This First Nations tour in Dawson City, Yukon reduced me to tears

The history of the Klondike region in the Yukon goes much deeper than the garish gold rush.

When I first arrive at the buttermilk-yellow former Commissioner’s Residence in the northwestern former gold rush town of Dawson City in Canada’s Yukon, part of me expects a cotillion of grand ladies in hoop skirts to sweep majestically down the central stairwell. Built in 1901, the property was central to the governance of stampeders – as they were known – who flooded the tiny town during the gold rush era of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Inside, it’s faithfully preserved to look like it did when the commissioner was in residence – opulent flocked wallpaper, mounted deer heads and stuffed owls staring lifelessly from the walls. There’s even a wide wooden dining table set with replicas of a refined cream tea. So far, this could be just about any stately home tour in any number of locations in North America. But after we’ve admired the flounces and finery, our guide, Gabriela Sgaga, asks us to gather around on a circle of chairs.

“This is about unlearning what many of us learned in school,” she explains. She plays a re-enacted recording of two officials from the gold rush era – an Anglican bishop and a police officer – who are nutting out what to do about the pesky problem of the “Indians”, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, who had lived on the land “for thousands of years”. The spoken words are taken directly from contemporaneous letters between the two men.

The Governor’s Residence in Dawson City.

“I’m here to discuss the ‘difficulties’,” announces one as our group listens. After some debate they go on to conclude that the best solution for the “difficulties” is to move them to an island in the middle of the river, even though they admit that this will separate them from their traditional hunting grounds and homeland. “The whites are the providers and workers in this country,” the police inspector says dismissively. “And should therefore enjoy its privileges.” The “difficult” Indians, is the inference, can rot.

After the recording finishes, Sgaga asks us to share how it makes us feel, and if we like, to relate it to First Nations’ struggles in our own country. In my group are two men from France and China, me and two Canadians. Although the French and Chinese have been no strangers to a spot of brutal colonising of their own over the centuries, it’s the Canadians and I who still live directly on colonised land. The three of us almost trip over our words as we try to explain how moving this experience felt to each of us and we related what we’d heard to what we knew about colonisation in our own countries and regions. I cried a little. It’s deeply profound to be sitting among so much decadence, so many symbols of what one group can gain when it conquers another, and to hear the plans for that conquering spoken in such stark terms.

This tour – called Red Serge, Red Tape: From Tr’ondëk to Klondike – is part of a moving historical reckoning that the area commonly known to white Canadians as the Klondike (a mishearing of the First Nations name Tr’ondëk) in the Yukon in northwest Canada is currently undertaking.

Colourful clapboard houses in Dawson City.

Most white Canadians know the town of Dawson City for its bawdy frontier gold rush history; it’s all clapboard Hollywood western-style building façades, rowdy taverns and kitsch cancan shows. But in 2023, UNESCO added eight significant parcels of land in the Tr’ondëk-Klondike region, including Dawson City, to its prestigious World Heritage List. The UNESCO protection will help preserve the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in stewardship of this land for thousands of years. The designation is a decree: Dawson City’s gold rush history is still a significant part of the town’s heritage. But Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in stories must be told with equal weight.

Tours such as the one I took in the Commissioner’s Residence and several First Nations cultural centres dotted around the town stand as reminders of the past. But First Nations culture is not some distant historical relic. Look for it, and you’ll find it’s alive and thriving around Dawson City and throughout the Yukon. A vivid example comes on the night my group gathers for dinner at Bon Ton and Co, a warmly lit restaurant that champions local fresh ingredients, many grown by Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in collectives. The plan is that we’ll be joined by Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in artist Jackie Olsen but she turns up 20 minutes late.

“Someone gifted me a moose head,” she explains. “I had to get the brains out because I use that for tanning hides and then I had to drop the tongue off to my uncle. He’s been starving for moose.”

The Moosehide Gathering.

The First Nations way of life here isn’t a display for tourists. It’s living, breathing and thriving. These traditional activities – hunting, tanning, and others like salmon drying and learning and speaking almost-lost First Nations languages – are having a resurgence around the Yukon. A healthy herd of caribou, once a staple First Nations food source, has even re-established itself around Dawson, after they were hunted almost to extinction by the 1970s. Events like the Moosehide Gathering in Dawson City bring together different nations and families from all over the region for dancing, drumming and feasting.

The effects of colonisation, the deep wounds that men like the two officials from the Commissioner’s Residence inflicted on the First Nations people of Canada haven’t healed. But there is hope.

“We went from losing our land and culture,” says guide and artist Darcy McDiarmid from Dawson City’s Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre, “to reclaiming it.”

The author was a guest of Travel Yukon.

Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre in Dawson City.

Yukon travel tips

How to get to the Yukon: Qantas and Air Canada fly direct to Vancouver, then Air North flies to Dawson City in the Yukon via Whitehorse.

Where to book: You can book First Nations experiences including winter activities like ice fishing and dog sledding at the Yukon First Nations Culture and Tourism Association. 

Originally published as This First Nations tour in Dawson City, Yukon reduced me to tears