ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a continuing tradition of storytelling by Athapaskan women who live in the southern Yukon Territory in north-western Canada. The stories they tell show remarkable persistence and address important questions in women’s lives during a period of industrial expansion and social upheaval. Women’s accounts of their lives differentiate clearly between appropriate behaviour for men and for women, even though environmental constraints and domestic necessity meant that, when necessary, members of either sex could do tasks normally assigned to the other. Strict gender differences began at puberty when girls were secluded for several months and received intensive instruction from older kinswomen. Traditional Athapaskan narratives are powerful because they are constructions rooted in general social concerns, even though they are refracted through individual tellers by the time people hear them. Native artists and musicians in the Yukon are often men whose art requires solitary creative activity.
