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Experiences of Power among the Sekani
drinking so they could feel superior, as providers of booze and rides
into town. Third, many whites (usually not those who hung around
the reserve) in the new towns used the forest as a sporting arena for
their snowmobiles and for hunting, though not hunting in the unob-
trusive way the Sekani had practiced. The presence of these sport hunt-
ers made the bush unattractive for Sekani, who had no desire to run
into representatives of the people who, in their opinion, had ruined
their way of life. Fourth, intensive logging of the Sekani homeland
destroyed habitats for beaver and moose, disturbing Sekani habits of
displacement over the homeland. Fifth, the region was transformed
from forgotten backwater into an administrative zone that had to be
“normalized” (apologies to Foucault) by imposing a “regular” form
of government administration. This meant, at the very least, hunt-
ing and fishing regulations that further weakened Sekani desires to
hunt and trap. At the worst, it meant welfare for the “unproductive”
Sekani, most of whom chose not to work in the new economic sector
of logging. The Sekani also became the target of various government
social service agencies that needed a clientele to justify their existence.
Almost overnight, programs sprang up for everything, from teaching
bush craft to training the Sekani in the new skills they needed, it was
believed, to survive in the new politicized environment. It seemed that
McLeod Lake was quickly becoming a welfare community where few
people worked in the new economy and most ceased regularly hunt-
ing and trapping.
The result was massive discouragement. Some would call it alien-
ation, but whatever the term, the results were shocking. Alcoholism
became a major problem. Violence and tension were endemic. These
are all classic signs of a people in distress and are important to the sub-
ject at hand since they led to a cleavage between the generations and,
in particular, to a crisis in social reproduction as older people stopped
trying to impart their knowledge to the disinterested young. Between
1962 , the year work began on the dam, and 1978 (ten years after its
completion), the year I arrived in McLeod Lake, one-seventh (thirty-
five people) of the population died from violence or accidents related
to drinking. Dozens moved away seeking new lives in other Native
communities or in white towns. The community, once composed of
