Chipewyans

By Henry S. Sharp and John Beierle

Dene, Northern Indians, Yellowknives.

The Chipewyan inhabit the Central Canadian Subarctic. The people call themselves - collectively - Dene (The People). The term Chipewyan, their common English name, is generally regarded as coming from a pejorative Cree description of the inadequacy of their first attempts to prepare beaver skins for the fur trade. Early Hudson Bay Co. records and especially Hearne's Journal often refer to the Chipewyan as "Northern Indians". The Yellowknives, sometimes regarded as a separate tribe, are generally considered to be a branch of the Chipewyan that merged into other Athapaskan speaking populations during the fur trade period. The Chipewyan tend to call local settlements and temporary aggregations of people by reference to the activity (e.g., those gathered at a particular creek mouth to exploit a late winter sucker run), person, or place around which the local group has formed. These names have often been recorded by English speakers as if they referred to permanent internal divisions of the Chipewyan. The result is a plethora of Chipewyan temporary epithets fossilized in English and referring to groups that in fact never existed among the Chipewyan.

As the fur trade developed and points of trade were established in Chipewyan territory, there came an increasing pattern of referring to groups of Chipewyan trading into or camping near points of trade by the name of the point of trade, again generating a plethora of names referring to non-existent Chipewyan political subdivisions. With the stabilization of the fur trade, identification between the point of trade and how the Chipewyan began to think of themselves and organize themselves became increasingly accurate. By the end of the nineteenth century, most larger scale internal Chipewyan groupings could be accurately reflected through the name of the point of trade with which they were affiliated. With the increasing popularity of the phrase, "First Nation" in the 1980s, group identity began to reflect local designations or the formal band name assigned by the Canadian government suffixed by the First Nation designation.

The contemporary Chipewyan occupy an immense but sparsely settled territory. From Churchill, along Hudson Bay, settlements follow the Churchill River into Saskatchewan then continue westwards to the Athabasca River in Alberta. From the western shore of the river, ending roughly about Fort Churchill, Chipewyan country extends northeast to the southern shore of Great Slave Lake and eastwards along that lake. From there the Chipewyan utilize the forest-tundra interface and transitional forest to the south all the way to Hudson Bay. There is intermittent occupancy of the tundra even farther north than Dubwant Lake. The area east of Great Slave Lake is seasonally occupied -- generally within the tree line -- by Chipewyan from villages in the Northwest Territories as well as from Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Details of the homeland of the aboriginal populations are unknown but were centered at and above tree line between Great Slave Lake and Hudson Bay. With the fur trade, especially after the arranged peace with the Cree, Chipewyan populations expanded south and southeastwards. They pushed into the boreal forest south of Great Slave Lake and south to the Churchill river. There was a concomitant abandonment of large areas of the inland tundra to the Eskimo. Economic and political influence, through trade and raiding, extended farther west during the fur trade but this was not coupled with occupancy of the land.

The aboriginal population is unknown. Chipewyan culture is dominated by life in a vast and harsh land with scarce and irregular food resources. Population densities rarely exceeded one person per hundred square miles so the figure of 2,500 - 3,000 is probably the best available approximation to the pre-contact population. Post-contact populations fluctuated wildly between 1780 and 1850 in response to disease and migration. The population of the "contact-traditional" period (roughly 1850 - 1920) was more stable overall but local populations were subject to dramatic fluctuations in response to disease, fire, and changes in animal populations and distribution. Absolute population figures remain unknown. The post World War I population began a gradual climb, again with local fluctuations, with increased contact with the outside world and slowly improving health care. The 1950s, with their greatly improved health care, resulted in a dramatic demographic explosion that continues to the turn of the twenty-first century. Because of the disparity between ethnicity and the administrative categories used for record keeping, an accurate count of the Chipewyan is not possible even in 1999 but total population may exceed 30,000.

The Chipewyan speak a language that is a member of the Northern Athapaskan branch of the Athapaskan language family. Within the Chipewyan language there are substantial dialectical variations in pronunciation and semantics but all variants are mutually intelligible with a modicum of effort on the part of native speakers.

