White River First Nation

The Kluane First Nation is a Canadian First Nations in the Yukon, whose members describe themselves as self Lu'an men. Most of them live in Burwash Landing at over 70 km of Kluane Lake. They belong to the Athabascan language family, more precisely to the Southern Tutchone.

Their traditional territory ranges from the St. Elias Mountains to the south end of Kluane Lake and the A'ay Chu ( Slims River), to the Ruby Range to the north, almost to the Nisling River, westward to Donjek River. The Tachal Region of Kluane National Park and Reserve is also included. They call it Lu'an men Keyi, the members of the First Nations as men or Lu'an Lu'an Mun.

In the 1950s, a combination of two strains was initiated by the Canadian government, representing the White River First Nation today. 1961-1991 was still the Burwash band added so that to the new strain (band) included three languages. In 1991, the band split again Burwash of the art structure.

Like most other tribes in the Yukon, including the Kluane came to an agreement with the federal government and that of the territory in 2003.

For the Kluane First Nation, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development reckoned exactly 142 recognized Indian in December 2009.

History

Early History

Earliest livelihoods were the caribou herds, but also elk, sheep and marmots, hares and pikas Alaska. Then there were birds and fish, especially salmon. Again, live grizzly bears, wolves, coyotes and bobcats. While the salmon to cover a nearly 4000 km long way over the Yukon River to the north of the territory, the Pacific salmon are on the shorter road to the Alsek River in the south of the traditional area.

The harsh climate required a semi-nomadic life, where families in spring and summer camps for fishing came together, but also in the short autumn to hunt. Kluane Lake is covered from November to June by an ice sheet, which can be up to 1.5 m thick. In the south and west of today's Burwash is the Kluane Range, a high to about 2500 m mountain that rises almost vertically from the lying just 800 m above sea level. This vast plain extends from Lake Kusawa to Alaska. Behind it stands the Donjek on range, the amount of which is surpassed even by the St. Elias chain, which rises about 6000 m. Northward are less high, albeit rough mountain ranges, such as the Yukon Plateau, the Ruby and the Nisling Range. Dense forests and numerous lakes dominate the landscape. The most important river is the Donjek River, which comes from the high mountains and its glaciers, and receives the Kluane River, which in turn drains the lake of the same. The Duke River, also springing from the glaciers, flows near Burwash in the Kluane River. These rivers offer cheap transport and walking trails.

The early groups lived in shelters made ​​of twigs, branches and skins. The clothing was adapted to the climate. From October to April Permafrost, the average temperature in the warmest month of July is about 12 ° C. Only 290 mm ​​of rainfall reach the area, of which 110 mm in the form of snow. In addition, the region is very stormy.

Here were the relationships between the groups that moved as nomads in the southern Yukon and Alaska, extremely tight, even though they spoke different languages ​​, such as Southern and Northern Tutchone, Upper Tanana or Tlingit. Also, similar to their view of the world and their relationship to their environment. Shamans did himself as a healer and were responsible for contacting with spiritual powers. They also helped in locating prey.

During less favorable times of the year attracted little family associations, with some variations followed their respective hiking cycle each year, through the entire traditional territory. Therefore, can be found to this day hundreds of remains of former camps, and in particular for residence and hunting vantage points, such as the Talbot Creek or in the Ptarmigan Heart Valley. Since water is available almost everywhere, firewood was the only prerequisite of the stock. But it also came in larger groups to joint hunts, as well as to trade and hard together, especially for Potlatch. When trading was about obsidian, copper, moose and Karibuhäute, goat hair, tendons and dye plants, such as certain lichens. From the coast of dried seaweed, buttery oil the candle fish came in return ( Eulachon ), mussels ( dentaries ), a type of tobacco and blankets, which were supplied by the Chilkat Tlingit.

The company was divided into two Moietys, the wolf and the crow clan ( Ägunda and Khanjet ), which also existed in other groups, and similar to those close relations existed as within the group later by the British and Canadian authorities as a tribe were designated as the root so.

The most important prey were the reindeer, known as caribou. The Kluane caribou herd is a herd of Woodland, and thus consists of woodland caribou. The animals usually go in the summer to higher pastures, located in deep winter. From this rule, the Kluane herd differs because it remains all year uplands in the Talbot Arm and Brooks arm. The animals migrate at Kluane River along between the two plateaus. However, the oral tradition also knows of barren ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus ), which so far emigrated in 1936 to the south, they were spotted at Kluane Lake.

