Klukshu

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Klukshu or Łù Ghą is a summer village and salmon fishing site of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations in the Yukon Territory . It is located on the eastern edge of Kluane National Park and on the Haines Highway .

In pre-colonial times, Indians of various ethnic groups, whose language was also the Southern Tutchone, lived in Klukshu, as well as in Kloo Lake , Canyon, Shäwshe and Hutshi . However, the place was only visited in summer and autumn to catch and dry salmon. A fish weir was built there for this purpose.

The name Klukshu comes from the Tlingit language and means 'end of salmon', which refers to the place where the salmon spawning runs in Klukshu Creek ended.

The area around Klukshu was apparently the only one in the Yukon in which a certain type of bark beetle invaded for the first time between 1934 and 1942 , the spruce bark beetles and which caused significant ecological changes.

In 1944, the places Champagne and Klukshu together had no more than 64 inhabitants, the Department of Indian Affairs found. The place Klukshu consisted of only a few log cabins, but appeared in the press of the larger Canadian cities in the south in 1936 when the murder of Paddy Duncan of Parton Kane became known. Duncan was from the Dalton Post area , near the Canada-Alaskan border. He grew up near Klukwan near Haines . During the Klondike gold rush he hired himself as a welcome and capable guide and porter and made a small fortune in the process. After the gold rush he worked in the opencast mine, but also as a hunter and as an assistant to the surveyors who were supposed to define the border between Canada and the USA. He also worked as a guide for the police and was looking for gold in the 1930s. He was a widower in September 1936 and two of his daughters lived in Alaska . He had only learned English as an adult, he couldn't write. Now, as he had often done before, he moved to Champagne, where he shot and killed a man named Parton Kane under the influence of alcohol for reasons that are not clear. Chief John Fraser of the Champagne band - the band was called the ethnic groups or tribes at the time - demanded a grand return celebration eight years later when Duncan's release was being discussed as sufficient compensation. Until the 1990s, this was the last case Native American law was considered by the Canadian judicial authorities.

The Haines Highway , built during World War II , follows the old Dalton Trail 180 km from the port in Haines via Klukshu, further north to Haines Junction , where it joins the Alaska Highway .

In 1993 Canada and the Yukon came to a first agreement with four tribes, including the Champagne and Aishihik, who have since covered an area of ​​2,427 km². You have been managing the neighboring Kluane National Park since 1995 , which also applies to the Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park to the south . Occasionally, Indian ideas about living together with wild animals, which they consider to be carriers of certain powers, are expressed with the park authorities. While the residents of Klukshu didn't bother the older grizzly bears fishing because they knew it would keep the younger, more aggressive ones away, the area was selected around 2000 to release animals from other areas that were considered dangerous and therefore captured . The previously peaceful relationship between Champagne and grizzlies may be related to the fact that the salmon migrations here are very short. Half of the salmon clump in two and a half to about 7 days. Experience has shown that this temporary oversupply reduces competition. However, when the number of bears becomes too large, the tribal elders request a skilled shooter to shoot some of the animals. But this is not without danger, as the government of the territory has prohibited this and imposed heavy fines.

There is a blog called Klukshu Times .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Kluane National Park and Reserve. Klukshu Village
  2. ↑ Kluane beetle history all in the rings , Your Yukon 2003, archive.org, September 22, 2011.
  3. ↑ This and the following from: Ken S. Coates, William R. Morrison: Strange things done: murder in Yukon history , McGill-Queen's University Press 2004, pp. 122–144, here: p. 126.
  4. ^ Douglas A. Clark and D. Scott Slocombe: Respect for Grizzly Bears: an Aboriginal Approach for Co-existence and Resilience , in: Ecology and Society, 14/1 (2009)
  5. ↑ Klukshu Times

Coordinates: 60 ° 17 ′ 21 ″  N , 137 ° 0 ′ 5 ″  W.