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island<br />
A cultural<br />
gold<br />
rush<br />
After spending more than a century<br />
in the shadow cast by the Klondike’s<br />
precious metal heyday, First Nations<br />
heritage is stepping into the limelight<br />
in the Yukon<br />
By Teresa Earle with photography by <strong>Fritz</strong> <strong>Mueller</strong><br />
42 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL Spring 2013 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL 43
I<br />
Yukon<br />
I’m hunched over a tea-coloured Klondike stream with<br />
a large metal dish in my hands, swirling grey river gravel<br />
around in a motion that, I’m told, settles gold at the bottom and<br />
washes away everything else. It turns out panning is backbreaking<br />
work, and pretty soon I roll back on my haunches to<br />
watch Bonanza Creek sluice back and forth between the valley’s<br />
rounded slopes. I picture a swarthy prospector crouched by this<br />
birch-lined stream, dreaming of the mother lode and slowly<br />
filling a beaded moose-hide poke tied to his belt. I can understand<br />
the allure, but it’s not sexy work. After an hour of staring<br />
at a muddy pan and several false alarms, my twin five-year-old<br />
daughters and I eventually isolate a golden fleck and stash it in<br />
a glass vial. On our way back to the car, the girls charm a tour<br />
bus driver who pulls his own vial from his breast pocket and<br />
shakes some glittering gold flakes onto our meagre find. If only<br />
striking it rich were so easy.<br />
We’re just upstream from Discovery Claim, a 15-minute<br />
drive south of Dawson, Y.T., where either a Tagish First Nation<br />
man named Keish (better known as Skookum Jim) or one of<br />
his three companions found gold lying between flaky slabs<br />
of rock, like “cheese in a sandwich,” in August 1896. News of<br />
the strike sparked the famous Klondike gold rush that lured<br />
thousands of fortune seekers and turned tiny Dawson into<br />
a northern metropolis surrounded by tent encampments.<br />
Writers such as Jack London, Pierre Berton and Charlotte Gray<br />
have explored the drama that unfolded during that era, but<br />
these “gold fever!”-type stories of prospectors, lawmakers,<br />
lawbreakers and rowdy saloons have tended to overshadow the<br />
rich history and traditions of the Yukon’s First Nations.<br />
But that’s changing. Since the late 1990s, when the Yukon<br />
celebrated a series of centennials, including the big Klondike<br />
strike, the RCMP’s presence in the territory and entry into<br />
map: chris brackley/canadian geographic; map sources: 2005 North American Land Cover, Produced by NRCan/CCRS, USGS and INEGI,<br />
CONABIO and CONAFOR<br />
Drumming performances (previous pages) and carving demonstrations (above) are all part of the Adäka Cultural Festival in Whitehorse,<br />
where paddlers helped mark last year’s grand opening of the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre with a ceremonial canoe journey (opposite).<br />
Confederation, First Nations people have been pulling their<br />
stories out from the shadow of the gold rush and presenting<br />
their heritage with a burst of pride. Five cultural centres have<br />
opened across the territory in the last decade, and the First<br />
Nations art and performance scene has exploded. My daughters<br />
are even learning how to speak Southern Tutchone at their<br />
Whitehorse school. All of which explains why we have just<br />
spent a week cruising the Klondike Highway from Carcross<br />
to Dawson in an RV: gold panning notwithstanding, we want to<br />
witness the revival of these traditions ourselves.<br />
‘Gold fever!’-type stories<br />
of prospectors, lawmakers,<br />
lawbreakers and rowdy saloons<br />
have tended to overshadow<br />
the rich history and traditions<br />
of the Yukon’s First Nations.<br />
But that’s changing.<br />
U.S.A.<br />
CANADA<br />
Tombstone<br />
Tr'ochëk National<br />
Historic Site 5<br />
9 Dawson<br />
Yukon<br />
River<br />
Dänojà Zho<br />
Cultural Centre Discovery<br />
Claim<br />
National<br />
Historic Site<br />
Stewart Crossing<br />
Pelly<br />
Crossing<br />
Big Jonathan House<br />
Beaver Creek<br />
S T .<br />
ite<br />
Enlarged<br />
area<br />
Haines<br />
