The Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement and the fourteen Final and Self-Government Agreements that flow from it create new and complex arrangements that touch on all facets of public and private life in the Yukon. Land claims settlements are the basis for new relationships at all political levels and create mechanisms for ensuring First Nations jurisdiction over, control of and input into matters of concern to Yukon First Nations. In the two or so years since the enabling legislation has given effect to the first four settlements, Yukoners have come together to discuss and learn what the agreements will mean and do. Lawyers have gathered to learn about new land, tax and government regimes, and First Nations, students and aboriginal people from other parts of Canada and from around the world have convened to talk about the negotiation process, the agreements, land, communities, health, agriculture, relationships with mining and other development interests and the like. There has been less public interest in and discussion of the provisions dealing with Heritage.

The Umbrella Final Agreement (UFA) includes a provision for the creation of the Yukon Heritage Resources Board (HRB) to make recommendations to the federal Minister of the Environment, the territorial Minister of Tourism, and First Nations governments about the care, promotion, identification, protection and management of both moveable (objects and documents) and fixed (sites) heritage resources. There is nothing in the agreement that suggests strategies for accomplishing this task. The relevant section in the UFA Implementation plan (UFA IP 98-99) describes the organizational structure and only requires (pursuant to UFA 2.12.2.8) that it prepare an annual budget and that it make arrangements to share secretariat services with the Yukon Geographic Place Names Board, also created under Chapter 13. Its activities are defined as those referred to in Chapter 13 and to obligations created under Chapter 10, that is, to review proposals to establish parks or designated sites (10.3.4) and to review Special Management Area management plans (10.5.5).

The ambit of the HRB is broad, as we shall see, and yet, as I have noted, there is little in the UFA that clearly points to the vision the negotiators may have had for this board, given that it is limited to making recommendations and determining ownership of disputed objects. It is clear that they saw that preservation and understanding of the past is an important aspect of the Yukon First Nations' new relationship with government and with the territory's other residents. The objectives section of Chapter 13 makes that clear. The actual start-up and initial couple of years of operation of the Board show, as we shall see, that there were and still are difficulties to be overcome and mutual understanding to be developed. In a sense, the experience of the Heritage Resources Board mirrors the challenges all Yukoners face with the implementation of the Final and Self-Government Agreements. Let me explain what I mean by first introducing another element I think is particularly relevant.

In the past, preservation and commemoration of the Yukon's history was, by and large, focussed on the events and activities of non-Native missionaries, miners, traders, trappers, builders and settlers. Yukon First Nations people were rarely included in overview accounts of the territory's history. A couple of older examples will illustrate my point. Walter R. Hamilton's The Yukon Story (1964) begins with a brief account of European exploration of the Northwest, mentioning Indians only insofar as they aided or abetted the explorers. R. A. J. Phillips' 1967 "layman's introduction to the real North," Canada's North, begins with a chapter describing the geography of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. In Chapter Two he spends four paragraphs describing contemporary theories on the peopling of the Americas, twenty-eight on the "Eskimo," (7½ pages), and a mere thirteen short paragraphs describing the lifeways and cultures of northern Indians (for a total of three pages). An epigraph opposite the title page shows what the current thinking was about the Aboriginal inhabitants and the settlers of Canada's North. General the Right Honourable Georges P. Vanier, Governor-General of Canada from 1959 to 1967 is quoted as saying, "Canada's vast unoccupied continent to the north constitutes the fiercest challenge and the brightest promise that has ever fallen to one nation's lot in recorded history" (my italics). The 1969 White Paper, so despised by those it was supposed to help, pointed out that "it is important that Canadians recognize and give credit to the Indian contribution. It manifests itself in many ways; yet it goes largely unrecognized and unacknowledged" (Canada 1969, 8). The White Paper also recognized the vital connection between preservation and protection of cultures and values and the survival of First Nations identities. However, the thrust of the policy statement turned that assertion into a mealy-mouthed statement of the importance of strengthening one culture among many in a diverse and open society: "Indian people," the White Paper said, "must be helped to become aware of their history and heritage in all its forms, and this heritage must be brought before all Canadians in all its rich diversity" (9, emphasis in original).

