Honourable senators, this item stands adjourned in the name of the Honourable Senator Clement. After my intervention today, I ask for leave that it remain adjourned in her name.

Honourable senators, I rise today on the lands of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation to speak to you of the lands, the people and part of the story of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the First Nation of Na–Cho Nyak Dün, the Kluane First Nation, the Kwanlin Dün First Nation, the Liard First Nation, the Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation, the Ross River Dena Council, the Selkirk First Nation, Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, the Teslin Tlingit Council, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and the White River First Nation.

Honourable colleagues, I rise to speak to Senator Duncan’s Inquiry No. 14 calling our attention to the one hundred twenty‑fifth anniversary of the Yukon Act last year. Senator Duncan is a proud Yukoner — have you noticed? — and Yukon is proud of her, as are we. She was the first and only female premier of the Yukon from 2000 to 2002. Senator Duncan signed the devolution agreement with Canada. The Yukon was the first territory to sign such an agreement, which gave the people of the Yukon the power to manage their own lands and natural resources, and to foster economic development and job creation for themselves. Senator Duncan was involved in the negotiation and implementation of land claims agreements with the First Nations of the Yukon, and she was premier when the self‑government agreement with the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council was signed.

Senator Duncan asked me to speak to her inquiry, because she knows that I share her passion for the spellbinding beauty and majesty of the Yukon and its people. I have had the good fortune to visit the Yukon many times to see my daughter, Lauren McCarthy; her husband, Jamie; and my grandchildren, Jack, Amelia and Sophie over the seven years they lived there. Lauren taught at Whitehorse Elementary, and Jamie worked for the Carcross/Tagish and then the Kwanlin Dün First Nations.

I had the good fortune to hike the trails of the research forest with Senator Duncan and her dog. I went kick-sledding in the wildlife preserve, tobogganed the hills of the Carcross Desert, skied at the Whitehorse Nordic Centre, soaked in the healing waters of the Takhini Hot Springs, trekked across the frozen surface of Kathleen Lake in the Kluane National Park, feasted at the Klondike Salmon & Rib, spoke to my grandson’s class at Elijah Smith Elementary, visited the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre, met with students and faculty at the Yukon University, meandered along the pathway of the Yukon River and so much more.

Colleagues, I also had the good fortune of visiting Whitehorse with the Senate. It was the last stop on the Senate Special Committee on the Arctic’s fact-finding trip.

Colleagues, Senator Duncan has explained to us the context of the Yukon Act. Gold was discovered in the Yukon in 1896 by a Tagish First Nation Woman, Kate Carmack — otherwise known as Shaaw Tláa — her brother and her husband. Word of the gold spread like wildfire, and by the next year Dawson City, Yukon, became the largest city north of San Francisco and west of Chicago.

Against the backdrop of the gold rush, the assertion of Canadian sovereignty and the regulation of liquor consumption in the territory were the motivations for the Yukon Act.

Senator Duncan has told us that the act, which was given Royal Assent on June 13, has been amended several times over the years. Senator Duncan also referred to another important anniversary in the story of the Yukon and, in particular, to the Indigenous people of the 14 nations I mentioned earlier. This is what I wanted to highlight in a little more detail.

Today, approximately 25% of the population of the Yukon is Indigenous; 11 of the 14 First Nations have signed modern treaties. Yukon land claims:

. . . had been put forward as early as 1901 and 1902 when Chief Jim Boss of the present-day Ta’an Kwach’an and surrounding area, wrote letters to the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs in Ottawa and to the Commissioner of the Yukon.

He outlined, way back at the turn of that century, the concerns of his people:

. . . in terms of the alienation of lands and resources in their traditional areas and their need to have a say in their own affairs and governance.

The Klondike gold rush brought many settlers to the Yukon, but most left after the rush was over. However, it was the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942 that changed life in the Yukon forever. More and more settlers moved in, taking land and building homes along the 892-kilometre Yukon stretch and beyond. By the 1960s, Indigenous peoples were further pushed off their lands due to resource development.

