ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a story of an archive-in-the-making. The treaty archive helped to frame a new Dene political consciousness. Central to this archive was the testimony of Dene elders who were present at treaty signings and were asked to remember the promises made to their communities during those events. On 3 April 1973, a young Dene chief, Francois Paulette, along with 15 others, applied to lodge a caveat under the Land Titles Act 1970 in order to protect their communities' interests to 400,000 square miles of land that a proposed oil and gas pipeline would cross. The Caveat case that the Dene leaders pursued in 1973 was therefore not a singular event. In the late 1960s and 1970s, as politics in the north heated up, a number of individuals and organisations began to carry out research into Dene history particularly about land rights and treaties. Dene leaders clearly and consciously asserted the political goals of achieving a recognisably distinct peoplehood.
