Klondike Gold: Celebrating, and Contesting, Discovery
The discovery of the gold sparking the Klondike gold rush remains controversial. At one level it is about the person who found the gold. On another level though there are questions about the meaning of the Discovery story. The continuing celebration of Discovery leads us to ask whose story is this, and who is left out of the story?
Although the prospectors searching for gold often worked in small groups, they knew each other. Because of the dangers faced these visitors to the Yukon helped each other and made rules amongst themselves. In 1894 these men created the Yukon Order of Pioneers (YOOPs) as a mutual-aid society. Membership was based upon their experiences in and knowledge of the Upper Yukon River basin. Over time this group’s shared experiences distinguished them from the mass of gold rush newcomers. That is, the YOOPs carried local history and the values created by their shared experiences.
Also in 1894 the Canadian Government sent in the Northwest Mounted Police to protect Canadian sovereignty and enforce Canadian law. The arrival of the Mounties replaced the increasingly fragile miners’ rules with an authoritative code of laws backed by physical force to ensure compliance. This Canadian takeover was locally legitimized as the YOOP shared memory integrated with the larger national collective memory of the Canadian settler society. This national collective memory emphasized the transformation of an empty continent into a civilized modern society. The first decade after the gold rush saw a transformation in the mining of Klondike gold. The individual miner on his claim was bought out by corporations and his hand labour was replaced by large capital-intensive mining machinery. The YOOPs, concerned that their values and social contributions to Yukon society be forgotten, persuaded the Yukon’s Territorial Council to celebrate Discovery Day as a public holiday in 1911. The next year the holiday started at noon with photos of the Pioneers, a parade and then speeches and a sports day. In the fairground there were balloon ascensions, refreshments and free shows for the children, a football match and a town dance followed in the evening.
However, the main feature of Discovery Day celebrations was the parade. The parade was led by two Pioneers carrying large Union Jacks. They were followed by a group of Mounted Police on horseback and the musical strains of the Dawson Brass Band. The main body of the parade was a collection of floats representing the local businesses. Other floats carried a full-sized replica of the first log cabin in Dawson, a sourdough boat and even Olaf Olsen’s “great wooden cart, the first wheeled vehicle made and used in Dawson.” Chasing behind the floats were the children of the Klondike, “between 100 and 200 strong, many of them born in Dawson or on the gold creeks, all radiant in their glowing health.” After them came “the hardy men who opened the Yukon to the world”, the almost 500 members of the YOOPs. The parade ended with the rigs of the Dawson fire department. A grand parade and slight variations of it still wind through the streets of Dawson today.
The parade is a pageant of Yukon history. First the Pioneers enter the wilderness - the empty space and timeless void before discovery, carrying forward British sovereignty. Their position at the head of the parade, at the point of creation of the Yukon, reinforces their place at the apex of the community’s social hierarchy. They are supported by the Mounties on horseback, the para- military representatives of the Canadian state laying a solid foundation of order for future development. The Stampede itself is represented by the big brass band which, in its turn, announces the incoming tide of civilization. With the beginning of history there is the opportunity to take advantage of progress - log cabins and the wheel. The floats of the mining industry and businesses are ordered by their arrival in the Yukon and their contribution to the economic and material development of he Territory. And with these modern developments, there is also the possibility of a future -- the children. Finally, the pageant concludes with the highest order of civilization -- the local organization of self government for the common good represented by the fire trucks.
With this formalized celebration of Discovery, the YOOPs’ shared memory was abstracted into the Canadian national collective memory. The local story of Discovery entered into Canada’s national story of settlement, economic development and newcomer society. By celebrating this national collective history the Yukon was culturally incorporated into Canadian mainstream society. At the same time this history buried other histories.
Edward Said identifies this denial of history as a tool of an imperialist power seeking to gain control over and understand a foreign region. The creation of a past gives control over the present.1 This YOOP memory of the Yukon past was incorporated into a Canadian national history and helped create and maintain the newcomers’ idea of the Yukon as an empty land, just waiting for discovery and development. This shared memory created a Yukon identity, represented in the parade, and in the process dispensed both power and powerlessness in its society.2
The society established by the YOOPs and the Mounted Police was granted power and Yukon First Nations, not at all present in the shared memory of the nation, were made powerless, effectively invisible. Yukon First Nations have long contested Discovery as a narrative of meaning for the Yukon. Indigenous oral accounts of the rush describe the curious, discourteous and sometimes rapacious behaviour of newcomers that gradually poisoned relations between them. In 1971, Yukon First Nations prepared a call for a new relationship with Canada. Published as Together Today for our Children Tomorrow - A Statement of Grievances and an Approach to Settlement by Yukon Indian People, it pointed out that Yukon original peoples had been left out of history. “Public holidays now have little meaning to the Indian. August 17 - Discovery Day means to the Whiteman the day the gold rush started. It means to the Indian the day his way of life began to disappear.”3
The Umbrella Final Agreement, the treaty concluded between Canada, Yukon and Yukon First Nations in 1992, is a cultural accommodation that includes a rebuilding of history in the Yukon, a redistribution of power that fully includes First Nations. Thus, a better understanding of Discovery offers us a chance to acknowledge different stories, different memories and different ways of living in the Yukon.
Notes:
1. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 66, 108-109.
2. Said, 332.
3. Council for Yukon Indians, Together Today for Our Children Tomorrow - A Statement of Grievances and an Approach to Settlement by Yukon Indian People, (Brampton: Charters Publishing, 1973), 17.