: Walsh, David
• Other Authors: The Fulbright Program, The Graduate College, Arizona State University, The Department of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, Arizona State University
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Donner Institute 2014
• Subjects: Religious Studies; Anthropology of Religion; Ethnography; Indigenous peoples > Canada; Dene Indians; Indians of North America; Climatic changes; Global warming; Hunting and gathering societies; Arctic regions; Food; Eating and meals; Diet; Cooking; Food habits; Nutrition; Arctic; Canada; Northwest Territories; Climate change; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://ojs.abo.fi/ojs/index.php/scripta/article/view/843

Climate change leading to a drastic decline in caribou populations has prompted strict hunting regulations in Canada’s Northwest Territories since 2010. The Dene, a subarctic indigenous people, have responded by turning to tradition and calling for more respectful hunting to demonstrate respectful reciprocity to the caribou, including a community-driven foodways project on caribou conservation and Dene caribou conservation which I co-facilitated in 2011. In these ways the caribou is approached as a person. Dene responses to caribou decline can best be understood by ontological theories of an expanded notion of indigenous personhood. However, I argue these theories are inadequate without an attention to foodways, specifically the getting, sharing, and returning of food to the land. The necessity of sustenance reveals a complicated relationship of give-and-take between humans and caribou, negotiated by tradition, yet complicated by the contemporary crisis.