A NEW ERA FOR OLD CROW

In the Yukon’s northernmost community, the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation is reckoning with how to preserve their land and culture, amid a warming climate and an influx of tourists

- MERAL JAMAL

The July air is cool. Whitefish and sausages smoke on a grate above the fire. Hot coffee sits in a kettle by my side.

The kids are playing by the water. I sit around the fire with the adults, listening to them talk. About the day, about a game of capture the flag we played earlier that afternoon, about life here in Old Crow.

At 128 km north of the Arctic Circle, situated on the banks of the Porcupine River that connects Canada and the United States, Old Crow is one of around a dozen Gwich’in communities and home to around 250 members of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. It is also the only fly-in community in the Yukon.

It is my second day in the community. I’m one of six journalism students who have travelled to the Yukon because our professor believes that, in order to be a good journalist, one must spend time with the people whose stories you seek to share.

The Gwich’in are part of a larger family of Indigenous peoples known as Athapaskans and one of the most northerly Indigenous communities on the North American continent, second only to the Inuit. The Gwich’in way of life remains – both culturally and economically – anchored to the land through hunting, fishing, and trapping. Today, we are at the T’loo K’at campground for the Vuntut Gwitchin government’s summer family salmon fishing camp. And it is at this camp, after a day of being out on the water, of visiting the nets, of seeing how whitefish is cleaned and smoked, that I begin to understand what it means to be an outsider in Old Crow. A tourist.

It means there is so much I don’t know, and so much I have yet to learn. It means that for every new thing I learn about the Yukon’s northernmost community, there are twice as many things I must unlearn.

A STATE OF EMERGENCY