Indigenous Movement, Settler Colonialism: A History of Tlicho Dene Continuity through Travel

Abstract

Abstract Since time immemorial, Indigenous Dene Peoples have traveled ancestral routes throughout what is currently northern Canada and interior Alaska. Tłįchǫ Dene have continued to cultivate an identity as travelers throughout a history of ecological change and the settler ideology of Canadian colonialism. In this article, I aim to contribute to scholarship on Tłįchǫ travel and history by focusing on an additional dimension of movement: materiality. I have previously written about Tłįchǫ ecological ontologies relating to Indigenous conceptions of personhood in a more-than-human-world. In this article I apply my understanding of Tłįchǫ ontologies to the material dimensions of movement on the land, past and present, revealing an ontological, ecological, and spiritual continuity despite—although adapted in response to—settler-colonialism and climate change.