After the White Paper, in the seventies, when issues of human rights were becoming more current in the United States and spreading elsewhere, one might have expected some changes. But this was not the case despite some promising developments in a couple of Canadian universities. Universities began, in the late 1960s and early 1970s to develop Native Studies programs, originally intended to make themselves more attractive to Aboriginal students. Trent University was surprised in the first years of its program to find that its introductory courses were primarily filled by non-Aboriginal students (Hall 1987, 192). But change in the universities took time to reach the elementary classroom and their curriculum guides. In January 1972, the Yukon Native Brotherhood published a position paper on the education of Yukon Indians. The document's drafters pointed out that

For hundreds of years Canadian school systems have described Indians as uncultured savages, without religious beliefs, bloodthirsty, compassionless, and non-industrious. The truths are finally being discovered by White men and are far different.

No credit has been given to the many contributions made by Indians to science, medicine, art, philosophy and other fields.

. . . As a first step we demand that all books, films, and other recorded material which in any way fosters a negative Indian images, and which is not based on proven facts, be removed from classrooms. This screening of educational material must be done by our own people. (YNB 1972/1977, Sect. X, 58)

Soon after that the Yukon Native Brotherhood submitted its statement of claim to the federal government. The Yukon claim was motivated by many things, including the racist and ignorant stereotypes of the kind we have just seen, but two that stand out in Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow is a desire "to protect [our children] from a repeat of today's problems in the future" and to "have, both the right to be different, and the right to be accepted as fellow-citizens and as fellow-humans" (YNB 1973/1977, 17, 19). That document also states plainly that the goal of the day was to reach a settlement that would "enable the Indian people in the Yukon to live and work together on equal terms with the Whiteman" (YNB 1973/1997, 25). The federal government soon accepted the Yukon claim for negotiation, and a few years later the country was bombarded with images of northern Native people testifying before the Berger Inquiry. But even these signals of change did not, themselves, cause much immediate change.

In 1976, Ted Parnell, then working for the Alberta Human Rights and Civil Liberties Association, published Disposable Native, which contained the results of a study examining "the underlying processes of Native-white conflict in Alberta" (2). In the chapter devoted to Culture and Native Education, he described some particularly offensive stereotypes peddled in school textbooks and insisted that these were seriously damaging:

Native culture in schools has also been greatly misrepresented. This makes it very difficult for the Native child to identify with his cultural tradition and to take a bearing on his position in the larger society. It becomes difficult for him to know who he is, what his heritage is and what his future alternatives are. (87)

These excerpts are selective, but they are representative of the materials available to the public. A quick look at many Canadian history books dating from the Seventies and early Eighties show that most authors associated Aboriginal people with the North, where, it would seem they had retained more authentic cultural practices and values. In the South, by contrast, Aboriginal people were largely ignored or catalogued as a category of urban social problem.

The events of the seventies and changes in university classrooms finally began to have some effect. By the late Eighties Aboriginal people and their pre-contact cultures became standard introductory information and they appeared more often in the Canadian texts. Some historian/anthropologists began publishing ethnohistories, bringing Canada's aboriginal peoples and their contributions to some prominence, though more usually to an academic audience.

