Dog-craft:a history of Gwich'in and dogs in the Canadian North

In this article I propose the notion of dog-craft and explore the expansion of the capital markets in the circumpolar North. Through the fur trade and mineral extractions, indigenous people incorporated and improvised the use of dog teams for trapping, fishing, hunting, and gathering. This article f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hunter Gatherer Research
Main Author: Loovers, Jan Peter Laurens
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/dogcraft(25dcc173-e003-4d6a-95ce-6257b2a2e440).html
https://doi.org/10.3828/hgr.2015.21
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Summary:In this article I propose the notion of dog-craft and explore the expansion of the capital markets in the circumpolar North. Through the fur trade and mineral extractions, indigenous people incorporated and improvised the use of dog teams for trapping, fishing, hunting, and gathering. This article focuses on the Gwich’in people in the northwestern corner of Canada. I elaborate on the history of crafts related to dogs as well as to the dogs themselves. In most recent times, following the disappearance of a particular type of dog – the working dog – these crafts have vanished for the greater part.