National Network for Equitable Library Service

Etseh, Etsi and their three grandchildren have just embarked on a month long canoe trip in the Northwest Territories -- from the town of Rae to Hottah Lake. They are following the Idaa trail, a trade route that the Dogrib people have traveled for hundreds of years. Etseh and Etsi traveled the Idaa trail when they were children and as they paddle north with their grandchildren they pass along their knowledge of special sites along the way and explain how their people survived in the old days -- building birch bark canoes, fishing with willow lines and muskrat-tooth hooks, and ambushing herds of caribou. This remarkable work, based on ten years of archaeological research, documents the past and present of one of the most intact tribal cultures of North America.