The Athabaskan Nation in Northern Canada 

Danilo Anton

Some time ago I had the opportunity to work on an environmental impact assessment of a uranium mine in Northern Canada. 
It was near Wollaston Lake in the northe of Saskatchewan province. 
It is on the edge of the tundra with the boreal forest. There are very few people, the density is very low (perhaps less than 1 per km2).
It is inhabited by natives of the Dene nation. The local Dene communities live in 2 towns and have (according to the last census) 1,300 inhabitants in total. Wollaston Lake is a large lake (2,500 km2) with its own waves but hardly used by the Dene who live along its banks.

About Dene Nation
In the province of Saskatchewan there are 120,000 natives belonging to the Algonquian and Athabaskan ethnic groups. Other 120,000 live in Manitoba, Alberta, Northwest Territories and Alaska. The Ahtabaskan constitute about half. Among them there are approximately 50,000 Denes (no exact figures are available).

A reference to the abduction of indigenous children in Canada
Since colonial times the Dene communities were displaced from their land  and discriminated.
The Canadian government took thousands of children from their parents away from their families to exclude them from traditional indigenous life,
These children were forced to pray to other gods and to forget their language and culture. These policies lasted from 1876 to 1996. Several thousand Dene children were victims of this genocidal process.

Nowadays
Today things have begun to change. Assimilation schools were closed. The Dene nation is organized and active, has its own website, it has achieved that Athabaska-dene languages were considered official languages in the Northwest Territories.

The fight is not over. Actually it is just beginning. At some point in the future Dene will be able to recover and enrich their own culture, together with the rest of the Athabaskan groups finally until they get the full recognition of their rights and dignity.