Taylor Roades (b. 1990) is a Canadian documentary photographer based in Victoria, British Columbia. Her work is grounded in place and the natural sciences, exploring our connection to land, culture, climate and the environment.
Taylor Roades (b. 1990) is a Canadian documentary photographer based in Victoria, British Columbia. Her work is grounded in place and the natural sciences, exploring our connection to land, culture, climate and the environment.
Photographed: August 2023- November 2024
Location: The traditional territories of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Champagne and Aishihik First Nation, Kluane First Nation, Kwänlin Dün First Nation, Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, and Teslin Tlingit Council.
Southern Yukon, Canada
Southern Yukon, Canada
Published: Forthcoming 2027
Exhibited: Kluane Museum, Burwash Landing YK July 2026
Exhibited: Haa Shagóon Hídi (Our Ancestors House), Carcross YK July 2026Exhibited: Teslin Heritage Centre Aug 15th - Sept 15th 2026
Exhibited: Whitehorse Visitors Centre: Sept 18th - Oct6th
Funded By: Trebek Initiative, National Geographic Society, and Royal Canadian Geographic Society
Meaning and Memory in the Yukon Ice Patches documents the people, landscapes, wildlife, and hunting tools behind the Yukon Ice Patch Project, an annual land monitoring initiative that tracks hundreds of rapidly disappearing alpine snow and ice patches stretching from Kluane Lake to Teslin Lake.
During this work, community members have recovered incredibly well-preserved traditional hunting tools that have been lost in the ice, some for more than 9,300 years. The recovery of these items has inspired people to re-engage with the stewardship of the mountains on their lands and to develop cultural interpretations that authentically tell their stories.
Through portraits, landscapes, wildlife, and still lifes, these photographs explore a living relationship with the land and a hunting tradition that extends back thousands of years.
The project follows the collaboration between Elders and Youth, Heritage Experts and Scientists, Artists and Hunters, and archaeologists from the Government of Yukon, working alongside the heritage departments of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, Kluane First Nation, Kwänlin Dün First Nation, Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, and Teslin Tlingit Council.
Please click on the image for captions.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
A herd of caribou relaxes on an ice patch during mid summer heat. Caribou use ice patches in the summer for relief from the insects and warm temperatures at lower elevations. Snow, even in the summer, is an important part of caribou habitat. In the southern Yukon we find both permanent and perennial bodies of snow dotting the landscape in amongst critical habitat locations. The caribou's predictable use of mountain habitats has guided Indigenous hunting traditions since time immemorial.
Kwänlin Dün, Carcross/Tagish, and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The true significance of ice patch archaeology is the preservation of materials that rarely survive through time. This allows First Nations to interpret their design and artistic traditions into the ancient past.
The three osseous throwing dart points pictured are carved from caribou antler. All three points originally held stone projectile points, and each piece was constructed employing different designs that related to the function, identity or skills set of the people who made them.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün, Carcross/Tagish, and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
A traditional barbed antler arrowhead featuring a native copper end-blade.
Copper was considered a prestige item in traditional First Nation culture and its inclusion on this tool indicates its owner identified as an important or wealthy person. This 900 year-old piece was recovered from a now extinct ice patch in the overlapping traditional territories of the Carcross/Tagish and Kwänlin Dün First Nations. Dated by the A.E. LaLonde Carbon Dating Laboratory.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The first Ice Patch discovery was made in 1997 near Kusawa Lake at the Thandlat Ice Patch site, after a sheep hunter reported a piece of wood emerging from the ice. The surprising age of the find led to funded surveys in 1998, carried out by Yukon Environment and Yukon Heritage Branch (Government of Yukon) as well as Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, and the University of Alberta.
A community monitoring project blossomed to include Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Kluane First Nation, Kwänlin Dün First Nation, Ta'an Kwäch'än Council, and Teslin Tlingit Council.
Together, the Ice Patch Research Group works to monitor the impacts of climate change, preserve ancient hunting weapons, and develop authentic stories about Yukon＊s ancient hunting landscapes.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The layers of alpine ice preserve records of caribou and sheep use spanning 9,000 years with the dung that was left behind. Outfitters and biologists first noted this phenomenon observing that some mountain top areas smelled like barns or stables due to the manure melting free from the ice. With climate change we are seeing incredible quantities of dung melt free of the ice every year. This release of dung is fertilizing the surrounding environment. This has also allowed scientists to study ancient animal diet and health by examining the contents of the dung which has allowed us to interpret animal land use and environmental adaptation through time.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The Gladstone Ice Patch is the most ancient non-glacial mountain ice body in the project area. Gladstone contains hundreds of layers of ice that each contain remnants of Yukon’s history. The story that ice patches like Gladstone tell us is that the hunting traditions of Yukon First Nations were not only long lasting, but stable for a period spanning close to 9500 years. The glaciated St. Elias Mountains can be seen in the background.