Today, though scholars are more sensitive to the need to include previously marginalised peoples, the situation is not all that vastly improved. When we look closely at material published on the Yukon, we find that

Historical interest has been drawn primarily to the missionary efforts, mining, the Klondike Gold Rush, the construction of the Alaska Highway and other wartime projects, and the development of the Yukon's non-indigenous ("settler" is. . . used in other regions) society, largely because of the availability of documentary evidence for these events. (Graham 1997, 1)

In a paper presented to the Alaska Anthropological Association conference held in Whitehorse in April 1997, I pointed out the contemporary imbalance in the presentation of Yukon First Nations heritage and contribution to the history of the Yukon:

Many recent works incorporate introductory chapters on the traditional ranges, lifeways and cultural features of the Yukon's First Nations, but, it seems to me, that most of these studies have not fully realized or integrated the implications of the long occupation of this region by the First Nations. In many accounts, the Native inhabitants of the Yukon have been lumped together as "Indians" (a European concept of longstanding use) (see Francis 1992) or "Natives" and treated with little regard for individual cultural differences or actual historical experiences.

There is another, related aspect to this problem. Yukon public history, that is, the stuff we commemorate in our cityscapes, on our special occasions and holidays, and in our displays to visiting dignitaries, emphasises, almost exclusively, the Klondike Gold Rush. Our contemporary identity as Yukoners is that, apparently, of modern-day prospectors searching for our nuggets of gold (a notion that perhaps translates as "get rich quick"). Even today, when we talk about the arrival and settlement of thousands of people in the gold fields, the Native people who aided and avoided that flood of humanity are rarely mentioned (last year at the International Gold Panning Championships in Dawson, a government official gave a short account of Dawson history that did not include any reference to the Han at all (Sawa 1996)), are characterized in unflattering terms . . . or are presented in a way that diminishes or obscures them . . . .

The question I am asking here is whether we can overcome these traditions of lumping, ignoring or diminishing and find a way to write the history of the Yukon that includes rather than excludes. The short answer is "we must." (1)

The works of such renowned anthropologists as Catharine McClellan and Julie Cruikshank have done much to ensure that there is accessible material about the Yukon First Nations' heritage. In addition, some recent work by academic historians has begun to meld the experiences of First Nations and non-Aboriginal settlers; the most prominent of such books perhaps has been Ken Coates' Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 (1991). More and more, other works are combining the histories of all Yukon peoples but there are yet gaps between the words that are written and the thoughts that are harboured and the public commemorations we enact and codify in statuary and plaques. While we might be about decolonizing the Yukon in political and intellectual ways, we still haven't gone very far in decolonizing our historical celebrations. 1996 was the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of gold in the Klondike but celebrating it raised questions as unwelcome as those raised by the 1992 quincentennial of Columbus' landing in the New World.

The Heritage chapter of the UFA is intended, I believe, to ensure that we get our stories straight and together we preserve the evidence "today for our children tomorrow." The Heritage Resources Board has the mandate to make whatever recommendations it sees fit to ensure that the tales we tell each other and present to the world accurately reflect the historical experience of all cultures in the Yukon. The chapter also imposes an obligation on government to focus its attention and resources to ensure there are levels of each devoted to those heritage resources of particular meaning to Yukon First Nations comparable to those currently devoted to the history of non-Aboriginal development in the territory.

So, how does the agreement do all that? The Umbrella Final Agreement sets out, in Chapter 13, principles and mechanisms designed to redress the historical imbalance in the preservation and promotion of and respect for "the culture and heritage of Yukon Indian People" (UFA 13.1.1.1). Briefly, the chapter contains a list of twelve objectives (13.1.0), a short section of definitions (13.2.0), a section setting out rights of ownership and management of moveable and non-moveable heritage resources (13.3.0), a general section (13.4.0) that includes paragraphs that further define obligations and responsibilities for the promotion, care, ownership, and inventorying of First Nations heritage resources and provides the opportunity for individual Final Agreements to include specific provisions respecting important cultural or heritage resources.

