ABSTRACT

This book is based upon more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork and personal experiences with the Teetł’it Gwich’in community in northern Canada. The author provides insight into Gwich’in understandings of life as well as into historical and political processes that have taken place in the North. He outlines the development of an educational approach towards conducting ethnography and writing anthropological literature, starting with the premise ‘you have to live it’. The book focuses on ways of knowing and collaboration through learning and being taught by interlocutors. Building on the work of Tim Ingold, Loovers investigates the notion of reading life - land, water and weather as well as texts – and analyses the reading of texts as acts of conversations or correspondences.

chapter

Prologue

part I|1 pages

Introduction to an educational approach

chapter 1|27 pages

Ecology, education, collaboration

chapter 2|18 pages

Trails to knowing

part II|1 pages

A sentient history

chapter 3|24 pages

A growing world

chapter 4|21 pages

McDonald’s legacy, Gwich’in literacy

chapter 5|28 pages

Governing a land of resources

part III|1 pages

Losing elders, keeping life going

chapter 6|22 pages

Education and language

chapter 7|23 pages

The healing land

part IV|1 pages

Life on the land

chapter 8|25 pages

Knowing wood

chapter 9|22 pages

Reading places and trails

chapter |9 pages

ConclusionReading life 1

chapter |3 pages

Epilogue