The aboriginal Chipewyan were a people of the tundra and transitional zone of the boreal forest specialized as predators of migratory herds of barren ground caribou. Indirect contact with Europeans through trade goods and pressure on their land and economy came primarily from the more southernly Cree who were in direct trade with Europeans. Direct contact came in 1715, at which point the Chipewyan entered the fur trade primarily as middle-men between Europeans and tribes as yet uncontacted. Direct fur production was only a secondary aspect of the Chipewyan economy in the early fur-trade. The Chipewyan held their land against neighbors to the south, west, and along the coast. As the fur trade stabilized, many Chipewyan moved deep into the full boreal forest, and into direct production of fur for the fur trade. Christianization occurred throughout the nineteenth century as an adjunct to the stabilized fur trade but residential missionaries did not reach a number of Chipewyan settlements until after World War II. As there has never been appreciable white settlement in Chipewyan country outside the few larger towns, the Chipewyan have retained utilization of, and de facto control over, their lands. Relations between the Chipewyan and whites have not been without stress or occasional violence but over all, relations between the cultures have been remarkably peaceful. Abandonment of bush life for that in town or village is an effectively finished if not completed process. Those Chipewyan committed to living primarily in the bush seem able to replicate themselves from generation to generation. The Chipewyan are as caught up in the technological revolution of the end of the twentieth century as are any other group of people in North America but, even as technology changes at an increasingly rapid pace, the Chipewyan have been able to adapt that technology both towards changing their lifestyle and towards maintaining that of their previous lifestyle that they wish to have persevere.

Aboriginal Chipewyan culture lacked permanent settlements. The Chipewyan were intensely social and formed together in aggregations larger than families whenever circumstances permitted. Early contact reports -- 1770s -- indicate the presence of seasonal villages of several hundred souls during the caribou hunting season (late-fall to mid-spring). With the establishment of trading posts the Chipewyan population began to exploit these posts as seasonal resources. Temporary camps formed around them that in turn grew into permanent villages and towns. At the end of the twentieth century, town life is the normative pattern with settlements varying from less than a hundred to several thousand souls.

From time immemorial the Chipewyan have been specialists in the pursuit of the barren ground caribou. Human population movements were responsive to the yearly migrations of the caribou; a pattern of life that required tremendous mobility. Caribou were consumed fresh and frozen for later use but each year a substantial effort was put into preparing dried caribou meat. Light, nutritious, and easily stored and transported, dry meat was the critical capital of survival in Chipewyan life. Caribou provided the basic raw materials for most of the Chipewyan needs for shelter, clothing, and bedding and was the source of many tools and implements of daily life.

The Chipewyan made use of all available large animals and of most of the smaller ones as well. Fish and fowl were important food sources but the use of any particular species tended to be seasonal.

The barren ground caribou was the staff of life for most of the Chipewyan living within the transitional zone of boreal forest at least until the end of World War II. The Chipewyan who occupied the boreal forest proper adopted, in the absence of barren ground caribou, a more diverse animal, bird, and fish subsistence base. For both groups, store foods began to replace rather than supplement bush foods in the 1950s. This represents a pattern of diet and subsistence change that is continuing at the turn of the twenty-first century but bush food, of all species but particularly so for fish, remains a critical and substantial component of the diet of the Chipewyan in all but the largest of the northern towns.

With the advent of the fur trade the Chipewyan assumed a middle man role between the European traders and the native peoples to the west and northwest of Chipewyan country. As long as they were able to maintain this role, trade and raiding were more important sources of wealth than was the actual production of fur for trade. The fur trade provided a variety of ways other than trapping to obtain goods, cash, and credit. Wage labor, market hunting, and transport were important as was the small market that developed for Chipewyan manufactured goods such as clothing, snowshoes, and decorative items. When the fur trade stabilized and the Chipewyan lost their middle man role, these venues remained and, since much of the aboriginal Chipewyan country is poor in fur-bearing species, were often more significant sources of income than was trapping itself. The significance of wage labor has progressively increased throughout the twentieth century. By the 1980s, income from wages was surpassing that from transfer payments from the various levels of Canadian governments. Entrepreneurship began to flourish from the late 1970s with foci on service industries, transportation, and retail activities of diverse types.

The aboriginal Chipewyan were nomadic hunters. Whatever items they needed, they manufactured for themselves. The primacy in Chipewyan culture was on knowledge: how to make what was needed from what was at hand and how to locate resources as they were needed. Chipewyan material culture focused upon functional but disposable items. Decorative and ornamented items were made for a variety of purposes but there was little accumulation of artifacts as the demands of transporting them in a highly mobile lifestyle were prohibitive. As some Chipewyan became more settled during the fur trade the demand for constant moving diminished. Material culture became a better means to express artistic inclinations as well as a way to produce trade items. Chipewyan technology expanded to meet the demands of the fur trade and has always been innovative and remarkably effective at adapting new technologies to meet the need of The People.

