Gwich'in

The Gwich'in, long known as Kutchin or Loucheux and calling themselves Dinjii Zhuu, are an Athabaskan people of the far northwest, spread across the tundra north of the Arctic Circle from north-eastern Alaska through the northern Yukon to the lower Mackenzie River.

Their many bands, among them the Vuntut, Teetlit and Gwichyaa, share three exogamous clans, the Nantsaii, Chits'yaa and Tenjeraatsaii, and their place names trace their occupation back to the early Holocene, roughly 8000 years ago.

Life turned on the great caribou herds, above all the Porcupine herd, together with river salmon, and the Gwich'in became celebrated makers of snowshoes, birchbark canoes and caribou-skin clothing decorated with porcupine quill. Their history and laws were carried in oral trickster and animal tales, while eastern and western dialects divided roughly along the Alaska-Canada border.