Talking Tools

Justice Thomas Berger's inquiry into the impacts of a proposed pipeline through the Yukon and Mackenzie Valley was a landmark in Canadian aboriginal and northern history. The inquiry provided a voice for the Dene who had no say on developments in their homeland until then. This volume chronicles some of the stories heard at the Inquiry to illustrate the Dene worldview. It was though storytelling that the Dene became cognizant of their place in the world, and no longer an isolated northern tribe. The telling of their stories no only revitalized the Dene, but created a revival of grass-roots democracy across Canada. With the more recent telling of John B. Zoe's story on the cosmology of the Tlicho from the time of signing the Treaty in 1921 to the Tlicho Agreement, a long-standing tradition was being refreshed. The Journey is now part of the lexicon of Tlicho stories, adding to their oral history as a people from time immemorial.