The Chipewyan are great travelers and journeyers. In aboriginal times families often traveled hundreds of miles a year in the course of their ordinary subsistence cycle. Single journeys of hundreds of miles were not exceptional. The aboriginal Chipewyan penchant for travel led them into substantial trade relations with all their neighbors, including even tribal enemies. During the early fur trade the Chipewyan expanded their trading activities in conjunction with raiding and warfare, especially to the west and northwest. They acted as, and jealously guarded their position as, middle men between European points of trade and neighboring tribal groups not yet in direct contact with European traders. Inter-tribal trading and raiding faded with the stabilization of the fur trade and more thorough European penetration of Northern Central Canada. Trade with Canadians remained a major component of the Chipewyan economy until the 1980s although this was being obviated by their increasing involvement in the cash/credit economy of Canada from the 1950s onward.

The aboriginal sexual division of labor was based upon a distinction of males as food producers, primarily as hunters, and females as food processors. Shamans may have been restricted to males but both genders could possess power, act as healers, and display power in other areas. The probability, based on the generations born after 1880, is that midwives were all female. Warfare seems to have been a male domain. Both genders were sufficiently competent in productive skills that individuals of either sex were able to live in isolation for substantial periods of time. Production of domestic items -- clothing, tipis, etc. -- was a female domain. With the Christianization of the Chipewyan the division of labor seems to have become -- at least in the realm of power -- more restrictive. Micro-urban life in the last half of the twentieth century has led to a relaxation of the rigidity of the sexual division of labor and, after about 1980, many females were able to become economically self-sufficient and greatly removed from the constraints of the traditional division of labor.

Aboriginal land tenure was that of an open common. The application of the concept of ownership to the land was non-existent. The People were subsistence hunters of migratory herds and moved at will in response to environmental factors (primarily the presence of caribou), aesthetic preferences for particular places and types of mocroenvironments, and the presence of kin and affines. With the Chipewyan expansion into the boreal forest, and the necessary shift to dependence upon non-migratory forest species, closer ties between specific family groups and specific tracts of land became a more effective means of ensuring subsistence. With the progress of the twentieth century and increasing governmental regulation, the registration of trap lines formalized these more specific ties between individuals (and through them their families) and specific and defined tracts of land. Areas in the north of the Chipewyan range, where pursuit of barren ground caribou still dominates subsistence, remain largely free of governmental regulation and are still treated as an open common.

Chipewyan kinship is bilateral. There is no indication of any other form of kin organization from the time of contact onwards. Mortality has always been high while food resources are erratic and often scarce. The Chipewyan have dealt with these circumstances by using their kinship system as a means of establishing wide-spread nets of alliance to distribute food and other resources. The core of Chipewyan kinship is the extended family linked through kinship and marriage to the kindreds of all its members. The result is restricted cognatic descent groups bounded by descent, affinality, residence, economic co-operation, friendship, and other factors that merge to create the on the ground residential units. These overlapping ties are, again in conjunction with residence, economic cooperation, political ends, and a host of other factors, the basis for the interconnectedness of regional populations.

The aboriginal and early contact terminology is unknown. Reliable, though incomplete, kin terminologies are not reported until well into the twentieth century. Local historical factors and contact with other cultures have amplified the inherent diversity of Chipewyan kinship terminology to the point that few valid statements can be made about it. Simply using cousin terminology as an example, the Chipewyan have been reported to distinguish cross-cousins from parallel-cousins, to group cousins with siblings, to distinguish cousins by age relative to the speaker, to distinguish cousins on the basis of same or opposite sex to the speaker, and to distinguish cousins from each other on the basis of the sex of the parental sibling who forms the connecting kin link.

If the affinal terminology is considered with the kin terminology, there are curious but widespread kin equations (e.g. WZ = BW = HBW = FBW = MBW = WM = HM) that give intimations of a previously existing and more systematic structuring of relations between wife-givers and wife-receivers. In the face of high adult mortality, Chipewyan kin terminology places an emphasis upon the creation of multiple kin ties as well as the use of fictive kinship and adoption to extend kin ties to the widest possible net of social relations.