The chapter also provides for the creation of the Yukon Heritage Resources Board (13.5.0), negotiation of specific provisions for a First Nation's involvement in the management of heritage resources in National Parks and National Historic Sites (13.6.0), and the distribution of relevant government research reports to the affected First Nation (13.7.0). It concerns the definition of the form of jurisdiction a First Nation will have over heritage sites in traditional territory (13.8.0), and the procedure to be followed in the event of the discovery of a Yukon First Nation Burial Site anywhere in the territory (13.9.0) (where applicable, similar provisions are negotiated in trans-boundary agreements). The last three sections of the chapter concern the management, repatriation, and preservation of documentary heritage resources (13.10.0), create the Yukon Geographical Place Names Board (13.11.0), and provide occasion for negotiating specific economic opportunities provisions for Yukon First Nations at designated heritage sites (13.12.0).

The Objectives section (13.1.0) of the Chapter sets out rationales for the provisions and correspond in most ways to the issues raised in the discussion above. In general, the objectives are to promote greater respect for, understanding and incorporation of Yukon First Nations values and cultures, oral traditions and heritage in the Yukon's public history and place names, to facilitate research into Native languages, oral traditions and other heritage resources, to ensure consideration of the impact on heritage resources of development in development assessment processes, and to establish mechanisms to ensure the appropriate management of and access to Yukon First Nations heritage resources.

The chief mechanisms for ensuring the objectives are met are the binding provisions of the chapter (by and large obligations imposed on government), the Yukon Heritage Resources Board (HRB) and the Yukon Geographic Place Names Board. The Heritage Resources Board, the UFA declares, "shall be established to make recommendations respecting the management of Moveable Heritage Resources and Heritage Sites to the Minister and to Yukon First Nations" (UFA 13.5.1). While the requirements for government-funded plans, inventories, and consultation will have some bearing on the functioning and programming of the Heritage Branch and Parks Canada, it seems that for the most part, the burden of investigation, contemplation and synthesizing will fall to the Heritage Resources Board, if its members are willing to undertake duties that may lie beyond the strict letter of the agreement. It is hard to tell. There are signs, even now, that it will take some time for the HRB to develop into its mature form and become comfortable with the mandate it has been given. In this respect, the situation of the Heritage Resources Board parallels that of other joint boards established under the UFA.

The HRB was established under the terms of the Umbrella Final Agreement in late March 1995 with a membership of 10, five of whom were nominated by the Council for Yukon First Nations (CYFN) and five by government. Board members serve three-year terms. At its first meeting, Albert James, Vice-Chair of CYFN, addressed the Board and

stressed to members their responsibilities as stewards for the management of Heritage resources throughout the Yukon. For First Nations, this means safeguarding the objects and sites that are the keys to First Nations identity. He expressed the Council's belief that the Board would play an important role in advising both First Nations and other governments of Heritage issues. (YHRB 1996, [1])

The territorial Minister of Tourism, the Honourable Doug Philips, also addressed the Board. He

stressed the significant role the Board will play in advising all levels of government in the territory on Heritage issues, and emphasized the Board's responsibility for protecting and preserving Yukon history for all Yukoners. (YHRB 1996, [1])

It was not "stressed" how the Board was supposed to do that. The members were going to have to figure it out for themselves.

John Ferbey of Whitehorse was the first chair of the HRB. In a recent interview he described some of the initial difficulties the Board experienced. It was clear from the UFA that the HRB was to make recommendations in ten, broad, areas:

13.5.3.1 the management of non-documentary Heritage Resources;

13.5.3.2 means by which the traditional knowledge of Yukon Indian Elders may be considered in the management of Moveable Heritage Resources and Heritage Sites in the Yukon;

13.5.3.3 means by which the traditional languages of Yukon First Nations can be recorded and preserved;

13.5.3.4 the review, approval, amendment or repeal of regulations pursuant to heritage Legislation pertaining to Moveable Heritage Resources and Heritage Sites in the Yukon;

13.5.3.5 the development and revision of a strategic plan for the preservation and management of Moveable Heritage Resources and Heritage Sites in the Yukon;

13.5.3.6 the development, revision and updating of a manual including definitions of ethnographic, archaeological, palaeontological and historic resources, to facilitate the management and interpretation of these resources by Government and Yukon First Nations, such manual to be developed by Yukon First Nations and Government;

13.5.3.7 the development, revision and updating of the inventory of Yukon Indian Heritage Resources provided for in 13.4.8;

13.5.3.8 means by which public awareness and appreciation of Moveable Heritage Resources and Heritage Sites may be fostered;

13.5.3.9 designation of Heritage Sites as Designated Heritage Sites;

13.5.3.10 any other matter related to Heritage Resources of the Yukon.

