Kaska Territory: The place where animals go to get fat
by Chloe O'Loughlin
A giant swath of wilderness straddles northern B.C. and the Yukon. It's the traditional territory of the Kaska Dena, an almost pristine landscape where, as the Kaska saying goes, "animals go to get fat". CPAWS has supported the Kaska's land use planning process for many years.
Recently, the Kaska penned this Vision Statement:
The Kaska Nation wants to reclaim our role as stewards of land and resources in our traditional territory. Toward this end, we want to develop long-term capacity and capability to promote and implement a Kaska land ethic. Our land ethic is an ecosystem-based approach to land management, based on the maintenance of biodiversity and ecological integrity. This approach requires that areas of high ecological, cultural, spiritual and aesthetic values are identified and protected, and ecological processes continue to generate biological diversity.
Our traditional territory is 24 million hectares (93,000 square miles), about the size of the entire state of Oregon. It spans three provinces and territories (British Columbia (BC), Yukon and Northwest Territories) and constitutes fully 25% of the Yukon Territory, and 10% of the entire land area of BC. The majestic northern boreal forest regions of interior BC and the Yukon have some of the continents most expansive and impressive wilderness areas, with a great diversity of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Extensive mountain ranges and wild rivers frame pristine boreal forest watersheds. Large free ranging populations of woodland caribou, moose, Dall's sheep, Stone sheep, a full suite of large carnivores, and hundreds of thousands of migrating neo-tropical songbirds and waterfowl make their home in these diverse boreal landscapes. Only a few roads cross this region, one of the wildest landscapes on the North American continent.
When a place is as wild as the Kaska territory, animals become part of human culture. In the centre of this newsletter, CPAWS celebrates these Kaska creatures. With Kaska permission, we used Kaska words for the animals, so this poster can serve as an educational tool for Kaska children into the future. We hope that non-Kaska children and adults also find it instructive. These Kaska words provide a glimpse into a very old language, where the animals were named by the people who lived with them.
At its heart, this Ne' ah' poster is a depiction of an ideal wilderness, with healthy, large animals. At CPAWS, we hope British Columbia continues to have large areas where animals can get fat.
We know this is what the Kaska want too. We are confident that the Kaska will continue to make conservation paramount in their territory. The Kaska people will undoubtedly remain some of the greatest environmental stewards of British Columbia.
Download the poster (.pdf)
CPAWS - British Columbia Chapter