FORT MCPHERSON, N.W.T. - Fort McPherson residents turned out in force for a Yukon government meeting Tuesday on the Peel River watershed land use plan.
More than 200 people crammed into the Johnny D. Charlie community hall – from school children to elderly grannies – to discuss the river that flows past their front door.
Even though most of the watershed lies in the Yukon, McPherson’s Tetlit Gwich’in have strong historical ties to the entire region.
They still rely on caribou from that land and the fish from the river. And they know that whatever happens upstream could eventually come down the river to haunt them.
“We are the first community that will be affected by any sort of development,” Tetlit Gwich’in official Diane Koe told the six-member Yukon contingent who flew in from Whitehorse for the four-hour meeting.
“The world is changing drastically and it’s because of development and it’s because of industries that ruin land and water all over this world,” she said.
“As Gwich’in people, we want to keep the Peel watershed free from development.”
The Tetlit Gwich’in Renewable Resource Council said the only plan it supports is the one it helped to create.
It worked with the Peel commission for years, sharing its knowledge and providing input at every stage in the planning process.
“It is disappointing and alarming…to see that work pushed aside for the government’s new plan, which clearly ignores the years of consultation with us and everyone else who was consulted,” said the council’s Wilbert Firth in a written statement.
The government’s new proposals “do not reflect any of the feedback that we have given after all those years of consultation,” he said. “This is not protection, this is development.”
For Abe Stewart Jr., clean water is key.
“If we look after our land and our water, they in turn will look after us. That’s the way it’s been for generations and generations and that’s still the way it is today,” he said.
And it won’t be any different for future generations.
“They’ll carry this fight on for as long as the river flows, they’ll carry it on,” he said. “It’s never the end. It’s never the end for us.”
Elder Eileen Koe said the Peel’s wilderness helped her heal.
She credits a four-month stay in the Snake River area in the 1970s as changing her “unbalanced life.”
Grappling with the impact of years spent at residential school, coupled with the recent loss of two people she loved, her father sent her upriver to the Snake to get her out of the community.
The “harsh, but beautiful” landscape helped her deal with her overwhelming grief, she said.
“I came out of there with a better understanding of who I was and what I needed to do,” said Koe, who now helps others who are grieving.
The McPherson meeting was the last one the Yukon government is holding in the communities.
It’s accepting public submissions on the Peel plan until Feb. 25. All that input will be posted on its website shortly after that.
It then plans to enter government-to-government negotiations with the four affected First Nations – Mayo’s Na-Cho Nyak Dun, Dawson’s Tr’ondek Hwech’in, Old Crow’s Vuntut Gwitchin and the Gwich’in Tribal Council.
The First Nations have already said they support the commission’s Peel plan and have threatened to take the Yukon to court if it tries to push through its new proposal.
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