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