First Nations
In Canada, the First Nations are the predominant indigenous peoples in Canada south of the Arctic Circle. Those in the Arctic area are distinct and known as Inuit; the Métis, another distinct ethnicity, developed after European contact and relations between First Nations people and Europeans. There are 634 recognized First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. Under the Employment Equity Act, First Nations are a "designated group", along with women, visible minorities, people with physical or mental disabilities. First Nations are not defined as a visible minority under the Act or by the criteria of Statistics Canada. North American indigenous; some of their oral traditions describe historical events, such as the Cascadia earthquake of 1700 and the 18th-century Tseax Cone eruption. Written records began with the arrival of European explorers and colonists during the Age of Discovery, beginning in the late 15th century.
European accounts by trappers, traders and missionaries give important evidence of early contact culture. In addition and anthropological research, as well as linguistics, have helped scholars piece together an understanding of ancient cultures and historic peoples. Although not without conflict, Euro-Canadians' early interactions with First Nations, Métis, Inuit populations were less combative compared to the violent battles between colonists and native peoples in the United States. Collectively, First Nations, Métis peoples constitute Indigenous peoples in Canada, Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or first peoples. First Nation as a term became used beginning in 1980s to replace the term Indian band in referring to groups of Indians with common government and language; the term had come into common usage in the 1970s to avoid using the word Indian, which some Canadians considered offensive. No legal definition of the term exists; some indigenous peoples in Canada have adopted the term First Nation to replace the word band in the formal name of their community.
A band is a "body of Indians for whose use and benefit in common lands... have been set apart... moneys are held... or declared... to be a band for the purposes of" the Indian Act by the Canadian Crown. The term Indian is a misnomer given to indigenous peoples of North America by European explorers who erroneously thought they had landed on the Indian subcontinent; the use of the term Native Americans, which the US government and others have adopted, is not common in Canada. It refers more to the Indigenous peoples residing within the boundaries of the United States; the parallel term Native Canadian is not used, but Native and autochtone are. Under the Royal Proclamation of 1763 known as the "Indian Magna Carta," the Crown referred to indigenous peoples in British territory as tribes or nations; the term First Nations is capitalized. Bands and nations may have different meanings. Within Canada, First Nations has come into general use for indigenous peoples other than Inuit and Métis. Individuals using the term outside Canada include U.
S. tribes within the Pacific Northwest, as well as supporters of the Cascadian independence movement. The singular used on culturally politicized reserves, is the term First Nations person. A more recent trend is for members of various nations to refer to themselves by their tribal or national identity only, e.g. "I'm Haida". For pre-history, see: Paleo-Indians and Archaic periods First Nations by linguistic-cultural area: List of First Nations peoplesFirst Nations peoples had settled and established trade routes across what is now Canada by 1,000 BC to 500 BC. Communities developed, each with its own culture and character. In the northwest were the Athapaskan-speaking peoples, Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ, Tutchone-speaking peoples, Tlingit. Along the Pacific coast were the Haida, Kwakiutl, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nisga'a and Gitxsan. In the plains were the Blackfoot, Kainai and Northern Peigan. In the northern woodlands were the Chipewyan. Around the Great Lakes were the Anishinaabe, Algonquin and Wyandot. Along the Atlantic coast were the Beothuk, Innu and Micmac.
