Traditionally, the Dogrib fished and hunted, subsisting chiefly on barren-ground caribou, which were trapped or speared.
The Dogrib eventually massacred many Yellowknife in raids in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The Dogrib remained relatively isolated until the mid-20th century, when improved transportation and communication facilities brought them into greater contact with other parts of Canada.
American Indians (including Athabaskan-speaking Slave and Dogrib and some Algonquian-speaking Cree) and Métis (descendants of people of mixed Indian and European ancestry) constitute a large portion of the area's population.
Dogrib descendants numbered more than 3,000 in the early 21st century.
The name Dogrib is an English adaptation of their own name, Thlingchadinne, or Dog-Flank People, referring to their fabled descent from a supernatural dog-man.
The chief enemies of the Dogrib were the Cree, Chipewyan, and Yellowknife.
The languages spoken in the interior of Alaska and northwestern Canada include those of the Carrier, Dene Sųɬiné (formerly Chipewyan), Dogrib, and Slave peoples.
The virtual destruction of the tribe came in the late 18th and early 19th centuries at the hands of the Dogrib, however, who were retaliating for earlier raids and harassments.
Dogrib, self-name Thlingchadinne, Tlicho, or Doné, a group of Athabaskan-speaking North American First Nations (Indian) people inhabiting the forested and barren-ground areas between the Great Bear and Great Slave lakes in the Northwest Territories, Canada.