KLUANE Junction<br />
NATIONAL PARK<br />
Y.T.<br />
River<br />
W h<br />
1<br />
E L I A S<br />
B.C.<br />
YUKON<br />
R I VER<br />
Nunavut<br />
N.W.T.<br />
Alta.<br />
Klond<br />
Carmacks<br />
Tagé Cho Hudän<br />
Interpretive Centre<br />
M O U N<br />
T A I N S<br />
ike River<br />
K L<br />
W E R N E C K E<br />
O<br />
N<br />
D<br />
K E<br />
Y U K O N<br />
2<br />
H I G H<br />
Keno Hill<br />
W A Y<br />
Fox Lake<br />
Da Kų<br />
(Our House)<br />
Kwanlin Dün<br />
Cultural Centre<br />
1<br />
WHITEHORSE<br />
3<br />
11<br />
BRITISH<br />
Carcross<br />
ALASKA<br />
M O U N T A<br />
Bennett<br />
Skagway<br />
I N S<br />
Cultural Centre<br />
White Pass &<br />
Yukon Route<br />
Railroad<br />
Chilkoot Trail<br />
2<br />
4<br />
P E L L Y M O U N T A I N S<br />
8<br />
7<br />
1<br />
6<br />
COLUMBIA<br />
COAST MOUNTAINS<br />
44 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL Spring 2013<br />
U.S.A.<br />
CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL 45
Yukon<br />
When not watching paddlewheelers on<br />
the Yukon River (below), visitors can drop<br />
into Dawson’s Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre<br />
(this image), the exterior of which is<br />
meant to suggest salmon drying racks.<br />
Keith Wolfe-Smarch grins and points to a book lying<br />
open to an archival photo of Skookum Jim’s nephew, Patsy<br />
Henderson, who was with his uncle when he struck it rich,<br />
dressed in beaded and fringed moose hide regalia and standing<br />
tall for the camera. “That’s what I’m doing,” he says. “I’m<br />
welcoming visitors to Carcross and sharing my culture.”<br />
Wolfe-Smarch is a renowned Tagish-Tlingit master carver<br />
who spends most of his days in the new riverfront Carcross/<br />
Tagish First Nation carving studio, which isn’t far from where<br />
Henderson, trading on his gold rush celebrity, used to greet<br />
visitors arriving on the White Pass & Yukon Route trains,<br />
which chugged over the mountain pass, until his death in 1966<br />
at age 87. Here, Wolfe-Smarch mentors young carvers, creates<br />
works of art that are being integrated into local buildings and<br />
speaks passionately about his culture with anyone who happens<br />
to wander in. And while Carcross may have fresh tourist<br />
infrastructure — the grand post-and-beam pavilion next to the<br />
First Nation office at the edge of Nares Lake, for instance, or<br />
the new visitor centre where tour buses line up to disgorge<br />
visitors keen on seeing a replica of Skookum Jim’s house — the<br />
carving studio is the crucible, the place where the community’s<br />
cultural revival is being forged.<br />
We explore the work space as Wolfe-Smarch and fellow<br />
carver D. J. (Dwayne) Johnson tell us they’ve just returned from<br />
the Chilkoot Trail, where they mounted a carved facade on<br />
a Parks Canada building at Bennett, B.C., the abandoned settlement<br />
at the trail’s north end. Wolfe-Smarch shows us a scarlet<br />
headdress emblem he’s secretly carving for the new chief,<br />
Danny Cresswell. My daughter asks why it’s loosely wrapped<br />
in a handkerchief; it turns out the chief often wanders over to<br />
visit the carvers, so Wolfe-Smarch is always ready to hide the<br />
work-in-progress.<br />
I ask Wolfe-Smarch about the vivid colours on the totems<br />
and carvings around the studio. “Red represents life, black<br />
stands for protection, white is peace and blue is decorative but<br />
also represents wealth,” he explains, pointing outside where a<br />
muralist is painting a red, black, white and blue Wolfe-Smarch<br />
design onto the gable wall of the new café, Caribou Coffee,<br />
which is housed in the replica of Skookum Jim’s house.<br />
Wolfe-Smarch also happens to be a descendant of Skookum<br />
Jim. They are both of the Daklaweidi clan — one of six matrilineal<br />
clans represented by beaver, raven, crow, frog, wolf and killer<br />
whale — and the clan’s giant orca crest taking shape on the coffee<br />
46 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL Spring 2013
yukon<br />
Carvings (above) are displayed at<br />
the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre in<br />
Whitehorse, where performers such as<br />
the Dakhká Khwáan Dancers (left) and<br />