The Blackfoot Confederacies reside in the Great Plains of Montana and Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. The name "Blackfoot" came from the colour of the peoples' leather footwear, known as moccasins, they had painted the bottoms of their moccasins black. One account claimed that the Blackfoot Confederacies walked through the ashes of prairie fires, which in turn coloured the bottoms of their moccasins black, they had migrated onto the Great Plains from the Plateau area. The Blackfoot may have lived in their homeland since the end of the Pleistocene 11,000 years ago.. For thousands of years, they managed the prairie to support bison herds and cultivated berries and edible roots, they allowed only legitimate traders into their territory, making treaties only when the bison herds were exterminated in the 1870s. The Squamish history is a series of past events, both passed on through oral tradition and recent history, of the Squamish indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
Prior to colonization, they recorded their history through oral tradition as a way to transmit stories and knowledge across generations. This was common among all the peoples; the writing system esta
Champagne Landing
Champagne Landing is a small First Nations settlement on the Alaska Highway in Canada's Yukon. The few residents are citizens of the Aishihik First Nations; the resident population was 25 in the Canada 2011 Census. Champagne is on one of the tributaries of the Alsek; the original Dalton Trail connected to this settlement, a roadhouse was built there in 1902. The Alaska highway no longer routes through the community, having been rerouted in the fall of 2002; the old roadway is still open to provide access. Many residents have moved to Haines Junction. Champagne and Aishihik First Nations web site
Pelly Crossing
Pelly Crossing is a community in Yukon, Canada. It lies. Population in 2008 was 291, it is the home of the Selkirk First Nation, home to the Northern Tutchone culture. Cultural displays and artifacts are housed in a replica of Big Jonathan House. Visitors can make the journey from Minto by boat to visit the original structure down the Yukon River at Fort Selkirk, an important historic and cultural site for the Northern Tutchone people; the Selkirk First Nation community was established as a ferry crossing and a highway construction camp when the Klondike Highway from Whitehorse to Dawson City was built in 1950. With the completion of the Pelly River bridge and the road to Dawson City, sternwheeler traffic on the Yukon River came to a halt. Fort Selkirk, located near the confluence of Pelly and Yukon Rivers, was abandoned; the Government of Canada forced members of Selkirk First Nation to move from Fort Selkirk to Minto Landing before settling at Pelly Crossing. Today, the restored Fort Selkirk is a common stop for Yukon River travelers.
Pelly Crossing is located on the Pelly River, 155 miles south of Dawson City on the Klondike Highway. Pelly Crossing has a continental subarctic climate with short but warm summers, but with the vast majority of the year being dominated by the bitterly cold winters. During cold snaps temperatures approaching −60 °C has been recorded; the weather is rather dry and summer nights remain cool. The local community is based on hunting, trapping and guiding. There is curling rink, baseball field, swimming pool, youth center and laundromat. Visitor services include food and lodging. There is one motel, take-out food, a grocery store and diesel, a campground, post office and bank; every February, Pelly Crossing hosts a checkpoint for the long-distance Yukon Quest sled dog race
Dawson City
Dawson City the Town of the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush, its population was 1,375 as of the 2016 census. Making it the second largest town of Yukon. In prehistoric times the area was used for agriculture by the Hän-speaking people of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and their forebears; the heart of their homeland was Tr'ochëk, a fishing camp at the confluence of the Klondike River and Yukon River, now a National Historic Site of Canada, just across the Klondike River from modern Dawson City. This site was an important summer gathering spot and a base for moose-hunting on the Klondike Valley; the current settlement was founded by Joseph Ladue and named in January 1897 after noted Canadian geologist George M. Dawson, who had explored and mapped the region in 1887, it served as Yukon's capital from the territory's founding in 1898 until 1952, when the seat was moved to Whitehorse. Dawson City was the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush.
It began in 1896 and changed the First Nations camp into a thriving city of 40,000 by 1898. By 1899, the gold rush had ended and the town's population plummeted as all but 8,000 people left; when Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902, the population was under 5,000. St. Paul's Anglican Church built; the population dropped after World War II when the Alaska Highway bypassed it 300 miles to the south. The economic damage to Dawson City was such that Whitehorse, the highway's hub, replaced it as territorial capital in 1953. Dawson City's population languished around the 600–900 mark through the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen and held stable since then; the high price of gold has made modern placer mining operations profitable, the growth of the tourism industry has encouraged development of facilities. In the early 1950s, Dawson was linked by road to Alaska, in fall 1955, with Whitehorse along a road that now forms part of the Klondike Highway. In 1978, another kind of buried treasure was discovered when a construction excavation inadvertently uncovered a forgotten collection of more than 500 discarded films on flammable nitrate film stock from the early 20th century that were buried in the permafrost.