The fur trade came shortly after 1800 by the Tlingit in the region, so that the local trade for the first time tied to global trade. Around 1880, large quantities already came here. This came European goods, such as guns, metal goods, axes, knives, as well as tobacco, tea, sugar and flour to the Kluane and its neighbors. While this change in many aspects of their life, but they fit, in contrast to further south living groups hardly meet the needs of the fur market to. The procurement of food and social reasons for hikes continued to have priority, the Kluane not attracted to any of the trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company, as did many other tribes. This also had to do with the fact that the Tlingit defended their fur trade monopoly.

Jack Dalton built south of the Kluane area in 1894 a first trading post. He stood at the old trading post Neskatahin.

Klondike Gold Rush, Kluane Gold Rush

During the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896 more than 100,000 whites arrived in the territory, but few moved into the area around the Kluane Lake. 1901 presented the Indians only slightly more than 10 % of the population in the Yukon.

Originally Burwash Landing was a summer camp of the Southern Tutchone, as a trading post there in 1904 the brothers Louis and Eugene Jacquot was who supplied the ore and coal mines. To this station is a part of the Kluane was sedentary. The Jacquot had been lured by the Klondike Gold Rush of the French Lorraine. In 1904 she studied during the Kluane Gold Rush for the precious metal. The place they named after Lachlin Burwash, who had to register the findings in the area in Silver City ( mining recorder ). To their trading post soon included a hotel, a restaurant, a retail shop and a shop for hunting.

Alaska Highway, assimilation

With the construction of the Alaska Highway numerous construction workers came starting in 1942 in the Yukon, the Kluane had to leave the Nisling Valley and moved to the 90 km distant Burwash Landing. 1944 was a mission of the Oblates, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary with the help of the brothers Jacquot. Head of Mission between Whitehorse and Alaska was Father Eusebe Morisset, OMI, who led his mission stations in Champagne, Aishihik, and Snag until 1964. Father Henk Huijbers, OMI, 1947, from Holland and began to collect artifacts and exhibit. In 1966 a first museum in a log cabin, the cabin Burlbilly Hill said. Oblate Father Henk Huijbers, resistance fighters and missionaries from the Netherlands, collected artifacts. Fred and Margaret O'Brien built the school room early 90s to a showroom.

During the construction of the Alaska Highway Kluane suffering from many previously unknown diseases. They were made sedentary, prohibited hunting. This was due, on the one together with the fact that among the 20,000 road workers and soldiers, many were shot indiscriminately at the game. As stocks plummeted drastically, the remainders were placed under protection ( Kluane Game Sanctuary, today Kluane National Park ).

By 1951 the children of the Kluane went into the synagogue of the Oblates. Then they had to go to British Columbia to Lower Post. There they had to live in the local residential school, were their mother tongue, the Southern Tutchone, no longer speak. The local groups were encouraged to choose a tribal council and to appoint a chief. So, from the various groups, the so-called Burwash band. She was forced to merge with the White River Band to Burwash and White River bands.

Ruth Jacquot - Donnelly, widow of the late Eugene Jacquot in 1950, gave the Indians from the White River and Donjek a house, and many of them stayed in the area. This Copper Joe played an important role, whose father Copper Chief of a family from Alaska came from, which already controlled the copper trade in the region around Burwash Landing to 1875. Mary Copper Joe, the daughter of Copper Joe, had married in 1920 Louis Jacquot. Old Copper Joe 's House still exists today.

Within a few years displaced from about 1965, the snow sled, the dog teams. Thus, reduced drastically the time it was necessary to provide the dog with fish. On the other hand, he allowed it to travel longer distances, and in spite of settled life to continue to achieve the traditional hunting, trapping areas. So for weeks and months-long hikes were short trips of one or two days in length. However, as prices for pelts fell further, it was difficult to acquire the expensive machines and entertain. It was no longer possible to obtain supplies from the country. Very few managed to return to the dog teams, so that soon lived most of Kluane in place. The Canadian social policy reinforced this dependency of goods through its dependence on the welfare state. There were also problems with alcohol, as in most societies uprooted.

However, the mobility within the community remained relatively low, although the Alaska Highway was open to the public. However, many Kluane lived on the other side of the lake. The only one who had a car that was Father Morisset, who so they could hunt for later pick up days or weeks often at certain points drove. With the increase in the number of cars the Kluane organized their lives more and more to the highway, so that trips to Whitehorse were granted. Many of the younger people spend the majority of their lives there because there they find work, they buy one, spend their free time or go to school there. At the same time the access to the protected areas has become increasingly difficult because the highway the first time allowed a monitoring of the hunt. She was indeed regulated since 1920, but made ​​the remoteness of the area, a police surveillance impossible. Hunting bans from 1943 were, therefore, not only paper but also were enforced. In a letter to the Yukon Commissioner complained the Kluane that their livelihoods will be destroyed, and that they had been driven away, like a bunch of dogs ( pack of dogs ). Father Morisset supported them and also wrote to the government. He complained that the lack of skins made ​​widows unemployed who had previously made ​​moccasins that one is dependent on meat supplies from Whitehorse. "What one expects that these Indians should live? " He asked at the end. After all, they were allowed to hunt limited amounts of muskrat and moose. But not this enough to get her vast knowledge of the region. The attachment to the land fell.