Carcross/Tagish First Nation Traditional Territory
For forty-two years Donna Wolfe has been an environmental monitor, and cultural programs officer for the Carcross-Tagish First Nation. She sits in a hunting blind on Mt. Montana
"I was interested in preservation of our land, and looking after it, and making sure people aren't contaminating or destroying it. These historic sites I think are important to preserve because if we could go back in time and have them the way they were in the first place built, then our great-grandchildren could see the originality of it."
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross/Tagish Traditional Territory
Hunting was an organized practice where people used their knowledge of geography, ecology, and animal behaviour to harvest successfully.
These lookouts stand as ancient monuments to that knowledge because they are located at places that were considered important and reliable hunting spots to their ancestors.
You can stand at these features and “look out” at what ancient hunters saw and interpret the landscape values they saw as significant for their way of life.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross/Tagish Traditional Territory
The people of the Yukon transitioned to hunting with the bow and arrow about 1000 years ago. These 200 year-old hunting arrows have rarely preserved fletching.
This style of arrow is the most common form of large game arrow referenced in First Nation histories. The bone points on the tip were designed to detach into the animal on impact, and the hunter would track the wounded animal until it died. Radiocarbon dating analysis, as well as an analysis of the distinctive fletch binding style, suggest that these two arrows were made by the same person, and likely lost on the same hunt.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Ice Patches are not a common landscape feature. It is only the perfect combination of snow fall, seasonal temperatures, and altitude that have allowed them to form in the alpine regions of the Yukon. Ice Patches form in the winter during marine weather incursions from the Gulf of Alaska which bring precipitation, but more importantly, extreme southerly wind events that concentrate snow in “drifts” on the north faces of the mountains of the southern Yukon. This snow then survives through the summer in areas shaded from the sun creating a landscape phenomenon of persistent snow understood and used by animal and human alike.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross/Tagish Traditional Territory
The ice patch at the top of Mt. Granger covered in a fresh layer of snow. Over the past 7,000 years cool climates have resulted in these drifts surviving through summers and growing over time.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Photograph of Ron Chambers Champagne and Aishihik First Nation Elder pictured here with his walking stick.
We understand life in the mountains through the knowledge of our Elders. Archaeological analysis can only tell us so much about traditions of Yukon First Nations People. Elders’ stories and traditional historic accounts have provided deep insight into the value of landscapes where people hunt and this allows us to understand the tools and objects that have been left behind in the ice.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
In the summer of 2020, a Champagne and Aishihik First Nations field crew discovered this slotted antler dart point with numerous chert and obsidian microblades adhered into slots using spruce resin glue. This piece was radiocarbon-dated by sampling a .04 gm spec of spruce resin removed from the slots which returned an age of 7100 years before present. One of very few projectile slotted points with intact blades in the Yukon River drainage.
Dated by A.E. LaLonde Radiocarbon Dating Lab in Ottawa Canada.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The broken and partially degraded tip of a throwing dart with the wood binding and sinews still present. It appears to have been buried by creek sediments after it melted free from ice at the Gladstone Ice Patch in Champagne and Aishihik First Nation Territory. Dating of this piece returned an age of 6000 years before present.
Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory.
Piece of a 500 year-old birch wood snowshoe frame
Dr. Gary Salazar, a senior AMS Physicist puts samples into the accelerator mass spectrometer at the A.E. LaLonde Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. A.E. Lalonde Laboratory is where small samples of Ice Patch artifacts are sent to be radiocarbon dated.
Before the advent of radiocarbon dating in the 1960s archaeologists often struggled to understand the age of the objects they recovered. But Radiocarbon is not an archaeological method. It involves the intersection of chemistry and physics thus learning the age of an object requires sending samples to the laboratory. For the technique to work you must obtain a sample of an organic material that was alive around the time of its use and the piece is sent off to a team of chemists. What the chemists do is measure the ratio of unstable Carbon 14, versus stable Nitrogen 14 to see how long the organic material has been dead. The less Carbon 14 you have, the older the object is.