These silent-era film reels, dating from "between 1903 and 1929, were uncovered in the rubble beneath old hockey rink". Owing to its dangerous chemical volatility, the historical find was moved by military transport to Library and Archives Canada and the U. S. Library of Congress for both transfer to safety film and storage. A documentary about the find, Dawson City: Frozen Time was released in 2016; the City of Dawson and the nearby ghost town of Forty Mile are featured prominently in the novels and short stories of American author Jack London, including The Call of the Wild. London lived in the Dawson area from October 1897 to June 1898. Other writers who lived in and wrote of Dawson City include Pierre Berton and the poet Robert Service; the childhood home of the former is now used as a retreat for professional writers administered by the Writers' Trust of Canada. Dawson City lies on the Tintina Fault; this fault continues eastward for several hundred kilometres. Erosional remnants of lava flows form outcrops north and west of Dawson City.
Like most of Yukon, Dawson City has a subarctic climate. The average temperature in July is 15.7 °C and in January is −26.0 °C. The highest temperature recorded is 35.0 °C on 9 July 1899 and 18 June 1950. The lowest temperature recorded is −58.3 °C on 3 February 1947. It experiences a wide range of temperatures surpassing 30 °C in most summers and dropping below −40 °C in winter; the community is at an elevation of 320 m and the average rainfall in July is 49.0 mm and the average snowfall in January is 27.6 cm. Dawson has averages 70 frost free days per year; the town is built on a layer of frozen earth, which may pose a threat to the town's infrastructure in the future if the permafrost melts. Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902 when it met the criteria for "city" status under the municipal act of that time, it retained the incorporation as the population plummeted. When a new municipal act was adopted in the 1980s, Dawson met the criteria of "town", was incorporated as such although with a special provision to allow it to continue to use the word "City" for historical reasons and to distinguish it from Dawson Creek, a small city in northeastern British Columbia.
Dawson Creek is named in honour of George M. Dawson; this led the territorial government to post the following signs at the boundaries of the town: "Welcome to the Town of the City of Dawson". In 2004, the Yukon government removed the mayor and the town council, as a result of the town going bankrupt; the territorial government accepted a large portion of the responsibility for this situation in March 2006, writing off $3.43 million of the debt and leaving the town with $1.5 million still to pay off. Elections were set for June 15, 2006. John Steins, a local artist and one of the leaders of the movement to restore democracy to Dawson, was acclaimed as mayor, while 13 residents ran for the four council seats. Steins was succeeded in office by former mayor Peter Jenkins, who in turn was succeeded by the current mayor, Wayne Potoroka. Other past mayors of Dawson City have included Art Webster, Colin Mayes, Yolanda Burkhard, Mike Comadain and Vi Campbell. In the Legislative Assembly of Yukon, Dawson City is in the electoral district of Klondike represented by Sandy Silver of the Yukon Liberal Party.