Early contact marriages were arranged, sometimes involving the betrothal of young girls to grown men, with the primary concern being to place the daughter into a situation where she would be economically secure. Polygny was practiced but only by exceptionally successful men. High adult mortality rates wreaked havoc upon the longevity of marriage. Multiple marriages during the life cycle were common. Divorce was common as was spousal abuse -- by spouses of both genders -- and mechanisms for rupturing established marriages -- including wife wrestling -- existed. After Christianization, monogamy became prescriptive and formal divorce was extremely rare. Over the last three decades of the twentieth century the pattern of marriage and divorce, especially with the advent of marriages in which the partners are self-selected, have come to reflect the tends and patterns found in the rest of Canada.

The aboriginal domestic unit was a contained subsistence unit that could range in size from a single couple housed within a single tipi up to a polygynous grouping of wives, children, and dependents of a single husband housed in several tipis. Commonly, two to several domestic units camped together. The domestic units within a single camp were interconnected by kinship and marriage. Subsistence and economic goods moved between the domestic units in such a complex series of interchanges that it is extremely difficult to distinguish the component domestic units. The literature tends to report these camps as unitary bodies rather than as separable aggregations of domestic units. With micro-urbanization the domestic unit has tended to correspond to the household as measured by a single dwelling.

Aboriginal and early patterns of inheritance are unknown. The Chipewyan generally place little intrinsic value on possessions but place a high value on the exchange of objects as a means of creating or reaffirming individual relationships. The Chipewyan are not fond of the possessions of the dead. With the advent of western technology, high value items and irreplaceable tools were probably dispersed before death. After death, items of lesser value were most likely abandoned. The pattern of inheritance of goods in response to the changes at the end of the twentieth century is still an emerging phenomenon so variable as to escape systematic characterization. Now that life is more settled, the patterns that emerge for the inheritance of government built housing will probably be the lead element in the generation of Chipewyan patterns of inheritance for the twenty-first century.

Chipewyan culture places a high value upon individual autonomy and the individual assumption of responsibility for the course of one's life, even for children. The Chipewyan teach through stories and by example -- encouraging each individual to observe the actions and consequences of the actions of others and to learn from those observations. A great deal of Chipewyan child-rearing involves peer raising in which slightly older siblings and cousins assume responsibility for the care of the growing child.

The Chipewyan were an acephalous tribal entity bounded by language, custom, an economy, and the defense of a common homeland rather than by formal institutions or offices. Extended families were linked by kinship and affinity in conjunction with ties of friendship, trust, and the shared exploitation of resources and particular geographic locales. Leadership was vested in influential males who demonstrated competence in specific activities -- that competence a mark of supernatural power -- and occupied strategic positions within extended nets of kinship and marital alliance. Groups formed for specific tasks -- berry picking, raids, etc. -- around individuals who had the desire to lead and the requisite characteristics to draw people into association with them. This pattern was intensified during the early fur trade as opportunities for long distance trading and raiding became partial substitutes for routine subsistence activities. With the stabilization of the fur trade, leadership revolved increasingly around the possession of supernatural power as expressed in trapping, hunting, and income generating labor.

Political activities centered around established figures of demonstrated supernatural power; those proven capable of ensuring adequate supplies of caribou and other subsistence items, those capable of defending the local population from enemy raids, or healers capable of protecting during times of epidemic. The Chipewyan organized and defended their territory and its economy but did so without recourse to institutionalized offices or leaders. This acephalous pattern remains the norm for ordinary Chipewyan life even though interaction with Euro-Canada has led to the adoption of the formal structures and offices embedded in Canadian law and governmental bureaucratic practice.

Normal means of social control are through gossip and the intensive observation of each individual's behavior characteristic of small scale societies extremely dense in overlapping roles and social relationships. Internal conflicts were individual and did not lead to institutionalized mechanisms like feuds. Excessively violent or disruptive individuals may have been removed through murder in remote areas but there is no evidence of this being formalized into any kind of collective reaction.

The Chipewyan had a long history of conflict with neighboring tribes. Low scale warfare, through deliberate raids and violent accidental encounters, was a necessary aspect of maintaining a homeland free from alien occupation. The fur trade first aggravated raiding and then led to its cessation.

