Traditional aboriginal caribou-hunting peoples in northern Canada moved seasonally on the land until the late 1950s and this relationship is thousands of years old (Gordon 1996). Archaeological evidence in the Yukon shows that the relationship between humans and caribou in some parts of the Canadian North is up to 25 000 years old (Cinq-Mars 2001). The distribution of many Dene peoples anticipated the changing migratory movements of the barren ground caribou, especially before settlement. A recent economic valuation of just two of these barren ground herds (the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq herds) found that the domestic hunt of the more than 13 000 aboriginal peoples living on the ranges of these herds has an equivalent economic value of [...]
