Dane-zaa Erotic

The Dane-zaa have hunted the Peace River country for as far back as their stories go. Their name for themselves is usually translated as real people. Outsiders called them the Beaver Indians, after the animal the fur trade was built on, and that label still clings to the language and to some band names. What makes them a people is less a boundary on a map than a way of knowing the land. Small family groups moved with the seasons through boreal forest and open parkland on both sides of the line that now divides British Columbia and Alberta, following moose, caribou and, in older days, wood bison.

Their language belongs to the Northern Athabaskan branch of the Na-Dene family. It is closely related to Sekani, and the Tsuut'ina of southern Alberta are generally thought to have split off from Dane-zaa ancestors. Today most fluent speakers are elders. Communities such as Doig River have worked hard to record songs, place names and stories while the people who carry them are still here to tell them.

The fur trade reshaped the region quickly. Cree bands armed through the trade pushed west in the 1700s, and the fighting drove Dane-zaa groups upriver until the two sides made peace. Tradition credits that settlement with giving the Peace River its English name. Dane-zaa bands entered Treaty 8 in 1899 and 1900. The twentieth century brought homesteaders, highways, oil and gas wells and hydroelectric dams, and in 1945 the original Fort St. John reserve was surrendered. In 2021 the Blueberry River First Nations won a landmark British Columbia court ruling: the sheer build-up of industrial development on their territory had breached their treaty rights.

The Dreamers

The most distinctive thread in Dane-zaa life is the Dreamer tradition. Prophets known as dreamers were said to travel to heaven in their sleep and bring back songs that show the living the trail to follow after death. Those songs are still sung at drum dances, where people dance in a circle to the singers' drums. Charlie Yahey, the last widely recognized dreamer, died in 1976, and song keepers have carried the songs on since. Alongside this runs an older idea of personal power. A child sent alone into the bush might receive a lifelong helper from an animal, and people usually keep that relationship private. Christian missions have worked in the region since the nineteenth century, and many families hold both traditions at once.