In a community where you'll find Protect the Peel stickers on everything from playground equipment to coffee mugs and ball caps to garbage can stands...
Mary Walden Special to the News INUVIK It doesn't seem to matter where the Yukon government sets up its Peel consultation shop, the message it receives is pretty much the same. Protect the watershed. Accept the final recommended land use plan.
Gwich'in Tribal Council vice-president Norman Snowshoe was in no mood for government bafflegab when he turned up at the Yukon's open house on the Peel land-use plan Tuesday.
Vuntut Gwitchin elder and Yukon dog-mushing legend Stephen Frost is a straight shooter. The 81-year-old admits he doesn't know much about the far away Peel River watershed.
Just hours after Yukon government workers had packed up their Peel maps and heaved a huge sigh of relief that they'd survived seven days of public grilling, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake rattled the mountains.
Tr'ondek Hwech'in elder Percy Henry wants the Peel River watershed protected, and he's wearing the T-shirt to prove it. His mouth curling up in a mischievous grin, Henry proudly unzips his leather jacket.
When Frank Patterson was only 18, he went by horseback into the Peel with his friend Jimmy Johnny. It changed his life. "I was troubled but that four months that I spent out there - I came back with a different perspective.
Tetlit Gwich'in elder Robert Alexie has travelled to places in the Peel that most people have only read or heard about. Raised on the Trail River, he's been up the Hart, Wind, Blackstone and Ogilvie Rivers - sometimes by dog team, sometimes on foot.
If 90-year-old Eunice Mitchell had been given a chance to speak, she would have asked about the mess left behind by oil companies at the Peel's Caribou River.
With the Chinese snapping up Yukon mineral properties, the need to protect the Peel Watershed from industrial development has become even greater, said the chair of the North Yukon Renewable Resources Council.
Warped by time and discoloured by fire, a monster fuel storage tank sits exactly where its steel plates were welded into place nearly 50 years ago. It should be removed and the site cleaned up.