This list represents a huge area of supposed competence for the board, which it was not likely to have, given that no body of its kind had existed in the Yukon before. In addition, the Yukon heritage community is a tiny one and most of those who have professional training are employed full-time at it. The rest are largely volunteers or free-lancers, who have other demands on their time. In addition, museums officials and workers noted, during the 1997 Museums Roundtable held in conjunction with the Yukon Historical and Museums Association's Annual General Meeting in October 1997, that there has been only small increases in the interest of First Nations people in joining such organizations as the MacBride Museum Society, the Yukon Transportation Museum Society, the Dawson City Museum, or the Yukon Historical and Museums Association (YHMA). Even where there are local museums in predominately Native communities, like Burwash or Teslin, people have been, say museums people, noticeably unwilling to invest what incomes they have in becoming paying members of those museums or serving on the boards (YHMA 1997). Thus, to date, there has been little opportunity for First Nations people to hear the debates and practically no opportunity for them to become involved in them.

Thus, the HRB was faced from the beginning with a daunting job of operationalizing the mandate of the board, conducting board training workshops, becoming familiar with each other, and setting up its secretariat. John Ferbey felt that some of the problems arose from the feeling of Board members that the HRB "doesn't have anything very concrete to do other than determining ownership [of disputed objects]" (pers. comm. 12 November 1997). Another aspect of the Board's implementation problems arose from differences in expectations. Ferbey illustrated his observation by describing meetings the Board held in Dawson City. There was a first meeting with the Dawson First Nation and a second one to which the entire community was invited. Ferbey said it was like "day and night. There was such a difference in expectations that it signalled that we were going to have to do a lot of work. We were supposed to provide a universal view" (pers. comm. 12 November 1997).

The HRB also encountered some resentment and suspicion from people in established government programs and departments who apparently feared the intervention of the Board in their projects and the potential additional costs its recommendations might represent (Ferbey, pers. comm. 12 November 1997). This was perhaps a natural-enough reaction to new ways of doing things, but it represented yet another obstacle for the new board to cope with.

In the first year of its operation, the Board was allocated $159,752 in funding. Of that it spent $50,090 for four meetings and a number of other projects. The first task it undertook was to provide the Yukon Minister of Tourism with recommendations on the government's proposed amendments to the Yukon Historic Resources Act. The Board did not do the work itself. Instead, it commissioned Marc Denhez of Ottawa, an advocate of existing building rehabilitation and reuse, to give his opinion on the relationship between heritage designation and property rights, on the upper limits on penalties for offenses and on the synchronization of territorial legislation with municipal heritage initiatives (YHRB 1996a). These issues were particularly important because the Yukon Party government's amendments to the legislation, which had been passed (but not proclaimed) by the previous NDP government, revolved largely around philosophical differences about the rights of property owners in the buildings they owned. The original legislation had permitted heritage building designation without the owner's consent, though there were appeal mechanisms. The Yukon Party rejected this as government interference in a property owner's right to do as he or she wished with that property and proposed invoking expropriation as the single method of protecting heritage structures in the absence of owner consent. The Board also commissioned a second report from Denhez, "Strategy for Rehab and Re-Use of Heritage Buildings" (1996b). In the Legislative Assembly, the Heritage Resources Board was mentioned. The government later withdrew some of its proposed amendments, announcing smugly in the Legislature (while carefully ignoring the storms of controversy that had raged over the matter) that:

. . .we have withdrawn two amendments concerning the designation process that appeared in the draft bill. The withdrawal of these amendments was done specifically in response to the recommendations provided to me a month ago by the Yukon Heritage Resources Board. It also addresses concerns expressed by a number of the First Nations and the Yukon Historical and Museum Association. (Hansard 1996, line 719)

The government mentioned the Heritage Resources Board, indicating that the Board itself, if not its mandate and purpose, was coming to be considered more and more by government and bureaucrats. Even before its first meeting, the existence and presumed responsibilities of the Board was ammunition in the legislative war over amendments to the Yukon Historic Resources Act. Piers McDonald, opposition critic for tourism, just over a week before the HRB's first official meeting, badgered the government to explain its intentions for the amendments:

I would like to ask the Minister whether or not the Yukon Heritage Resources Board, which is now scheduled to have its first meeting on March 31, will be canvassed for opinions about the major revisions to the act, and whether or not it will be given sufficient time to respond to the government. (Hansard 1995a, line 926)

The Minister, the Honourable Mr. Phillips argued that

. . .if people became aware that they were going to possibly demolish the [Cariboo] hotel [in Carcross] and build a new hotel with a facade like the old hotel, somebody would probably have alerted the Heritage Resources Board or others and people would have moved in, designated it as a historic site, placed a stop-work order on it, as permitted by the act, and the persons may have been out all the money they paid for the hotel. . . . (Hansard 1995b, line 1137)

The NDP clearly supported the Board and the land claims negotiations process that had brought it about. Shortly after the HRB's first meeting, Piers McDonald addressed the Legislature. This excerpt from his address from the debate over the location of the Beringia Centre, gives some idea of what the Opposition thought Chapter 13 and the HRB was for:

Do I support the umbrella final agreement, which says that some of these attractions essentially should expose First Nations culture and history as a priority and not as an off-shoot to some gold rush activity, but as a priority? Yes. I think that is not only what we agreed to and is now law, but it is also something that we should be doing, because, with my limited exposure to tourism and tourists-- have had a little bit--they hunger for First Nations history and First Nations culture. That is a thing that is unique. (Hansard 1995c, line 1661, emphasis added)

Despite the supportive rhetoric, however, it was a tough battle for the Board in the beginning.

The Board immediately undertook activities to establish itself as a working board. It added Jeff Hunston, Director of YTG Heritage Branch, as an ex-officio member of the board, invited individuals and experts to speak to the Board about heritage issues. The members participated in two workshops, one on land-use planning sponsored by CYFN and another on Policy Governance Model for Multi-group Organizations hosted by Yukon College. In addition, the Board co-sponsored, with the Yukon Historical and Museums Association, the 1996 Annual Heritage Lecture in February, which featured Marc Denhez. The Board also investigated the possibility of extending the Canadian Heritage Rivers program to include commemoration of the Yukon River (HRB 1996a).

Behind the accomplishments, however, there were still difficulties to be overcome. The board was finding it difficult to develop a team approach to issues and deciding where to start was nearly impossible. Some members thought the Board ought to find money to take on real research projects. Others merely found being advisory difficult to conceptualize and were a bit envious of the binding boards because their mandates were so much clearer and, as Ferbey noted, "they knew what they were dealing with" (pers. comm. 12 November 1997). To try to understand its role more clearly, the Board invited negotiators to a meeting to explain what had been intended. The meeting was not all that satisfactory because they heard from some negotiators instead of the negotiators.

