The Shúhtagoťine Cultural Landscape Project: Preserving the Archaeological Record of Specialized Hunting Sites in the Mackenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories

Presentation Type: 
Oral (live)
Author(s): 
Glen MacKay - Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre
Key Word(s): 
Caribou Fences
Alpine Ice Patches
Shúhtagoťine
Mackenzie Mountains

The Shúhtagoťine Cultural Landscape Project (SCLP) promotes the conservation of cultural values in the Shúhtagoťine (Mountain Dene) homeland through the restoration of Indigenous geographical place names and archaeological research on cultural places at risk of impact from climate change. This paper will describe our efforts to create detailed records of historic wood caribou fences at risk of destruction from wildfires using unmanned aerial vehicles and other methods, as well as our continued efforts to monitor rapidly melting alpine ice patches. These specialized hunting sites are physical manifestations of a vast amount of Shúhtagoťine traditional ecological knowledge about the movements and behavior of mountain caribou and other animals, which – in concert with place names and other contextual data – are illuminating patterns of Shúhtagoťine land and resource use in the central Mackenzie Mountains in the recent and more distant past.