Sample size matters
Magazine of reduced graphite samples being placed into AMS machine at the A.E. LaLonde Carbon Dating Laboratory in Ottawa, Canada.
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is a technique that allows us to distinguish and detect different types of atoms from a sample on the basis of differences in atomic weights (mass). It works by accelerating charged ions to high energies, separating them based on mass, and then detecting them to determine their abundance.
This method allows for precise measurements from very small samples, and is particularly useful for dating material isotopes like radiocarbon 14C.
Sample size matters, when working with important artifacts, meaning less damage.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The Yukon's ice patches exist in remote areas of the Yukon that do not have any form of inherent protection. Together, First Nations and Yukon Government have added protections to five mountain landscapes that have exceptional hunting records associated with Ice Patch sites. These sites will be designated as Territorial Historic Sites and are true monuments to Yukon First Nation hunting traditions. An Ice Patch on Thulsoo Mountain, photographed here, is one of these sites.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The Ice Patch Research Group works to understand how the loss of permanent alpine ice might affect caribou. By the 1960s caribou populations in the southern Yukon suffered through habitat loss and poor hunting management.
The Southern Lakes Caribou Relationship Plan is a collaboration of the First Nations and Yukon Government that has worked to steadily rehabilitate caribou populations. Ice and snow loss is just one of many threats to caribou health.
Teslin Tlingit Council Traditional Territory
In the summer of 2020 the Teslin Tlingit Council discovered what is believed to be a cache of poles (foreground) used to build a 2000 year-old caribou fence. Alicia Williams (mid-ground) is a Research Specialist for the Teslin Tlingit Council and a Teslin Citizen.
"Before I went out [to the Ice Patches] for the first time, my grandma actually said that it was really nice that I wasn't just going out as an archaeologist or heritage research specialist, but also as a Tlingit person, and that we're still documenting not only the past, but also the present, because we're still there and doing things. Maybe not in a traditional sense, but we're still working our way back to that."
A Group of Spearheads
Champagne and Aishihik, Carcross Tagish, and Kwänlin Dün First Nations Traditional Territory.
Stone points from ancient throwing darts with well preserved residues of paint and adhesive. While the preservation of stone in the archaeological record is expected, the adhesives and the use of decorative colour are often lost to time.
Spruce resin is used to help adhere the point to the dart shaft. The visible red tint comes from red ochre paint applied over body of the point or mixed into the resin glue.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün, Carcross/Tagish, and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Deuces Wild Creek was named by Art John's family in the 1950s-60s who would name some creeks after the poker rules they used at particular hunt camps. Here sits an ancient hunting blind.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
A traditional wooden arrowhead with a native copper end-blade recovered from the mountains near Gladstone Lakes.
Copper was considered a extremely valuable material and its use in construction of this piece implies the prestige status of its owner. The babiche lashings were wrapped meticulously - no overlap.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Like other Yukon ice patches, Little Gladstone pictured here developed on a north-facing slope where drifting snow accumulated over thousands of years, remaining frozen through most summers. These cold, stable conditions allowed organic materials —normally quick to decay—to survive for millennia.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
Mountain habitats are made up of complexes of ecological features that contribute to the health of the animals that rely on them. This image shows the proximity of an important mineral lick on the cliffs below an ice patch (background top left) where 160 artifacts have been recovered. These cliffs are where thinhorn sheep will congregate for safety from mountain predators. You will note sheep tracks in the snow leading to the cliffs and caves.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Many of the oldest artifacts recovered from the Ice Patches include slotted microblade dart points. This design involved glueing razor thin stone blades into the slots of a bone or antler point, seemingly to increase the damage they would do. The blades for these points were struck from a specially designed stone core allowing the maker to remove many blades form a small piece of stone.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün, Carcross/Tagish, and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Kadin Hare and Justin Jacobs, Ta'an Kwäch'än Land Guardians, sit in an ancient hunting blind in the Deuces Wild Creek cultural landscape. Indigenous Guardians are the eyes and ears on-the-ground, monitoring ecological health, maintaining cultural sites, and protecting sensitive areas and species.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
While most of the objects recovered from ice are lost hunting weapons, other pieces of traditional equipment are occasionally found, including this 1400 year-old moccasin.