In 1968, the Yukon Native Brotherhood, with Elijah Smith as its chief, was founded to:

“. . . protect the civil rights of all Yukon Indians” and “assist all Indians in determining their legal status in reference to the natural resources of Canada.”

In January 1973, more than 100 First Nations communities in the Yukon came together and finalized Together Today for our Children Tomorrow. The following month, on February 14, 1973, Chief Elijah Smith and a delegation of Yukon chiefs went to Ottawa to present their historic Together Today for our Children Tomorrow document to then prime minister Pierre Trudeau and to then minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Jean Chrétien.

For many of the chiefs, it was their first time out of the Yukon. The Together Today for our Children Tomorrow document painted a picture of how the Indigenous people of the Yukon viewed themselves and their experiences since colonization. It made proposals for land rights, royalties and a cash settlement. It asked the federal government to establish a committee to study the document and draft legislation based upon it.

Former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau committed to acting quickly and agreed to set up a negotiation committee and a process for modern treaties. After two decades — not so quick — of negotiations, the Umbrella Final Agreement between Canada, Yukon and the Council of Yukon First Nations was finalized. It covered land, monetary compensation, self-government and the creation of boards, committees and tribunals to give First Nations joint management in certain areas. The baton of leadership on these matters is now firmly in the hands of the “children of tomorrow,” as was envisioned by those who came together in 1973.

Fifty years later, leaders representing Yukon’s First Nations, Yukon and Canada met on a government-to-government basis at the intergovernmental forum in Ottawa this past December to advance common priorities, including affordable housing, homelessness, health and mental wellness, land use planning, language revitalization, emergency preparedness, financial agreements and declining salmon stocks.

Honourable colleagues, the Yukon Act asserted Canadian sovereignty over that territory. The devolution agreement between Canada and the Yukon, signed by our colleague Senator Duncan, gave the people of the Yukon authority over their lands, resources and opportunities.

The modern treaties and the fulfillment of the vision of the 14 Yukon First Nations articulated in the historic Together Today for our Children Tomorrow document returns the rights to lands, resources and governance to those original people of the territory. Honourable colleagues, what all Yukoners share is a love for that magnificent land.

Colleagues, Senator Duncan quoted a small section of The Spell of the Yukon in her speech. The last part of my speech today will be the recitation of the rest of that poem — Robert Service’s love letter to the land:

I wanted the gold, and I sought it,

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it —

Came out with a fortune last fall, —

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)

It’s the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep, deathlike valleys below. . . .

Some say it’s a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it

For no land on earth — and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

You feel like an exile at first;

You hate it like hell for a season,

And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kinds of sinning;

It twists you from foe to a friend;

It seems it’s been since the beginning;

It seems it will be to the end.

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow

That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;

I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow

In crimson and gold, and grow dim,

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,

And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;

And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,

With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer — no sweeter was ever;

The sunshiny woods all athrill;

The grayling aleap in the river,

The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness;

The wilds where the caribou call;

The freshness, the freedom, the farness —

O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,

The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

The woods where the weird shadows slant;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

I’ve bade ’em good-by — but I can’t.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,

And the rivers all run God knows where;

There are lives that are erring and aimless

And deaths that just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

There are valleys unpeopled and still;

There’s a land — oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back — and I will.

They’re making my money diminish;

I’m sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish

I’ll pike to the Yukon again.

I’ll fight — and you bet it’s no sham-fight;

It’s hell! — but I’ve been there before;

And it’s better than this by a damsite —

So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;

It’s luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,

It’s the forests where silence has lease;

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

Honourable colleagues, as we mark the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the Yukon Act last year and the fiftieth anniversary of Together Today for our Children Tomorrow, again last year, let’s join Senator Duncan in celebrating this remarkable place which, as Robert Service says, “. . . thrills me with wonder . . .” and “. . . fills me with peace” as it “. . . beckons and beckons, And I want to go back — and I will.” Thank you. Wela’lioq.