People in Mayo, Yukon, reflect on land claims milestone

Members of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun — one of the first four First Nations in the Yukon to sign a land claim agreement decades ago — are reflecting on what self-governance means as the territory celebrates the 50th anniversary Together Today for our Children Tomorrow, the document that kickstarted the land claims process.

"I think we didn't know what it meant to be self-governing," said Joella Hogan, a Na-Cho Nyäk Dun citizen, in a recent interview. 

"Now I see a shift in really making our acts, legislation, programs much more aligned with our values and culture, realizing that's what self-determination means. But I think there was that huge learning curve in figuring out really how to do that and to make it work."

The First Nation — based in the town of Mayo, approximately 400 kilometres from Whitehorse — became steward of its lands in 1995 when its final agreement was brought into effect. 

The Yukon's final agreements put an end to the Indian Act for 11 of its 14 First Nations, including Na-Cho Nyäk Dun. The Indian Act had been law in Canada since 1876, and part of a long history of assimilation policies.

And the community of Mayo was at the frontline of negotiations to deconstruct it in the Yukon. 

Together Today for our Children Tomorrow marked the beginning of land claims negotiations between First Nations in the Yukon and Canada. It took years of negotiations to draft final agreements after a delegation of First Nations leaders presented the cornerstone document in Ottawa to then-prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1973.

Twenty-two years after that, on Feb. 14, 1995, four communities started implementing their treaties: the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the Teslin Tlingit Council, the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun. 

Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Chief Simon Mervyn was a young man back then. He says he remembers the social tensions spoken of in the original Together Today document.

"I would say there was little cohesion in those days, in the sense that First Nations people were on one side of the fence, Caucasians were on the other side," Mervyn said in a recent interview. 

"Things have changed extensively in regards to the fact that in those days First Nations ... didn't have a foothold in their own society. And I think the start of the land claims issue started to bring people together, and started to react cohesively to the situation that we were in at that time."

Na-Cho Nyäk Dun elder Frank Patterson agrees. He says moving away from discrimination was one of the promises of the land claims and self-government agreements.

"[Discrimination] ... wrecked a lot of our people," Patterson, who's lived his entire life in Mayo, said. "We wanted a better life for First Nations people ... We are here to work together, to make it happen ... the discrimination, it's a feeling of people thinking the wrong way."

While thinking of the children of tomorrow, Patterson, along with Mervyn and several others in the community, says there is one critical issue that needs to be addressed today: the substance abuse crisis.