Photo exhibition tells story of Yukon's First Nations

How do you fully capture generations of cultural history in one historic photo exhibition?

You don't, says Council of Yukon First Nations (CYFN) Grand Chief Peter Johnston.

"This is a very, you know, a very small taste of what happened," he said, as he looked over the photos on display at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre in Whitehorse.

"We did have over 90,000 photos to go through, in regards to picking the right pieces, if you will, to tell the story."

The project is inspired by "Together Today for our Children Tomorrow," an historic document penned in 1973 and delivered to Ottawa by a delegation of Yukon chiefs. That document provided the foundation for land claim negotiations in Yukon.

"This exhibit is all about our journey over the last 50 years," Johnston said. 

"The significance behind it is about telling our story, not only for reflection of the past but more importantly into the future — of what our responsibility [is], and let alone the opportunities that we have as First Nations."

Carol Geddes, one of the curators of the exhibition, says it also goes back further into the territory's Indigenous history.

"We found it really important to begin before the modern day people became involved in land claims, because so many of our elders from the past began to stand up in those very early days to say, 'something is wrong here,'" she said.

As an example, she pointed to Chief Jim Boss of the Ta'an Kwäch'än — "one of our folk heroes," she said.

During the Klondike Gold Rush, Boss was famously outspoken about what he saw.

"He looked around himself and said, 'Oh my God, this is really terrible what is happening to our people.' So he wrote a very significant letter to the king to say, 'you've got to do something, something has to happen.'"

"The really remarkable thing about it was, this was a time when a lot of First Nations people were quite intimidated and were not able to speak up and their voices were not being heard."

Johnston hopes the photo exhibition will serve as a reminder of the past, and an inspiration for the future.

He says 46 years later, "Together Today for our Children Tomorrow" has proven to be a visionary document — and a worthy guide for future leaders.

"It's incredible the reflection that are our leaders and our elders at that point had, in regards to what our future would look like ... A number of the different chapters, if you will, are dead-on in regards to where we are today," Johnston said.

"I think it's still creating chapters for the next generation." 

The exhibition is on display in Whitehorse until the end of January, and then there are plans to take it to other Yukon communities.