This piece was recovered from melting ice in a very fragile condition, with the consistency of wet paper, and was meticulously conserved and reformed over many months of effort.
Design details of this piece conform with traditional Dene footwear construction. Analysis of this object's design has been used to demonstrate a cultural relatedness to other Na-Dene (also referred to as ＆Athapaskan) speaking peoples who migrated southward into today's American southwest at some point in the second millennium A.D.
Carcross Tagish First Nations Traditional Territory
Delany and Montana Prysnuk are sisters and citizens of Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, they run hide tanning workshops through their business Copper Caribou
"Cultures all around the world, people tan hides and have been tanning hides forever, you know? So, it's not like it's unique up here, it's not unique to Northern Nations.
But the Ice Patches, they show the longevity and the continuity of how important those practices are, and still are, for Indigenous peoples. Like, just to find preserved hide, preserved sewn moccasin, in melting out of the ice patch, you are transported back, that's a direct connection to ancestors.
People practicing hide tanning today, is a direct connection to those long-standing practices that were interrupted through the process of colonization and non-Indigenous settlers coming into the area, Gold Rush specifically into this area”
Mt. Montana Blind
Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory.
Often people who come across hunting blinds in the alpine often don’t realize these piles of stones were placed there thousands of years ago, and it is a struggle to communicate that to the general public.
“Treat them [the blinds] with respect and don't touch. Don't touch. Just take pictures. Don't move the rocks. Don't change what the old people did. Just feel what they did. Just enjoy what they did.” - Donna Wolf, Environmental Monitor for the Carcross Tagish First Nation.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The detachable foreshaft of a 2100 year-old throwing dart. This design appears to be the forbearer of traditional arrowhead designs where the foreshaft is designed to detach on impact with the animal being hunted.
Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory.
An aerial perspective of hunting blinds on the landscape, without a closer look you may miss them, and that is the point.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Karrie Brown, a Citizen of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, stands before the Gladstone Ice Patch, a site supported by nearly three decades of sustained monitoring and community-led programming. She first visited this area as a child during an ice patch camp, returning now to a landscape that holds early memories of learning on the land.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Ice patches are primarily caribou refuges and human hunting grounds, but bears can and do make use of them opportunistically. They might pass through ice patches while hunting or foraging, though they are more often around rivers, berry patches, or caribou calving areas. Here you can see bear claw marks in the ice.
Champagne and Aishihik, Carcross Tagish, and Kwänlin Dün First Nations Traditional Territory.
Traditional barbed bone or antler arrowheads. These arrowheads were considered ‘wounding’ arrows in which the heads would detach from the arrow shaft on impact with an animal. After this happened the animal would be tracked until it passed away. During traditional mountain hunts, this style of arrow was used for hunting caribou.
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
Portait of Dr. Christine Prior, Christine joined the Radiocarbon Laboratory in 2023. She received her PhD in Archaeology specializing in 14C dating of artifacts from the University of California, Riverside. Radiocarbon dating measures the decay of radioactive carbon-14 in once-living organisms. While carbon-12 and carbon-13 remain stable, carbon-14 slowly decays after death. By measuring how much C-14 is left, scientists like Prior can calculate when an organism lived—up to about 50,000 years ago.”
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Many of the places monitored no longer have ancient ice. This image depicts a growing reality; a ghost patch completely devoid of ice.
In this photo you can see how an incredibly rich successor vegetation has grown up out of the composting caribou dung showing how ice formation and loss are transforming the local ecosystem of these landscapes. Part of the Ice Patch Research Group's mission is to bear witness to the loss of ice and teach future land managers how to identify these ghosts of ancient ice.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
Kadin Hare, Ta'an Land Guardian looks out the helicopter window on route to survey three Ice Patches that day.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
Broken fragments of a 1000 year-old hunting bow recovered from the mountains near Alligator Lake.
A microscopic examination of wood fibres indicated that this is made from coastal maple. The presence of this material in the mountains of the upper Yukon River demonstrates the wide-ranging trade relationships First Nation people maintained with their neighbours.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
Found in the mountains near Alligator Lake, is the foreshaft of five thousand year old throwing dart with an intact stone point bound with sinew.