The government of Tr’ond
Stewart Crossing
Stewart Crossing is a settlement in Yukon, Canada located on the Stewart River. It is about 179 km east of Dawson City on the Klondike Highway, near the junction with the Silver Trail, from which it is about 53 km southwest of Mayo. A Yukon government highway maintenance camp and a highway lodge are the most prominent facilities at Stewart Crossing; the settlement is named for where the Klondike Highway, crossed the Stewart River by means of a ferry from 1950 until completion of a bridge in the mid-1950s. The settlement had a population of 25 in a decrease of 28.6 % from the 2006 census. The settlement has an area of 28.75 km2 giving a population density of 0.9 inhabitants per square kilometre
Watson Lake, Yukon
Watson Lake is a town in Yukon, Canada located at mile 635 on the Alaska Highway close to the British Columbia border. The Canada 2016 Census put the population at 790, a drop of 1.5% from 802 in 2011. The town is named for Frank Watson, an American-born trapper and prospector, who settled in the area at the end of the nineteenth century. Watson Lake is near the Liard River, at the junction of the Robert Campbell Highway and the Alaska Highway; the Cassiar Highway's northern end is 22 kilometres west of Watson Lake. The town is served by the Watson Lake Airport. Watson Lake is the main centre of the small forestry industry in Yukon and has been a service centre for the mining industry for the Cassiar asbestos mine in northern British Columbia and the Cantung tungsten mine on the Yukon-Northwest Territories border in the Mackenzie Mountains. Tourist attractions in Watson Lake include the Northern Lights Centre and the much-imitated original Signpost Forest; the Signpost Forest was started in 1942 by a homesick U.
S. Army G. I. working on the Alaska Highway, who put up a sign with the name of his home town and the distance. Others followed the tradition continues to this day; as of August 2010 there are more than 76,000 signs of various types depicting locations across the world. The Signpost Forest is one of four roadside attractions featured on the first series of the Canadian Roadside Attractions Series issued by Canada Post on July 6, 2009. Watson Lake and the neighbouring Upper Liard settlement are the home of the Liard River First Nation, a member of the Kaska Dena Council; the Two Mile area north of the core of town is a concentrated area of First Nations residents, while the town extends five miles out to the turn-off of Airport Road. Like most of Yukon, Watson Lake has a subarctic climate. Watson Lake experiences annual temperature average daily highs of 21 °C in July and average daily lows of −27 °C in January. Record high temperature was 34 °C in May 1983 and the lowest was −59 °C in January 1947.
Watson Lake has more precipitation than other parts of Yukon with an average annual snowfall of 197 cm and 255 mm of rainfall, resulting in larger trees and a more viable forest industry. List of municipalities in Yukon Community Profile Town of Watson Lake Watson Lake home page Kaska Dena Council
Beaver Creek, Yukon
Beaver Creek is a community in Yukon, Canada. Located at kilometre 1870.6 of the Alaska Highway, 1 nautical mile southeast of Beaver Creek Airport and close to the Alcan - Beaver Creek Border Crossing, it is Canada's westernmost community. The community's main employers are a Canada Border Services Agency port, the White River First Nation and a number of tourist lodges. At the 2011 census Beaver Creek had a population of a decrease of 8 % since the 2006 census, it is the home of the White River First Nation. The First Nation is made up of Upper Tanana speaking people whose traditional territory extends from the Donjek River into neighbouring Alaska, Athapaskan Northern Tutchone speaking people whose traditional territories included the lower Stewart River and the area south of the Yukon River on the White and Donjek River drainages. In addition to the Alaska Highway, the community is served by the Beaver Creek Airport; the CBSA station is the furthest from the border crossing of any Canadian customs station at a distance of 28.6 km / 17.8 mi, at least up to the 1990s, some individuals lived in the "no man's land" in between the border and customs.
Prior to 1983, the customs station was located in the middle of the community, with the resulting confusion: individuals driving past without stopping, locals with a new vehicle not being recognized as they drove by. Like most of Yukon, Beaver Creek has a subarctic climate, NRC Plant Hardiness Zone of 0a, it is situated at an elevation of 650 metres. Beaver Creek experiences annual temperature average daily highs of 20 °C in July and average daily lows of −30 °C in January. Record high temperature was 32.8 °C on June 15, 1969 and the lowest was −55.0 °C on January 17, 1971. Beaver Creek has 298.6 mm of rainfall. The airstrip at Snag, 25 km east of Beaver Creek, experienced the lowest temperature measured in North America, −63.0 °C on February 3, 1947. Community Profile White River First Nation
Reynolds, Francis J., ed. (1921). . Collier's New Encyclopedia. New York: P.F. Collier & Son Company.
