Yukon River Summit 2009

One of the big things that I worked on this summer for the Yukon River Inter-tribal Watershed Council was the bi-ennial (that means every 2 years) Summit.
The Summit is a gathering of the First Nations and Tribes of the Watershed. It's part celebration and part business. Overall, it is a time for all the staff, the board members, the member nations and experts in the science and policy to get together. There are a lot of old friends meeting and new friendships forming.

This year the Summit was held at Helen's Fish Camp, on Lake Laberge, which is about 40km north of the city of Whitehorse. It is a great camp that is in the traditional territory of the Ta'an Kwach'an people and there were older summit attendees sharing stories of their childhood experiences at the camp. Across the lake (it's a wide spot in the Yukon River) is the old Ta'an village which we had tours to throughout the Summit (which I missed due to my running around helping out).



One of my roles at the Whitehorse office was to get youth from Yukon First Nations to the Summit. A bit of a challenging task given that most youth are out and about for the summer. However, in the end I think we had over 20 youth come join us and we were pleased to have 3 new preps for the Yukon region come out of it. They went canoeing, created a mural, chose new regional reps and got a chance to meet some of the elders of the YRITWC. Of course they also made new friends and got to get to know each other a little better...it's all about building networks and meeting new people in other parts of the watershed, even if you are only 16! It was great to have the youth with us, providing a visual reminder to the leaders and the elders why their work is so important...as one of the girls said "The Next Generation is coming..." I loved getting to know some of the youth and to find out what they were interested in. They probably didn't know it, but they shared some great pearls of wisdom every once in a while. They were also the instigators of the handgames/stickgambling tournament that went off on the last night at the Summit.



There were many great people at the Summit sharing their knowledge and blessing us with their presence. I've tried to find some good links for them so you can get a better idea...

Oren Lyons: faith keeper for the Turtle clan of the Onondaga Nation and Indigenous activist
Roy Sampsel: Institute for Tribal Governance, Roy has been involved in Columbia River issues
Mitch Factor: Comedian and youth mentor
Clarence Alexander: Gwich'in leader and YRITWC Board Chair from Fort Yukon, Alaska
Carl Sidney ("Uncle Carl" as I like to call him): YRITWC Board Chair from Teslin, Yukon
Sarah James: Gwich'in women full of spunk and fighting for the caribou



We also had lots of northern organizations represented, the United States Geological Survey (our partners in science), the United States Nuclear Regulatory Committee, Yukon government (water resources, environment, etc), and more.

The evenings featured some great cultural performers including dancers from Atlin (Taku River Tlingit), the Dakka Kwan dancers, Dhe Cho drummers, Grandma Suzie (comedian at lunch), Mitch Factor...