Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Summer 2015
Department 1
Religious Studies
Abstract
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.
Copyright Note
This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Version
Version of Record
Recommended Citation
Walsh, David S. "The Nature of Food: Indigenous Dene Foodways and Ontologies in the Era of Climate Change." Religion and Food, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 26 (Summer 2015), 225-249.
Required Publisher's Statement
Original version is available from the publisher at: http://ojs.abo.fi/index.php/scripta/article/view/843
Included in
Canadian History Commons, Cultural History Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, History of Religion Commons, Practical Theology Commons
Comments
This article was also published in Indigenous Religions in 2018.