On the Trail of the Northern Hunters

My work in the early 1970s among the Chipewyan of Patuanak, Saskatchewan, also known as the Kesyehot'ine ("aspen house people"), focused on the community's "annual economic cycle." The latter had an identifiable temporal and spatial structure defined, in part, by movements of dozens of hunting, trapping and fishing teams. The cycle was a cultural means of distributing people across a vast territory of subarctic boreal forest at appropriate intervals to intercept needed resources which could be converted to food products and cash income. Moreover, the very rhythm of the cycle, the repetitive ebb and flow of teams in and out of settlements, the exchange of fishing camp for trapping camp, was socially and psychologically reinforcing. And since seasonal population dispersions had concentrations had been part of Chipewyan life for generations, the cycle was compatible with the people's way of viewing the world.

Much of the analysis emphasized the locational or spatial organization of communities as a fundamental form of ecological adaptation for boreal forest hunter-gatherers. More than any other activity, trapping accounted for the most dramatic fluctuations in seasonal settlement patterns among the Chipewyan and was also responsible for the greatest spatial dispersion of people at any point during the annual cycle. Moreover, trapping productivity (as measured by numbers of animals harvested amd cash income) varied positively with trapping area size and distance away from the central village. That is, the most productive hunters operated the largest traplines in the more remote sections of the territory. Even so, status and prestige were not directly linked to economic "success" in the Western sense. Chipewyan individuals and families alike could not maintain their integrity in the community without participating in a reciprocal flow of money, goods and services. By the same token, a Chipewyan trapper of average ability who could provide for his family and also share food and possessions with others was truly successful by community standards. He would have a an esteemed reputation as "good hunter" or "good trapper."

Read more about it:

Jarvenpa, Robert. 1977 Subarctic Indian Trappers and Band Society: The Economics of Male Mobility. Human Ecology 5:223-259.

Jarvenpa, Robert. 1980 The Trappers of Patuanak: Toward a Spatial Ecology of Modern Hunters. Ottawa: National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Canadian Ethnology Service Pub. No. 67.

Jarvenpa, Robert. 1998 Northern Passage: Ethnography and Apprenticeship Among the Subarctic Dene. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.