Gwich'in

Far in the north-west of the continent, mostly above the Arctic Circle, the Gwich'in live in a homeland that spans northern Alaska, the northern Yukon and the Mackenzie Delta of the Northwest Territories. They are an Athabaskan-speaking people, part of the wider Dene family, and their life and culture have long been bound up with the great migrating herds of caribou.

Gwich'in, also spelled Kutchin or Gwitchin, means roughly "one who dwells" or "resident" of a particular region. French traders called them Loucheux, and Anglican missionaries used the name Takudh. Among themselves the Gwich'in often use Dinjii Zhuu, a term that can refer to Indigenous people more broadly. Studies of traditional place names suggest that the Gwich'in have lived in this region for a very long time, perhaps since the early Holocene, around 8,000 years ago.

The Gwich'in creation story tells that people and caribou were once a single being that separated. Caribou provided meat, skins for tents and clothing, hide for drums and fat for soap, and their hides covered spruce-bough floors as bedding. Elders know at least 150 Gwich'in names for the bones, organs and tissues of the animal, together with stories, songs and customs connected to it. Most communities depend especially on the Porcupine caribou herd, which crosses the Alaska–Yukon border. The Gwich'in are also known for snowshoes, birchbark canoes, sleds, caribou-skin clothing, porcupine quillwork and finely detailed beadwork.

Gwich'in society has many bands, among them the Vuntut, Teetl'it, Gwichyaa and Neetsaii, and three ancient clans; people are expected to marry outside their own clan. A rich oral tradition includes the comic Vazaagiitsak cycle and tales that open with Deenaadai', "in the ancient days", when people and animals could speak to one another. Such stories teach values like generosity, cooperation and hard work.

Anglican and Catholic missionaries arrived in the 1840s, and Christianity remains widespread. A complete Gwich'in translation of the King James Bible, the Takudh Bible, was produced in an early spelling system, replaced in the 1960s by the orthography now in standard use. In 1921 Gwich'in leaders in the Mackenzie Delta signed Treaty 11 with Canada, but the two sides understood its terms differently and many promises went unmet. Residential schools, where children were often punished for speaking their own language, contributed to a sharp decline in Gwich'in speech.

More than 6,000 Gwich'in live in about 15 small communities, including Fort Yukon, Arctic Village and Venetie in Alaska, Old Crow in the Yukon, and Inuvik, Aklavik, Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic in the Northwest Territories. In 1992 the Canadian Gwich'in signed a comprehensive land claim agreement, a modern treaty that created the Gwich'in Tribal Council and gave it ownership of lands and authority over planning and conservation. The language is officially recognised in the Northwest Territories (since 1988) and in Alaska (since 2014), but UNESCO lists it as severely endangered, with a few hundred speakers; elders and linguists are documenting it and teaching it in schools. The Gwich'in have campaigned for decades against oil drilling on the caribou calving grounds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Our 1492 map draws an approximate Gwich'in homeland, labelled "Gwich'in Nành", stretching from interior Alaska to the Mackenzie Delta. The outline is based on present-day territories. It borders the lands of the Dene to the south-east, the Iñupiat to the north-west and the Inuvialuit, an Inuit people, along the Arctic coast.