Athabascan
The Athabascan people, who call themselves "Dene," covered an area from the lower Yukon, across Alaska and Canada, to Hudson Bay. Unlike the Inupiaq, who have a single language in which they all understand, the Athabascan have many languages. In addition to the contiguous Athabascan groups across Alaska and Canada, there are Athabascan tribes in the lower 48. These include, the Apache, and the Navajo tribes in the Southwest and 13 tribes on the Pacific coast.
In tradition times, Athabascan people hunted moose, by tracking them. They could tell by the tracks when a moose was ready to stop, and when they would be catching up with it. At that point, they would walk a semi-circle and if they came across the tracks again, they would know that the moose was still walking ahead of them. They would repeat the semi-circular tracking until they crossed where the moose tracks should have been, and if there were no tracks, they would know that they had gone ahead of the moose. They would then lie and wait, knowing that the moose would continue walking in their direction. Then when the moose arrived, they could take it by surprise, and shoot it at close range with their bows and arrows.
Because they had to move around a lot, they Athabascan people did not accumulate a lot of material goods. They carries their clothing, which was made of skins, and their shelters, which was also made of skins and a few tools and utensils. They materials, such as furs, tended to deteriorate when abandoned. As a consequence, archeologists, have not been able to find many material objects from the ancient ancestors of the Athabascan people. Most archeological finds are of materials which are, at most, a few hundred years old.
Present day Athabascan people, are largely integrated into the larger Alaskan community, however, they still maintain many traditions while living side by side with non-native people.
Skin clothing is still made, but used mainly at ceremonial times. Athabascan people decorate their skin clothing with some of the finest bead work in the world. Wild flowers are a basic motif in Athabascan bead work. Their moccasins, tunics, gun cases, baby-carriers, etc. are all decorated with bead work.
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Traditionally fish were caught in traps woven from wood. The fish would swim into a small opening at the end of a cone shaped piece leading into the basket, and once inside, the fish were unable to escape.
Although they did not invent it, the Athabascan adapted and became skilled fisherman with "fish wheels." A fish wheel consists of two large baskets, each about 8x12 feet across the opening and each attached to opposite sides of an axle. Between each axle, is a paddle, which is the same width as the baskets. The fish wheel is set on a pedestal between wooden pontoons and placed in a river so that the water hits the paddles and the basket, and causes the wheel to turn. As the basket revolves around the axle, it catches fish swimming up river. The basket has a slanted chute on the edge nearest the axle, and as the fish drops into the chute as the wheel turns, it slides down the chute, out of the basket, and into a large box resting on one of the pontoons.
Although many Athabascans have adapted to "western" communities like Fairbanks, many of them continue to live in isolated villages and retain much of their old live styles. The most publicized cases are the villages of Venetie and Arctic Village, which continue to fight against the development of lands surroundings their communities. Oil companies have proposed to explore for and develop on caribou calving grounds north of Venetie and Arctic Village, and those communities have fought against such development.
They argue that development would destroy calving grounds and undermine the subsistence of those villages. There is disagreement and divisiveness in both the native and non-native communities about whether there should be oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge which includes those calving grounds.
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