The Chipewyan were -- and generally are -- animists. Animals, spirits, and other animate beings existed in the realm of INKOZE simultaneously with their physical existence. Humans were part of the realm of INKOZE until birth separated them from that larger domain for the duration of their physical existence. Knowledge of INKOZE came to humans in dreams and visions given them by animals or other spirits. While the quality and quantity of human knowledge of INKOZE varied greatly from person to person, it was always lesser than that held by animals. INKOZE provided the Chipewyan with a systematic and comprehensive philosophy of causality that is both an effective and a reliable means through which human life can be organized. Prior to the arrival of the missionaries, the most effective practitioners of INKOZE were regarded as shamans. Less skilled or less powerful practitioners were regarded for their power but were less able to translate their knowledge into leadership among the people.

INKOZE established a paradigm in which more powerful animals/spirits sacrificed their physical forms for human use. This paradigm of sacrifice was compatible with the conventional Christian concept of the sacrifice of the God and allowed an easy integration of Christianity into existing religious belief. Most Chipewyan are now both Christian and animist although public recognition of those who possess significant amounts of INKOZE is a troublesome issue.

Traditional Chipewyan life, at least through the mid-nineteenth century, centered on shamans as healers, sorcerers, finders of game, and protectors from physical and spiritual enemies. Female mid-wives functioned, largely within each practitioner's kin group, until the middle of the twentieth century. Christianization altered the role of native religious practitioner's largely by driving them underground.

Aboriginal and early contact religious life is unknown. Shamans gave public performances either in the open or hidden in small (shaking) tents. The Chipewyan are not a people given to public ritual or ceremonial performance and there is little or no indication of public ceremonial performance. The social context for secular ceremonial performances (e.g. the Tea Dance or the guessing game) are fragmentary and poorly known. The Chipewyan have taken to religious ceremonial following Christianization and engage in secular ceremonial around events like Treaty Day. A number of western practices, such as the wedding dance and banquet, have been adopted although the increasing size of Chipewyan villages is making these increasingly family rather than community activities.

The arts were never a stand alone category in Chipewyan culture but were integrated into other aspects of Chipewyan life. Drama was -- if present -- poorly developed but oral performances -- myth, story telling, singing -- were well developed. Material expression of the arts was more highly developed among females than among males, especially in the decoration of functional objects, clothing, and tipis. With micro-urbanization has come a flourishing of the arts in Chipewyan culture. Music has grown in breadth and depth and a number of the bands that have been formed have achieved semi-professional status. Males have entered the practice of the arts in unprecedented numbers and both commercial and private production now includes painting and the creation of commercial, decorative, and religious objects.

Knowledge of INKOZE was integral to Chipewyan healing and medicine. Practical knowledge of healing gained through observation and stories was combined with dream revealed knowledge about the cure for particular cases of illnesses or injury. The medicine revealed in these dreams was based largely on plants but included other organic materials and minerals. Through time, the Chipewyan experimented with an immense quantity of materials for curing as well as a wide variety of combinations of the medical materials revealed in dreams. Individuals made careful observations both of the results of their attempts to cure and of the context in which each cure was attempted. Individually each healer developed throughout their life span a practical body of material and supernatural knowledge; collectively, at least a part of the experience of each healer to be passed into the public domain. Some, particularly plant-based, cures were so successful that they escaped any tie to the supernatural and became simple technology. Practical treatments for ordinary injuries and illnesses were present but little is known of their specific natures. Most of this cumulative body of knowledge has now been lost and the remainder is fading quickly.

Conceptualization of death, spiritual life, and the afterlife are poorly understood or little known for the contact Chipewyan. Death was often thought to result from sorcery or other supernatural agency. The Chipewyan believe in reincarnation (although what reincarnates is not a "soul" in the Western sense) and conceptualize the spirit as an aspect of INKOZE. The "soul" is not a single entity as the Chipewyan believe in ghosts that remain earthbound and that aspects of the spirit can separate from the self before death to visit places that were significant in each person's life. The dead retain a recognizable identity as they may visit the living in dreams or visions. The Christian concept of the soul has been added onto traditional beliefs about the spiritual construction of the person without displacing them.

Documents referred to in this section are included in the eHRAF collection and are referenced by author, date of publication, and eHRAF document number.

