Abstract
The Porcupine caribou herd is the focus of multiple stakeholder groups, all of which have different ways of understanding and valuing caribou. This thesis focuses on the knowledge and perspectives that the Teetł‟it Gwich‟in of Teetł‟it Zheh (Fort McPherson, NWT) bring to Porcupine caribou co-management. This paper-based thesis has two major aims: first, to explore how the Teetł‟it Gwich‟in construct knowledge about caribou; and second, to explore Teetł‟it Gwich‟in rules-in-use with respect to caribou hunting. A comparison is made between Gwich‟in methods of knowledge construction and rules-in-use with those of the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT), and the Porcupine Caribou Management Board (PCMB), with the intent of understanding difficulties in co-management. The thesis offers the concept of the Gwich‟in Knowledge Complex, a knowledge complex created from multiple sources of information about caribou, including scientific information (mainly from the PCMB and the GNWT) as well as Traditional Knowledge.