John Ferbey resigned as Chair of the HRB shortly after the NDP won the territorial election and was replaced by Flo Whyard. At a meeting with the Yukon Historical and Museums Association board of directors in early September 1997, she summarized her experiences as Chair. She too, was obviously feeling some frustration with the operation of the Board. She outlined the work that had been accomplished in 1996/97, which included the board members' participation in the Rupert's Land Colloquium in May-June 1996, and in the Yukon Land Use Planning Council Workshop held in Dawson that September where they announced their commitment "to work with planners to incorporate Yukon heritage as an integral part of the land use planning process" (HRB 1997). Members also attended the Economic Viability of Heritage Properties Workshop, in February 1997. Whyard also emphasized that in trying to meet the requirement that the Board make recommendations on the "means by which the traditional languages of Yukon First Nations can be recorded and preserved" (UFA 13.5.3.3), the Board had commissioned a study on Yukon Native languages. The Board made recommendations to government on the consolidation of the Yukon Historic Resources Act and the amendments to it, on proposed changes to the federal Yukon Archaeological Sites Regulations, and that the Yukon River be commemorated as an historic waterway, recognizing its importance to transportation prior to and since the Klondike gold rush.

According to Whyard, the current board does not see that it is part of its mandate to educate Yukoners about Yukon heritage. It sees itself strictly as an advisory body to government. It is very willing to have members of the public and representatives of organizations come to it, but it does not apparently feel the need to advertise that it is interested in hearing from people. It is clear from listening to both Ferbey and Whyard that the role of the Board is not yet well understood by its members nor by government and that this joint board faces many challenges to reach consensus on some issues. Ferbey wondered whether some of the Board's funding might be used to commission studies or other research into heritage issues that may or may not be before the board. At the moment, it is not clear whether that is a use of the Board's funding that is permissible (pers. comm. 12 November 1997). It seems that it will be necessary in some fashion, however, given that the Board's expertise is still developing.

There is one responsibility that the Board has not yet been required to take on. To date the Board has not been asked to review and make recommendations respecting any of the required management plans for Special Management Areas designated under a Final Agreement (FA). The FAs require government to prepare, or have prepared, a management plan within five year (UFA 10.5.2) and there are quite a lot of them in the first four agreements. Ferbey thought that "this was an area where the Board could have been active," working with local organizations like the YHMA or the Yukon Conservation Society to "pick up consultants, hire expertise to assess the Special Management Area plans; but we never did get any of those" (pers. comm. 12 November 1997).

At the beginning of this paper, I suggested that the experience of the Heritage Resources Board mirrors the challenges all Yukoners face with the implementation of the Final and Self-Government Agreements. The Historic Resources Board is obviously intended, as John Ferbey has said, "to provide a universal view" of heritage issues and the preferences for preservation and commemoration of all Yukoners. Yet, it is also clear, from this discussion that there is a monolithic legacy to be overcome. The universal view will be particularly hard to develop. In heritage matters, as in others, we still seem to act without thought to the changes that the Umbrella Final Agreement, the Land Claims Agreements and the Self-Government Agreements have wrought and will bring. In the Legislative Assembly, not long ago, Mr. Doug Philips said:

It's important that the minister [of Tourism] write Minister Copps and ask her to reconsider the decision to cut back. . . .would the minister be interested in drafting a letter, talking about the importance of the gold rush and the Gold Rush Centennial and the heritage with respect to the Yukon and getting all three parties in this House to sign the letter? As a strong lobby with the minister, I think maybe with the Liberals' signatures on that letter, along with our signature, it would send a pretty strong message to the minister that we think it's significant, important, and we would be more than happy to. . . . (Hansard 1997, emphasis added)

I think that the trials and tribulations--and modest successes--of the Heritage Resources Board can show us what we have yet to do and, also, what we have to look forward to. The HRB's brief story, incomplete though it is, illustrates the lessons we are all going to have to learn as we move towards greater implementation of the Land Claims Agreements and Self-Government Agreements. The HRB, in this sense, is a metaphor for the larger learning we face. We must develop ways to create the "universal view," whether it's in heritage matters or fish and wildlife management. Attitudes and preconceptions must change if we are to co-manage Yukon's heritage. We must change if we are to work together in all the ways required by the Final Agreements. It is in this way that I can suggest that the experiences of the members of the Heritage Resources Board can indeed provide lessons for us all in a post-claims future.
 
