Thurs May 6 detailed schedule

Trapping the Flow: Traplines and Hydroelectric Development in Kaska Dene Lands

Abstract

During the 1970s and 1980s, Kaska Dena traditional territories were subject to numerous natural resource development projects. These projects posed threats to existing Indigenous l hunting and trapping activities. The Kaksa Dena used existing traplines as a means of fighting these projects. When compulsory trapline registration was implemented in BC in 1925, it was a colonial imposition on Indigenous peoples, circumscribing Indigenous trapping activities. By mobilizing traplines against resource development projects in the 1970s and 1980s, traplines – rather than. Simply being understood as colonial impositions on pre-existing Indigenous trapping practices – had come to represent a means of protecting Kaksa Dena lands. However, even as traplines had taken on a new significance during this wave of colonialism based on resource extraction, the Kaksa Dena continued to assert the superiority of their traditional trapping practices, which pre-dated the imposition of registered traplines. Thus, traplines held a unique position within Kaksa Dena historical consciousness as both a means of preventing further colonial incursions as well as the colonial system which had upended their traditional land tenure system.

Presenter(s)

Glen Iceton

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