Trailblazers crack Yukon's housing problem
DAWSON CITY - Incredibly simple idea could solve the territory's housing woes
An architect's impression of the 'Colonial Condos' building in Dawson City hints at what the future of housing could look like in the Yukon (Image: White & White Architects)
A small group of morons living just outside Dawson City, Yukon have come up with an ingenious idea to solve the territory's housing crisis.
The idea is based on a novel approach to property development that involves non-Indigenous people taking land and natural resources from Indigenous people without any consultation or permission.
Whilst the appropriation of Indigenous lands and resources has never been tried before, if it proves to be successful here, the idea could quickly spread and solve Canada's housing crisis within just a few short years.
Bold vision
The three trailblazing morons behind the idea outlined their bold vision in a letter to the Yukon News on Wednesday. The letter was penned by Simon Tourigny on behalf of the group.
Tourigny in his letter went to great lengths to lecture First Nations people about First Nations' land rights and described how his group appropriated land and built a sawmill along with three log cabins at Ensley Creek, a river location 25kms south of Dawson City, where they also hunt, trap and forage without permission.
This new and exciting way to exploit Indigenous land is being tested on land that is protected and managed by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation (THFN).
The THFN has on a number of occasions politely asked the group to vacate the land on the basis that they are violating THFN laws.
The group has refused and this refusal has caused a strain on THFN natural resources officers as well as RCMP officers who have been forced to make their way to Ensley Creek on several occasions to try to reason with the group.
The cost of interventions by the THFN and RCMP is falling to THFN citizens and not to the three morons.
Selfish and clichéd
In the letter to the Yukon News, one of the group members Chloe Sergerie was quoted as saying that they represented “too much of a good example of an alternative way of living.”
By "an alternative way of living," what Sergerie meant was "a way of living defined by putting one's own self-interests above everyone and everything else."
On January 12, Sergerie was fined the maximum amount of $500 in the Yukon's Territorial Court for endangering the health of Yukoners by dodging her obligation to self-isolate after she arrived in the Yukon in a school bus, the most clichéd manner possible, on September 25, 2020.
Sergerie had arrived from Alberta but showed a B.C. driver's license to CEMA officers at the Yukon/B.C. border and didn't tell them she was travelling from Alberta. The Yukon at the time was in a travel bubble with B.C. but not with Alberta.
Sergerie was caught out three days later on September 28, 2020 when CEMA officers spotted an Alberta transit sticker on her bus parked in downtown Whitehorse where she was mingling with locals instead of self-isolating.
At her sentencing, Sergerie demonstrated her privilege and self-entitlement by complaining to the judge that she was planning on being self-sufficient in the Yukon (read "planning on taking from Indigenous people") but would now have to work in order to pay the $500 fine.
"No paperwork"
In the letter to the Yukon News, Sergerie says there is "no paperwork" that would apply to the morons' unprecedented demands to carry on their lifestyle on THFN land.
Such a statement required Sergerie to be astonishingly ignorant of the abundance of paperwork created on the backs of generations of efforts by Yukon First Nations to reclaim lands and rights taken by successive colonial governments who began appropriating in the Yukon during the fur trade and ratcheted it up at the onset of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896.
These gargantuan efforts by Yukon's First Nations, made in the face of immense odds, are reflected in "paperwork" including Ta’an Kwäch’än Chief Jim Boss's historic letter to the federal government of Canada (1902), Together Today for our Children Tomorrow (1973), the Umbrella Final Agreement (1993), the Final Agreements and Self-Government Agreements (starting in 1995).
The THFN signed its Final Agreement with the governments of Canada and the Yukon on July 16, 1998. The agreement enshrines the rights of the the THFN to make laws and decisions on its Settlement Land, the same laws that the morons now seek to crap on.
Make the Yukon Great Again
Nowhere in the body of the morons' letter to the Yukon News did it say "Yukon's lifestyle is vanishing" yet this was the title of the letter published on the Yukon News website and social media channels, a fact that suggests one of two scenarios.
The first scenario is that the author of the letter mentioned that title somewhere in his correspondence and the editor of the Yukon News agreed to frame the story as a "vanishing Yukon lifestyle" piece, as if disrespect for First Nations is somehow part and parcel of an idyllic and disappearing Yukon lifestyle.
The second scenario is that the editor of the Yukon News decided for himself to frame the letter as a 'vanishing lifestyle' story instead of couching it in the issues it clearly raises such as systemic racism and the dogged persistence of colonial attitudes in Canada.
The October 6 letter reflecting ignorance of First Nation struggles and rights is presented on the Yukon News website as a 'vanishing lifestyle' piece (Photo: Yukon News/Facebook)
Editors' note: Racism against Indigenous people is alive and well in the Yukon. The Whitewash News is looking for stories that can help highlight this problem and hopefully tackle it. If you have any experiences, tips or story ideas you would like to share, please get in touch. We take very seriously your requests to remain anonymous. This story was published in the 'Satire' section of our website. It is inspired by real news and based on true facts as per the links provided.
