GENERATIONS RETURN

Fort Selkirk, really important place. Everyone came there to trade — Ross River, Carmacks, coast. Lots of potlatch there.
-Sam Williams, 1994.

When people from Pelly are down there (Selkirk), they are really happy . . . . Just a good feeling when everyone gets together down there.
-Alex Morrison, 1994

THE STORY

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the building of all-weather roads from Whitehorse to Mayo and Dawson ended the sternwheeler era. This also brought about the end of Fort Selkirk as an active community. Most people moved to Minto to work on the new roads. The two stores closed, the Roman Catholic priest moved to Carmacks and the Anglican mission worker, Kathleen Martin Coward, transferred the mission to Minto. In the late 1950s, most people moved on to the new community of Pelly Crossing — although Selkirk people have ended up all over the Yukon, from Watson Lake to Burwash Landing to Dawson City.

Long after its abandonment, Fort Selkirk has retained its importance to the Selkirk First Nation members as a focal point in Northern Tutchone history. The settlement is at the centre of a vast system of trails reflecting its former importance within a large trading network. It is near an important hunting and fishing area. For the elders, it is at the heart of generations of memories and traditions, an important heritage site to be shared with their descendants.

Northern Tutchone elders have shared their history through oral history accounts, by working with school children, and spending time at Fort Selkirk telling students and visitors about the history of the Selkirk people. Since the early 1980s, younger Selkirk people have been working with the Yukon government’s Heritage Branch to preserve, manage and interpret the historic townsite. A local restoration and maintenance crew and interpreters work at Fort Selkirk every summer allowing the opportunity for new generations to preserve and present their history. Many families visit at Fort Selkirk in the summer while others still hunt and fish in the area.

This strong connection with the past has been commemorated and celebrated during two recent events at Fort Selkirk. In June 1995, the Selkirk First Nation hosted Chilkat First Nation people from Haines and Klukwan at Fort Selkirk. The occasion was the 125th anniversary of the drawing of the Kohklux map. Kohklux, a Chilkat chief and his two wives drew the first map of the southwestern Yukon showing travel and trade routes right up to Fort Selkirk. Together they celebrated the traditional trading connection between their ancestors, the Northern Tutchone of the Yukon interior and Chilkat people of the Alaska panhandle. In the same year, another former Selkirk resident, ex-Corporal G. I. Cameron, revisited his former home at the age of 95 during the centennial of the RCMP in the Yukon.

Further Reading:

Ingram, Rob and K-L Services. The Kohklux Map. Whitehorse: Yukon Historical & Museums Assoc., 1995.