2018 SPRING Newsletter

Hkànáy
Traditional knowledge, to me, is generation upon
generation of events and experiences carefully
preserved in language, stories, names and songs.
Lifetimes of information passed from grandparent to
grandchild largely unchanged in the telling.
Before I was brought in to Whitehorse to attend public
school I spend my formative years in and around the
Tàän Män (Lake LeBerge), Kwátän Æyá(Fox Lake)
and Tàûllä (Little Fox Lake) areas living, hunting and
trapping, listening to the stories of how my ancestors
travelled the land observing the changes as they came.
That’s how it was. Puttering about along side my
grandfather Frankie Jim, while I watched him cutting
moose meat he told me this story.
“You know” he
said “I was hunting
by myself when I
came to this big
animal with big
horns...I never saw
that kind of animal
before but I needed
to get food.”
“I killed it, opened
it up and cleaned
the insides...” he said “...then I went back to where the
people were to let them know so they could come to
help me pack the meat out”.
“I told the old men about the animal I killed” he
said “when they saw what I got, they told me it was a
moose, they knew about it, but that was the first time
I see that; before I only hunted caribou, there was no
moose around then” he told me. “I was just a young
man, “ he said “maybe twelve or thirteen years old”.
My grandfather was from Hutchi, born probably in the
second to last, or, the last decade of the 1800’s and he’s
passed away some time ago now. I think of him and
Gramma Celia often and I share their teachings with
my children and my grandchildren.
I tell the stories I heard as a child to underpin the
southern tutchone language and history that I pass
along within my family hoping they appreciate, as
I do, the incredible wealth of knowledge left by our
ancestors.
I teach them the names of the moose that now
outnumber caribou on the lands where I grew up;
Hkànáy - moose
Dänjii - bull moose
Dàghür - cow moose
Chį’urà - yearling moose
Dèsia - calf moose
as well as a couple of words for caribou;
Mezi - caribou
Mezi dèsia - calf caribou.
The moose and the caribou are used almost in its
entirety for food, shelter, clothing, footwear, utensils,
tools and toys.
There are three moose resident at the Yukon Wildlife
Preserve; using the southern tutchone words for
moose, see if you are able to identify each when you
next visit their pasture.
Shirley Adamson is
an Elder of the Tagish
Nation. She is a
member of the Yukon
Wildlife Preserve
Operating Society
Board of Directors and
chairs its Animal Care
and Use Committee.
6
Above Left: . Dàghür - JB is now almost 4 years old. She’s seen here resting
and ruminanting in a rather wintery scene. Above Right: Shirley, as
captured by Alistair Maitland.
Volume 12, Issue 4