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Purpose – Using the example of the Dene Games competition, this chapter examines the connections between contemporary sports and the games of the Dene (Athapaskan), a group of indigenous cultures inhabiting the subarctic regions of the Canadian Northwest Territories.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is based on participant-observation and individual interviews conducted during attendance at the Dene Games gatherings over the course of several years.

Findings – I argue that the indigenous Dene Games gathering, where traditional games are organised as a contemporary sports competition, opens a space for the reconstitution of indigenous physical activity practices. The tensions that occur when participation in indigenous games articulates to the practical logic of competitive sports, identify the Dene Games as a space of active cultural contestation.

Originality/value – The chapter examines the articulation of historically disparate social practises. It views the hysteretic effects of a pre-existing indigenous physical activity practice as a point of reference for resistance to the normative constraints emanating from the organisational modality of contemporary sports, without offering up an explanation that relies on voluntaristic assumptions of agency. It adopts this perspective in order to avoid grasping the indigenous practice as the operationalised object of its own intervention, a ‘museum piece’.

Despite widespread interest in the resources and people of Alaska, few libraries outside of the state maintain extensive collections on these subjects. In this article, David A. Hales reviews a multifarious sample of informative materials.

Beneath Canada's Northwest Territories lies a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Will a $16 billion gas‐pipeline bring prosperity or gloom? Will this bring employment opportunities for local people or will more qualified people be brought in from southern communities? The purpose of this paper is to give an account of what Dene residents of the Sahtu Region have to say about oil and gas development.

Starting in 2005, in‐depth interviews with people across the Sahtu Region are conducted.

Respondents recognise the short‐term advantages of building a pipeline, but they are concerned about the long‐term impact on the environment that currently ensures their livelihood.

This study begs for a longitudinal follow‐up.

Policy‐makers may benefit from knowing the feelings of their constituents.

This timely study reveals long‐term environmental and social impacts of short‐term development. This is especially important in a region where people believe that they have an obligation to the land upon which they live.

In this chapter, the author explores the conditions of sexualised, gendered violence against Indigenous women and girls. The author asks how various responses to this violence have shaped the present-day legal personhood of Indigenous women and girls from two perspectives: an Indigenous legal perspective and a Canadian legal perspective. To avoid the troublesome pan-Indigenous generalisations of legal personhood, the author focusses on one Indigenous society, the Gitxsan people from northwest British Columbia and their legal order and laws.² The author examines several specific questions about how the Gitxsan legal tradition historically defined the legal personhood of Gitxsan women and girls, and how this has changed with colonisation. The author takes up specific aspects of the operation and structure of Gitxsan law and legal institutions and analyse the ways that they are gendered.

This article describes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s work in providing grants to public libraries in low‐income communities above the 60th parallel in Canada. Through its Canadian Partnership program, the foundation granted $18.2 million to 1,466 libraries throughout the country, funding the purchase of over 4,000 computers, 27 training labs, and 16 laptop training labs. The area described in the article includes some of Canada’s most remote regions and required unique efforts to bring Internet access and information technology to low‐income communities in the territories of the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The computers helped many residents with literacy skills, increased job opportunities, and provided a host of other advantages. The foundation’s experience proved that the long‐range benefits to communities are only truly seen when such initiatives are community‐driven.