Cherish Clarke (below) perform during<br />
the Adäka Cultural Festival.<br />
A few days later, the questions are deepening.<br />
I grasp for the words to explain concepts<br />
like ancestor, tradition and First Nation, but<br />
our journey proves that sometimes it’s better<br />
to show than tell.<br />
Guide Tish Lindgren shows<br />
off a wolf pelt (this image)<br />
at the Dänojà Zho Cultural<br />
Centre in Dawson.<br />
48 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL Spring 2013
Yukon<br />
Master carver Keith Wolfe-Smarch<br />
puts down his tools and takes a<br />
moment’s rest in the Carcross/<br />
Tagish First Nation carving studio,<br />
where he mentors the next generation<br />
of craftspeople, creates his<br />
own works of art and shares his<br />
culture with visitors.<br />
shop wall will also be framed by killer whale totems. It seems odd<br />
to celebrate this icon of the ocean from 200 kilometres inland,<br />
but Wolfe-Smarch reminds me of the Tagish connection to the<br />
Tlingit, who make their home largely on the western side of the<br />
Coast Mountains, in southeast Alaska. Indeed, Skookum Jim was<br />
a legendary packer and guide whose strength and familial connections<br />
on both sides of that range kept him employed on these<br />
trading trails until, in 1896, he journeyed down the Yukon River<br />
and became part of gold rush history.<br />
Under the midday summer solstice sun, we squint<br />
to see the intricate beaded regalia worn in a procession of<br />
a hundred drummers and revellers winding along the riverside<br />
trail in downtown Whitehorse. We’ve arrived from Carcross<br />
on Aboriginal Day, during the grand opening of the Kwanlin<br />
Dün Cultural Centre. After decades of being driven from the<br />
waterfront, the Kwanlin Dün First Nation is celebrating its<br />
return to the river.<br />
When 19th-century travellers shot — or walked around —<br />
the boiling White Horse rapids, they likely regrouped near<br />
seasonal fish camps lining the river beneath clay cliffs. For<br />
generations, First Nations families gathered here to catch<br />
chinook salmon, until the gold rush turned it into a tent city<br />
and eventually into Whitehorse, displacing the riverfront<br />
people. Today, modern longhouses at the river’s edge host<br />
cultural events and the city library.<br />
The next day we’re back for more, this time for the Adäka<br />
Cultural Festival, a smorgasbord of the Yukon’s First Nation<br />
culture. Our girls are riveted by anything involving drums and<br />
Carcross has fresh tourist infrastructure<br />
— the new visitor centre where<br />
tour buses line up to disgorge visitors<br />
keen on seeing a replica of Skookum<br />
Jim’s house, for instance — but the<br />
carving studio is the crucible, the<br />
place where the community’s cultural<br />
revival is being forged.<br />
dancing. The rhythmic chants and spectacular adornments lead<br />
to endless questions: What are the furs and feathers? How do<br />
they make those drums and masks? What does that song mean?<br />
By the time we’re Dawson-bound in the RV a few days later,<br />
the questions are deepening, and this cultural adventure is<br />
prompting some rich conversation. I grasp for the words to<br />
explain concepts like ancestor, tradition and First Nation, but<br />
our journey proves that sometimes it’s better to show than tell.<br />
The aluminum hull pounds into the swollen Yukon<br />
River, sending a bracing spray into our faces. A few minutes<br />
50 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL Spring 2013
Yukon<br />
A muralist paints a Keith Wolfe-Smarch<br />
design on a replica of Skookum Jim’s<br />
house in Carcross (left). Gwich’in elder<br />
Maria Sawrenko (below) enjoys the fun at<br />
the Adäka Cultural Festival in Whitehorse.<br />
after pulling away from the dyke that fronts Dawson, we cut<br />
across the current above the confluence with the Klondike<br />
River. The skiff nudges into the mud at a rudimentary fish<br />
camp on a quiet, forested point of land between the Klondike<br />
and Yukon rivers known as Tr’ochëk, where we jump ashore<br />
and meet our Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation hosts.<br />
“It was rich spawning ground,” says traditional knowledge<br />
