(CS4.5) Memories in Ice: Collaborative Development of Cultural Interpretations of the Alpine Hunting Landscapes of the Southern Yukon

The Yukon Ice Patch Research Project is a 26 year long landscape archaeology project that features engaged collaboration with Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, Kluane First Nation, Kwanlin Dün First Nation, Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, Teslin Tlingit Council and Cultural Services Branch, Yukon Government. This project focuses on collaborative research in the outstanding alpine cultural landscapes of the upper Yukon River drainage system, where hunting groups set out into their traditional hunting territories to harvest mountain caribou and thinhorn sheep. In antiquity, these animals provided First Nations peoples with an abundance of resources needed to prepare for winter, including food and the materials for clothing, shelter and tools. It is a landscape ecologically defined by a mosaic of critical resources for browsing animals. One of these resources include hundreds of ice and snow patches where sheep and caribou seek respite from insects thereby becoming a landscape feature around which people organized traditional hunting activities. Because of this, hunting tools lost over the duration of this nine millennia long tradition are now melting out in response to climatic warming. These hunting territories are also dotted with built hunting structures that now serve as monuments to Indigenous cultural maintenance of this landscape. In this talk the Yukon Ice Patch Research Group will outline the many layered insights alpine research have granted us as we seek to understand evidence of an ancient and outstanding hunting tradition, and further discuss how these insights can assist in cultural education programs and be applied to forward looking landuse planning initiatives.