Tagish (Yukon)
| Tagish | |||
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| Location in Yukon | |||
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Territory : | Yukon | ||
| Coordinates : | 60 ° 17 ′ N , 134 ° 19 ′ W | ||
| Residents : | 222 (as of 2006) | ||
Tagish is a place in the Canadian Yukon, southeast of Whitehorse , not far from the border with British Columbia .
The place is between the two lakes Marsh Lake and Tagish Lake on the Tagish River . 45 of the 222 inhabitants are members of the regional First Nations , especially the Carcross / Tagish First Nation . The place owes its name to the Tagish, many of whom live in Carcross and Whitehorse .
history
The Tagish were originally nomadic and only came into contact with Indian middlemen in the fur trade after 1800. This was due to the fact that the coveted otters were almost extinct because of their fur by 1825, which increased the demand for furs from the hinterland. The Tagish now acted as trappers and traded indirectly with the Tlingit resident on the coast , who enforced a trade monopoly. Due to the close contacts with the Tlingit, the tribe was very similar in language and culture, which was reinforced by the immigration of two clans from two different Moietys .
During the Klondike gold rush , many Tagish were porters because they were not allowed to acquire claims themselves , but many of them died of previously unknown diseases such as smallpox and measles . The Tagish were mainly affected because many of the 100,000 men drove down the Yukon towards Dawson in search of gold . They also stopped at Lake Bennett , Tagish Lake or Marsh Lake to build boats.
With the construction of the Alaska Highway tens of thousands of road workers came to the Yukon Territory, and the population of Whitehorse grew rapidly. In 1948/49 the line was opened for private traffic. The Tagish became a minority in the town of the same name.
Until the 1970s, the Indians had to attend so-called residential schools , in which the children were strictly forbidden to use their mother tongue. In 1991 the last speaker of the Tagish language, Angela Sidney, died. They were also subjected to violent assault and sexual abuse, as in many of these schools.
The Tagish were one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Council for Yukon Indians , from which the Council for Yukon First Nations emerged in 1995. He negotiated land rights, usage rights and reparations.
Tagish Lake became known worldwide when a meteorite weighing more than 200 tons and an age of more than 4.5 billion years hit the Taku Arm, which forms the northeastern arm of the lake, on January 18, 2000 .
Web links
- Tagish ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 22, 2016.
Remarks
- ^ Statistics Canada
- ^ Chiefs asked to reveal child sex abuse, CBC News, Nov. 10, 2000 , archive.org, Apr. 22, 2009.