 

Works Cited

Canada. 1969. Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy presented to the First Session of the Twenty-eighth Parliament by the Honourable Jean Chrétien, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Ottawa: Queen's Printer.

Coates, K. S. 1991. Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Council for Yukon Indians. 1993a. Umbrella Final Agreement. Ottawa: Supply Services Canada.

Council for Yukon Indians. 1993b. Umbrella Final Agreement Implementation Plan. Ottawa: Supply Services Canada.

Denhez, Marc. 1996a. "Commentary on Amendments to the Yukon Historic Resources Act. Phase I." Paper commissioned by the Yukon Heritage Resources Board. February.

Denhez, Marc. 1996a. "Strategy for Rehab and Re-Use of Heritage Buildings. Phase II: Economics." Paper commissioned by the Yukon Heritage Resources Board. June.

Francis, D. 1992. The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.

Graham, A. 1997. "Spawning Run and Gold Rush: Is a Multicultural History of the Yukon Within Our Grasp?" Unpublished paper presented to the Alaska Anthropological Association Conference, Whitehorse, Yukon, 11 April.

Hall, A. J. "The Genesis of Native Studies in Canada." In Canada's Subarctic Universities/Les Universités canadiennes du Moyen Nord. Peter Adams and Doug Parker, eds. Ottawa: Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies, 192-205.

Hamilton, W. R. 1964. The Yukon Story. Vancouver: Mitchell Press.

Hansard. 1995a. 28^th Legislature, 2^nd Session. Web document located at http://www.gov.yk.ca/hansard/28-legislature/session2/055_Mar_23_1995.html. 23 March.

Hansard. 1995b. 28^th Legislature, 2^nd Session. Web document located at http://www.gov.yk.ca/hansard/28-legislature/session2/058_Mar_23_1995.html. 29 March.

Hansard. 1995c. 28^th Legislature, 2^nd Session. Web document located at http://www.gov.yk.ca/hansard/28-legislature/session2/067_apr_13_1995.html. 13 April.

Hansard. 1997. Blues. 15 December.

Heritage Resources Board. 1996. Heritage Resources Board 1995/96 Annual Report. Whitehorse: Heritage Resources Board.

Heritage Resources Board. 1997. About the Yukon Heritage Resources Board. Briefing notes prepared for the Yukon Historical and Museums Association Meeting. 3 September.

HRB. 1996. See Heritage Resources Board. 1996.

HRB. 1997. See Heritage Resources Board. 1997.

Parnell, T. 1976. Disposable Native. Edmonton: Alberta Human Rights and Civil Liberties Association.

Phillips, R. A. J. 1967. Canada's North. Toronto: Macmillan.

Sawa, T. 1996. "Chief Seeks to Set Straight Dawson History." Yukon News, 23 August: 1,4.

UFA. See Council for Yukon Indians. 1993a.

UFA IP. See Council for Yukon Indians. 1993b.

YHMA. 1997. See Yukon Historical and Museums Association. 1997.

YNB. 1972/1977. See Yukon Native Brotherhood. 1972/1977.

YNB. 1973/1977. See Yukon Native Brotherhood. 1973/1977.

Yukon Historical and Museums Association. 1997. "Museums Roundtable Discussions. MacBride Museum. Whitehorse, Yukon." 25 October.

Yukon Native Brotherhood. 1972/1977. "Education of Yukon Indians, A Position Paper by The Yukon Indian Brotherhood." January 1972. Reprinted in Together Today For Our Children Tomorrow by the Yukon Indian People. 1977. Reprint edition. Appendix 1. Whitehorse: Council for Yukon Indians.

Yukon Native Brotherhood. 1973/1977. Together Today For Our Children Tomorrow by the Yukon Indian People. 1977 Reprint edition. Whitehorse: Council for Yukon Indians.