In traditional times, the rewards of life on the land were hard won. People travelled great distances to survive, carrying their livelihoods with them as they hunted, and shaping their lives to the ways of the animals on which they depended. They fashioned all they needed—weapons, cooking utensils, even boats – from stone, wood and the many different parts of caribou and other animals. Home was where the animals were—the winter hunt camps, the summer fish camps.
For the Tetlit Gwich'in, the Peel was the centre of their world. They called it Teetl'itnjik, meaning "along the head of the waters." Tetlit Gwich'in means "people who live at the head of the waters." They were mountain people, hunting caribou throughout the valleys of the Richardson and Ogilvie mountains for most of the year. In summer, they descended to the Peel River and fished.
The Nacho Nyak Dun are "big river people," and live on the banks of the Stewart River in Mayo, Yukon, south of the Wernecke Mountains. They are the most northern of the Yukon's Tutchone First Nations, whose lives are oriented mainly towards the Yukon River basin, which runs roughly through the middle of Tutchone traditional territory.
However, the Peel watershed has always been important to the Nacho Nyak Dun as well. They would climb into the Wernecke and Ogilvie mountains to snare Dall sheep, as its meat was a special delicacy, and the supple soft skins were used for making children's clothing. When barren-ground caribou wintered in the Peel watershed, the word would spread and they travelled over the mountains to hunt them. In more recent times, Nacho Nyak Dun also trapped and prospected in the Peel watershed.
Other aboriginal people also travelled the mountains and valleys of this vast region during their yearly cycles. When they crossed paths, they might camp together and trade, or, in earlier times, go their separate ways, uneasy about people they did not know well. In later days they would mix, mingle, marry and travel huge distances to visit far-flung relatives. - Sarah Locke, in Wild Rivers of the Yukon's Peel Watershed, 2008