This article is intended to provide a caution to those who would extrapolate aboriginal Athapaskan social organization from data available today. To that end, it indicates that there are certain theoretical problems with applying an ecologically based framework to the derivation of social organizational forms and suggests an alternative methodology based on relating forms of lineality and locality to rights to and organization of the means of production. It then suggests that such a methodology cannot be applied at present due to dearth of data, save for on-the-ground observation concerning lineality and descent among the Dene. Then, as a first step in rectifying this problem, the article lays out how these factors are organized in one Dene Community.