ABSTRACT
The focus on social relations and social values in this chapter reveals the historical significance of kinship in the lives of a northern people: it examines how kin ties have promoted the survival of the Colville band in the face of ecological disasters and social change, and it explores how the Hare’s concern with reciprocity, restraint, and adaptability have bound them into a community possessed of its own consistencies and contradictions. A crucial dimension of Colville Lake’s life is the complex, bilateral network of social ties that links its native people. The Hare and their neighbors have now experienced over 200 years of contact with Euro-Canadian culture. There are marked disparities in the extent to which attitudes and behavior are standardized for close and distant relatives, or for people connected by marriage. The nature of aboriginal and post-contact social organization among the Northern Athabascans has been a matter of some controversy.