The Canadian welfare state was also reflected in the Kluane noticeable, because the government tried to expand health care, construction, education and administration. Therefore, now you organized the Indian groups or tribes in the form of " bands" mentioned units that elected a chief ( chief) and a group of consultants. They had no real power, but rather served as a mediator between the Kluane and the government, represented by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development ( INAC ). In order to reduce the costs and administrative burdens, we group it together several bands. So in 1961 Burwash band and White River band were pooled. They first called Kluane band, later Kluane Tribal Brotherhood and Kluane Tribal Council. The White River group was forced to move to Burwash, which led to considerable tensions. It offered its services only to those to who lived in Burwash, what more strongly bound the Indians to the place, and they forced their winter trap lines to leave the zones of permitted hunting.

In addition, now began the most aggressive phase of the assimilation policy that should be enforced primarily through a system of boarding schools like. 1944 was a Catholic mission station in Burwash Landing. The Indian children were not allowed to attend public school in Destruction Bay. At the same time fought Catholic and Anglican church and state resources to the teaching monopolies in the regions of the Yukon. The Catholic Father Morisset erected in the church school. The Catholic Church fought against that Catholic children should go to the Indian school in Carcross, and so in 1951 opened a Catholic school in Lower post their teaching, which is already in British Columbia. Every autumn it came to a school bus after Burwash and brought from the children, who clung to their parents and were taken away by force. The youngest was five years old, but they too were subject to compulsory school attendance. In 1950, in Burwash 22 declared Catholics. Today the Catholic Church plays because of bad experiences in Lower Post, where the Kluane their native language were not allowed to use, and has been held them constantly that they were inferior, hardly a role, albeit Father Morisset is personally held in honor. The children were kept under age and were such a life in the country where self-organization and creativity in dealing with new situations of the utmost importance, not grown. In addition, they talked bad to worse their native language, while the parents barely spoke English. 2008, the Prime Minister apologized for the catastrophic conditions in most residential schools. The school in Lower Post was operated until 1975.

Land claims and self-government, Kluane First Nation

However, the schools also had an unintended effect, because the students learned forms of resistance from passive refusal to open rebellion. First occasion was the often poor diet, so that the children learned in Lower Post, how to steel food from the kitchen. The attempts at forced assimilation strengthened, contrary to the initial impetus, the tribal identity and the idea of ​​a Pan - Indianismus. So this generation was open to ideas from the United States and southern Canada, but they also did not accept more fully the authority of the elders. Around 1970, the Yukon Native Brotherhood who fought for land rights arose. Ever since the late 60s her children had attended school in Destruction Bay. End of the 70s the Kluane Tribal Brotherhood opened his own school, but the number of children was too low. During those few years, the children learned both in the classroom as well as on the land, what was there for her life of meaning.

Added to this was that since about 1900 white settlers arrived in the region, some of which started families with Indian women. By 1985, however, their descendants lost automatically by the Indian law their status as Indians. Until the amendment of this law was about half of the Kluane without recognition as Indians. In addition, another important distinction between urban and rural Kluane, they designate themselves as Indians Busch ( bush indians ) and urban Indians (city indians ), ie those which live mainly outside major cities and those who live in the city.

1990, the Kluane Tribal Council informed ( tribal council ) back into the White River Band in Beaver Creek and the Kluane belt in Burwash Landing on. On 18 October 2003, the Kluane band signed a contract with Canada and the territory, which granted them self-government.

Current Situation

Chief (Chief ) is Willy Sheldon. 2006 or 15 residents spoke a non-English language, 10 were immigrants. 2009 spoke only two Elders Southern Tuchone who teach the language.

The Kluane have limited hunting and fishing licenses in the National Park and auction since 2006 to hunt Dall sheep, along with the North American Wild Sheep Foundation. The Kluane got it to 2008 just $ 275,625, thus 90 % of the yield, this sum will have to invest in the development of their community. The Kluane First Nation Development Corporation is increasingly relying on tourism.

2008, the tribe received $ 1.5 million for the construction of the Northern Housing Trust. Thus, ten houses were built, the tribesmen tion states, including those that do not live in Burwash Landing. Thus, the tensions grew within the community.