Abstract
Dena K’éh, the Kaska Dena language, guides brilliant and complex relations with caribou and other non-human Dena; relations that collide with foundational principles of Yukon wildlife management. Through exploring important governance articulations of Kaska Dena language and the conceptual undertones encoded within them, as well as exploring deeper meanings (re)produced in the language of dominant Yukon wildlife management, I illustrate these ideological collisions, and demonstrate how language colonization is used in the Yukon settler colonial project to facilitate it's goals. To me, anti-colonialism in Dena Kēyeh, or Kaska Dena territory, is about dismantling colonial structures of oppression, while also supporting the regeneration of relational responsibilities within Dena ethics. As I will attempt to demonstrate in the following story, resurgence of Dena language is critical and meaningful to that process