The Case of the Million-Dollar Duck: A Hunter, His Treaty, and the Bending of the Settler Contract

Tensions in Fostering ‘local food’ in the Northwest Territories: Contending with Settler Colonialism in Northern Research

“…Aside from more recent northern contributions situated in settler colonial frameworks (Burnett et al, 2016;Gombay, 2014Gombay, , 2017Levkoe et al, 2019;Ray et al, 2019;Wilson et al, 2019), none that I could find discuss settler colonialism and food systems specifically in the NWT. I did, however, encounter many critical contributions on related subjects like land-based practices (cf: Ballantyne, 2014;Irlbacher-Fox, 2014;Johnson, 2018; and extractivism (cf: Hall, 2013Hoogeveen, 2015;Peyton & Keeling, 2017). This prompted me to ask how researchers working on food systems in the NWT reckon with settler colonialism in their research.…”

“…Reading both Abel and Nahanni's statements together brings attention to an oftenoverlooked period of struggle over hunting rights in the territory that predates the largescale mobilization of Indigenous extractivist resistance that led to the Berger Inquiry (Johnson, 2018). Johnson (2018) argues that "a narrative that jumps from government-led relocations of subsistence communities to permanent settlements" to the "making of new activist organizations such as the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories [Dene Nation] (formed in 1969), misses a key site of sovereign struggle in the 1950s and 1960s, before the language of self-determination and indigenous rights was widely used" (p. 65).…”

“…Through these years of struggle, Johnson (2018) examines why the State was staunchly committed to protecting species such as mallards (through enforcement of the Migratory Birds Convention Act) at a time that these animals were not at risk. Sovereignty, Johnson (2018) argues, was at the heart of both small-and large-game hunting restrictions, and the State's "basis for claiming political authority" (p. 65). Despite these impositions, Indigenous hunters and trappers resisted these impositions by continuing their harvesting practices (Bayha, 2010) and were often criminalized for this 15 .…”

“…These narratives are premised on baseless assumptions about Indigenous harvesters' use of Western technologies (hunting equipment, firearms), lack of knowledge or protocols around harvesting and other racist tropes that need not repeating (Johnson, 2018;Sandlos, 2003). These inaccurate accounts have been overwhelmingly refuted, as has much of the conservation-based science that portrayed overharvesting as cause for caribou population decline Sandlos, 2003;Usher & Wenzel, 1987).…”

“…There is a historical element to my third, fourth and sixth chapters, so I consult the work of historians or other scholars writing historical materialisms, environmental, political and cultural history. These include histories of extractivism (Keeling & Sandlos, 2012;Kuyek, 2019;Peyton & Keeling, 2017), treaty-making (Abel, 1993;Fumoleau, 2004), conservationism (Johnson, 2018;Kuokkanen, 2020;Parlee, Sandlos, et al, 2018;Sandlos, 2008), food (Burnett et al, 2016;Mosby, 2012;Walters, 2012), agrarianism (Johnston, 2018;Piper & Sandlos, 2007); and Indigenous-State relations (Abele, 2009;Kulchyski & Bernauer, 2014;Nahanni, 1977). I consult these as secondary sources in historizing food issues, alongside complementary grey literature from sources including the GNWT, the Dene Nation, YKDFN, the TRC and the Berger Inquiry.…”