specialist Georgette McLeod, whose ancestors congregated here<br />
on the flats to fish each summer, hanging salmon on large racks<br />
to dry in the breeze. “They caught 40-kilogram salmon here.<br />
Then 30,000 people descended and it changed overnight.”<br />
As we follow a trail around Tr’ochëk National Historic Site,<br />
interpreter Kylie Van Every shows us evidence of thousands<br />
of years of salmon middens and describes the fishing culture<br />
of her ancestors. The site is dense and overgrown, and most<br />
visible artifacts are barely a century old: an abandoned ship’s<br />
boiler, a rusting licence plate, some pots. The Klondike gold<br />
rush was a hiccup in time, but its impacts — disease, displacement,<br />
culture loss — were unimaginable for the people who<br />
lived here. I look past the tangle of cottonwoods and wildflowers<br />
and try to picture the sawmill, railway, brewery and red light<br />
district that sprang up on this site, once known as Lousetown.<br />
Its transformation from a peaceful fishing ground to a shantytown<br />
hell must have been swift and tragic.<br />
By wrapping together ancient and recent history, Tr’ochëk<br />
gives me a new perspective on the false-fronted town across the<br />
water. “We’re seeing a shift in visitor interest from Klondike gold<br />
to cultural revival,” says Tr’ochëk site coordinator Alex Brook.<br />
“Everyone used to come for the gold rush, but that’s changing.<br />
My kids don’t even know much about Robert Service,<br />
and their school in Dawson is named after him.”<br />
Back in Dawson, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in guide Tish<br />
Lindgren leads us through the First Nation’s Dänojà<br />
Zho Cultural Centre. The exhibits and video draw<br />
us in, especially the hands-on displays — we erupt<br />
in high-fives when one of our daughters readily<br />
identifies a wolverine pelt. “Good Yukon kid,”<br />
Lindgren says approvingly. She invites us to share<br />
tea brewed from rose hips, rose petals and spruce tips, and<br />
outside our girls meet her same-aged son who is named after<br />
his great-great-grandfather, Chief Isaac. “First Nations people<br />
have their own story,” she reminds us as we say good-bye.<br />
“Mähsi — thank you for coming.”<br />
Teresa Earle (www.earle.ca) has written for Explore, Up Here and<br />
The Globe and Mail. She lives in Whitehorse with her husband<br />
<strong>Fritz</strong> <strong>Mueller</strong> (www.fritzmueller.com), whose photography has<br />
appeared in The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail and The<br />
Guardian. Both are frequent contributors to Canadian Geographic.<br />
To comment, please e-mail editor@canadiangeographic.ca<br />
or visit www.canadiangeographic.ca.<br />
Yukon ho!<br />
Getting there Whitehorse is a<br />
two-hour flight from Vancouver,<br />
Calgary or Edmonton. You<br />
can rent cars and RVs in<br />
Whitehorse, including from<br />
CanaDream RV Rentals<br />
(www.canadream.com). For<br />
current travel information,<br />
visit www.travelyukon.com.<br />
Staying there Campers can<br />
choose from about a dozen<br />
Yukon government campgrounds<br />
(www.env.gov.yk.ca)<br />
between Carcross and Dawson;<br />
try Fox Lake, Yukon River and<br />
Tombstone. Several private<br />
campgrounds also cater to RVs.<br />
To sleep in a real bed, in<br />
Whitehorse try the High Country<br />
Inn or the Beez Kneez<br />
Bakpakers hostel. In Dawson,<br />
try Klondike Kate’s, Bombay<br />
Peggy’s or any number of hotels<br />
and B&Bs.<br />
Playing there There’s no end<br />
of things to do on those long<br />
Yukon summer days, and most<br />
of it is very laid-back. Fishing<br />
off the bridge in Carcross, for<br />
example, is a great way to meet<br />
locals or catch your dinner.<br />
Whitehorse has the lion’s share<br />
of must-see attractions, with the<br />
MacBride Museum, the Beringia<br />
Centre and the S.S. Klondike,<br />
while kids will love the Dänojà<br />
Zho Cultural and Tombstone<br />
Park Interpretive centres and<br />
the free Yukon River ferry in<br />
Dawson. For food, try Chilkoot<br />
Trail Bakery in Carcross,<br />
Klondike Rib & Salmon in<br />
Whitehorse and Klondike<br />
Kate’s in Dawson.<br />
52 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC TRAVEL Spring 2013