{"id":9641,"date":"2021-07-08T10:46:32","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T14:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=9641"},"modified":"2021-09-09T07:26:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T11:26:11","slug":"episode-383-meet-moses-lord-indigenous-person-yukon-territory-1962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=9641","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 383 MEET MOSES LORD…INDIGENOUS PERSON, YUKON TERRITORY, 1962"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EPISODE 383    MEET MOSES LORD…INDIGENOUS PERSON, YUKON TERRITORY, 1962<\/p>\n

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Our Yukon job in 1961 was my closest relationship with first nations people\u2026mostly<\/div>\n
Northern Tuchone from their Mayo Landing Reserve.   <\/div>\n

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This is Moses Lord having canned peaches for lunch on the job.  He seemed to<\/div>\n
be an important person among his people.<\/div>\n

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\u201cDo you want to crawl into an old mine?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSure do.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThen come along with Dinky and me\u2026I\u201dll bring a lantern.\u201d<\/div>\n
(Strange, I do not remember Moses ever calling me Alan\u2026)<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
alan skeoch<\/div>\n
July 2021<\/div>\n

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MEET MOSES LORD<\/div>\n

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My two previous indigenous person stories were based on short<\/div>\n
 meetings.  Very short\u2026maybe 5 minutes max.   Enough time to make<\/div>\n
a lasting impression on me but really not enough time to make into a big<\/div>\n
deal.  Hell, the first contact was not even with a real indigenous person. In that<\/div>\n
incident I was mistaken for a First Nations person. \u201cLook, there\u2019s an Indian up<\/div>\n
on that rock outcrop.  Take a picture, quick.\u201d  It was m sitting on the outcrop\u2026skins<\/div>\n
bed brown by exposure.<\/div>\n

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The second incident lacked humour.   An incident of which I am not proud\u2026even<\/div>\n
at the  time in May, 1960, I was uneasy with what I had done.  I took pictures<\/div>\n
that would have been best not  taken.  Unflatteirng pictures.  <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Now is the time for my third experience with First Nations people.  Much much longer.<\/div>\n
Moses Lord and I worked together from May to September, off and on.  He was one<\/div>\n
of our employees.  Not hired because he was indigenous. Just hired from the available<\/div>\n
labour pool in Mayo Landing, Yukon Territory.<\/div>\n

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The only way I knew he was aboriginal was because of his name.  Moses Lord had<\/div>\n
the clear ring of an imposed name given by some kind of  Christian missionary .<\/div>\n
Moses was old enough to be my father\u2026I was 22 and he seemed somewhere between<\/div>\n
50 and 60.   <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Now I wonder if he had been one of the native children yanked from their<\/div>\n
parens aNd put in a kind of prison known as a \u2018residential school\u2019.   That thought<\/div>\n
never crossed my mind in 1962.  I did not even know much about residential schools.<\/div>\n
The subject never came up during the whole summer.  <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Moses was a nice man to work with.  Friendly.  Once he knew I was interested in<\/div>\n
finding abandoned placer gold mines dating back to the end of the 19th century<\/div>\n
he showed me one that we could explore.  Most placer gold mines were vertical..i.e.<\/div>\n
miners dug down through the permafrost to bed rock where gold nuggets and<\/div>\n
gold dust was possibly trapped in the cracks or faults in the rock.  A few were<\/div>\n
horizontal where miners had tunnelled into hillsides.   The one that Moses<\/div>\n
showed me was fantastic as the tunnel was festooned with ice crystals and seemed<\/div>\n
a fairyland.  At one point we even found well worn shovels and pickaxes.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
So I considered myself close to Moses.  When I began writing this episode I expected<\/div>\n
to say how a warm relationship was established. That would be an overstatement.<\/div>\n
Granted we got along well although<\/div>\n
it must have been hard for Moses who was perhaps 50 years of age having to do what<\/div>\n
a 22 year old \u2018boss\u2019 decided was necessary.<\/div>\n

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In retrospect I realize we were not close.  Friends\u2026yes.  But I had no idea whether Moses was Northern Tuchone<\/div>\n
like most local First Nations were.  Most but not all.  I knew nothing of his family except he lived in a house<\/div>\n
on the reserve \u2018that seems filled with women of all ages\u2019.  He was married\u2026had children\u2026perhaps<\/div>\n
grandchildren but I never asked about them.  In other words there was social distance between<\/div>\n
us.   This was not intentional.  Perhaps due to respect… for I noticed other First Nation workers seemed to<\/div>\n
defer to Moses.   \u201cDinky\u201d for instance who is in the mine tunnel with Moses.  Dinky had a trap line\u2026Moses related how<\/div>\n
a wolverine crawled down the stove pipe of Dinky’s cabin\u2026vicious, solitary creatures.  Dinky never said a word.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
When the job was over and I was packing up our equipment in September one of the local<\/div>\n
people\u2026I think it was Moses\u2026said:<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\u201cHow would you like a set of caribou antlers?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cLove to pay for a set.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo pay. There is a set leaning against our house\u2026you can have them.\u201d<\/div>\n

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And I still have them.<\/div>\n

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Caribou antlers.   I never saw a wild caribou in all my  years doing mining exploration.<\/div>\n

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DINKY with Moses (shoulder)\u2026huge fire with lots of moss<\/div>\n
piled on to get smoke \u2026 our defence against the flies.<\/div>\n

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Decades later, around 1980 I was asked to do a radio story on CBC<\/div>\n
about something related to the Yukon and I mentioned Moses.  When<\/div>\n
the broadcast was over i was called to the broadcast booth.  \u201cCall for<\/div>\n
you, Alan\u2026from the Yukon.\u201d   One of Moses Lord\u2019s daughtert wanted to <\/div>\n
say thank you for mentioning her dad.   Maybe we were closer than I thought.<\/div>\n

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SOURCE COMMENT\u2026RE NA-SHO YAK DUN\u2026.FIRST NATION PEOPLE IN MAYO LANDING<\/div>\n

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The First Nation of Na-Cho Ny\u00e4k Dun<\/a> represents the most northerly community of the Northern Tutchone language and culture group. In the Northern Tutchone language the Stewart River is called Na Cho Nyak, meaning Big River. <\/font><\/p>\n

Historically, the First Nation of Na-Cho Ny\u00e4k Dun lived and trapped throughout the area, using the rich supply of game animals, fish, birds, and numerous plants for food and for medicinal purposes.   <\/font><\/p>\n

Their lifestyle required traveling throughout the First Nation\u2019s traditional territory at various times of the year, for hunting, fishing, and gathering food to survive.<\/font><\/p>\n

Today, the Na-Cho Ny\u00e4k Dun has a membership of 602. As a self-governing First Nation, the First Nation has the ability to develop and adopt laws on behalf of their citizens and their Settlement lands.<\/font><\/p>\n

They are actively involved in affairs of the Mayo community to promote a better, healthier lifestyle for its future generations and a strong economy based on its rich natural resources.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPISODE 383    MEET MOSES LORD…INDIGENOUS PERSON, YUKON TERRITORY, 1962 Our Yukon job in 1961 was my closest relationship with first nations people\u2026mostly Northern Tuchone from their Mayo Landing Reserve.    This is Moses Lord having canned peaches for lunch on the job.  He seemed to be an important person among his people. \u201cDo you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}