The Chipewyan file consists of 58 English language documents, composed in large part of a series of community studies. These studies, when taken together with the more general texts in the file, provide the reader with a fairly complete picture of Chipewyan ethnology ranging in time from the prehistoric period to the 1990s. The principal communities and regional areas studied in the file are Snowdrift, the Great Slave Lake area, Elk River and upper Thelon River in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut; Wollaston Lake, Stony Rapids, Black Lake, Patuanak, Isle a la Crosse, Knee Lake, and Reindeer Lake in Saskatchewan; Fort Chipewyan in Alberta; and Churchill in Manitoba. Major emphasis in the file is on the three communities of Patuanak (studied by Jarvenpa and Brumbach), Black Lake (studied by Sharp), and Snowdrift (by VanStone). Other documents deal with general Chipewyan ethnography and with the other communities and regions listed above -- e.g., the Wollaston Lake region (Irimoto, 1981, no. 4), the Isle a la Crosse region (Jarvenpa, 1984, no. 45), the Great Slave Lake region (Helm, 1993, no. 24; D.M. Smith, 1990, 1998, 1992, nos. 59, 33, 31); etc. There are five major works in this file which provide a comprehensive survey of Chipewyan ethnology. These are: J.G.E. Smith (1981, no. 1), VanStone (1961, no. 2), Birket-Smith (1930, no. 17), Hearne (1958, no. 39), and D.M. Smith (1982, no. 57). The two studies by J.G.E. Smith (1981, no. 1) and D.M. Smilth (1982, no. 57), are reconstructive ethnographies, using data from the eighteenth century to re-create traditional Chipewyan culture. These documents provide information on the Chipewyan language, the environment, territory occupied, the history of Indian-white contacts, and the effects of these contacts on the native culture. Although the wide range of ethnographic information presented in the VanStone document pertains primarily to the village of Snowdrift, it is equally applicable to other Chipewyan groups in the area. This work contains a great deal of information on the annual cycle, subsistence activities, trade, employment, and government assistance programs.

Birket-Smith's monograph is a "classic" study of Chipewyan ethnography relevant through the first quarter of the twentieth century. This document places heavy emphasis on material culture but also contains data on the subsistence economy, settlement patterns, geography, social organization, amusements, religious beliefs, mythology, and the cultural position of the Chipewyan in relationship to other ethnic groups. Hearne's study of the Chipewyans is of particular historical significance because it represents one of the earliest accounts of Chipewyan-European contacts. The author was an astute observer and recorder of Chipewyan culture during his lengthy journeys through Manitoba, what is now Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories of Canada during the eighteenth century. His notes on the various Chipewyan groups that he met in his travels represent one of the earliest accounts of traditional native American culture and society.

For more detailed information on the content of the individual works in this file, see the abstracts in the citations preceding each document.

This culture summary was written by Henry S. Sharp in December 1999. The synopsis and indexing notes were written by John Beierle in January 2000. The Human Relations Area Files also wishes to acknowledge with thanks the suggestions offered by Henry S. Sharp in the selection of additional bibliographical items for this file.

• camp -- a temporary aggregation of people at the same location; theoretically an aggregation of hunting units -- categories 596, 621

• domestic unit -- an elementary family -- category 594

• Hudson Bay Company -- categories 443, 366, 439

• hunting unit -- siblings, their parents, and their spouses and children -- category 596

• INKOZE -- supernatural knowledge as well as power -- category 771 as causality; category 778 as power

• medicine fight -- category 754

• minimal hunting unit -- a hunting unit which may correspond to a domestic unit which is typically but not always composed of an elementary family -- category 594

• non-treaty Indians -- generally Metis -- category 563

• Northern Cooperative Trading Service -- category 474

• sasquatch (or Bigfoot) -- category 776

• SILOT'INE -- bilateral kindred -- category 612

• sub-chiefs -- category 624

• treaty day -- categories 648, 527

Gillespie, B. C. Territorial Expansion of the Chipewyan in the 18th Century. Proceedings: Northern Athapaskan Conference, 1971 (1). A. M. Clark, ed. National Museum Of Man, Mercury Series. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper No. 27, 350-388. Ottawa: National Museums Of Canada, 1975.

Gillespie, B. C. Changes in Territory and Technology of the Chipewyan. Arctic Anthropology 13 (1), 1976: 6-11.

Hearne, S. Journey From Prince Of Wales Fort In Hudson's Bay To The Northern Ocean. Edmonton: M. G. Hurtig, Ltd., 1971.

Helm, J. Always With Them Either A feast Or A Famine: Living Off the Land With Chipewyan Indians, 1791 - 1792. Arctic Anthropology 30(2), 1993: 46-60.

Sharp, H. S. Inverted Sacrifice. In: Circumpolar Religion And Ecology: An Anthropology of the North. Eds. Irimoto, T. & Yamada, T. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1993: 253-271.