Ancient Indigenous throwing dart construction employed a variety of designs; this piece was parted of a ‘segmented dart’ where the dart shaft was built by combining two or three wooden segments of straight grained wood to form an approximately 2 meter long shaft.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
A tuft of caribou fur rests on the ground, a small trace of animals moving through this landscape.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
In our lifetime, we have seen changes so big in our land, I can't imagine what the animals that the changes that they have seen. In my mom's lifetime, up in the big arm, there used to be so much mazi, they could hear them coming, and everybody would just pack up their tents and get the heck out of the way, because when they came, they just come right through the camp, then they get out onto Kluane Lake, and it was just like highway going across the lake, so much caribou running across the lake. This is in my Mom’s lifetime.
In my lifetime, we had to say that there's only 126 caribou in our land area that we live in, and we cannot hunt caribou. And we asked Bill Brewster, then the Minister of Renewable Resources, he's from Haines Junction, that hockey rink is named after him. We asked him, you cannot allow the big game outfitters to take any more caribou up in the area that we live in. You cannot because there is no more mazi. We went all over the place and all we counted was 126 caribou. We can't hunt them no more, and you cannot allow the big game outfitters, and you cannot give people permits. You are giving these guys permits, and there you go. How could you give them 20 permits to go hunt caribou up in that area where we told you we went through our whole country and all we saw was 126?
I was raised up on caribou. In my lifetime, my children, in my children's lifetime, our oldest daughter is 50 years old now. She won't admit it though. I shouldn't say that. And our other children in their lifetime, maybe we got two caribou. Two caribou! And caribou was so important for our food, for our clothes, for everything.
It's who we are. The DNA of that caribou is who we are. And in my children's lifetime, my husband and I were talking, and we said that, well, it's in our grandchildren's lifetime that that DNA is not in them. Because it's like a little treat if somebody gets a caribou. It's like a little piece of caribou like this, a little piece of meat, caribou.
My grandchildren's lifetime. That DNA has changed in them. We used to get fish, salmon, all the time in the lake, No more. - Mary Jane Johnson Kluane First Nation Elder
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross/Tagish Traditional Territory
This exceptionally preserved 6000 year-old hunting dart melted free from the ice over a three-week period and was recovered before it could deteriorate (The object is 204 cm long). This may be the best preserved Atlatl style traditional hunting dart in the world. Made from three pieces of birch wood tied together, it also features a simple chert point and a spectacular eagle feather fletch. The fletching on this object is the oldest intact example ever recovered.
Chemical analysis of residues found on the feathers and sinews indicate parts of this weapon were coated in castoreum from a beaver. While we do not know why the maker of this piece used castorium, it has been suggested that it could help moisten and condition the sinews, add colour like a paint, or add a scent that might help trained hunting dogs locate the wounded prey. Dated by A.E. LaLonde Carbon Dating Lab in Ottawa, Canada
Carcross Tagish First Nation
Sequoia Bayne reflects on the preservation of the blinds and artifacts used by her ancestors found in the Ice Patches while she sat in a blind. “I personally wouldn’t mind people studying all this, but I don't want them to keep it.
Like do all the research you want, take all the pictures, enjoy what you found, and see, but it wasn't on your land, and they [the artifacts] need to stay where they were originally found.”
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
Archaeologist Dr. Christian Thomas has documented and studied the Yukon’s ice patches for the last 25 years, he has been instrumental to uncovering artifacts, facilitating community around the Ice Patches, and helping preserve the region’s cultural heritage for future generations.
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
A sample of organic material glows inside Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Machine at the A.E. Lalonde Radiocarbondating Labrotory.
Radiocarbon chronologies from Ice Patch alpine hunting objects, show that dart throwing was abruptly replaced by the bow and arrow. This occurred after the massive volcanic eruption of Mt. Churchill 1,200 years ago, which caused wide-scale migrations of people allowing for cultural exchange with southern communities.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Sam White Kluane Citizen and his daughter Savannah sit in the story tent at Ice Patch Camp 2024.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün, Carcross/Tagish, and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Deuces Wild Creek was named by Art John's family in the 1950s-60s who would name some creeks after the poker rules they used at particular hunt camps. Here sits an ancient hunting blind.
Teslin Tlingit Council Traditional Territory
Caribou antlers melt out of the ice, along side remnants of suspected wooden fences once used to corral caribou for hunting. Giving us clues to how long animals and people have moved through this place.
Champagne and Aishihik, and Carcross Tagish, First Nations Traditional Territory.
Two hunting arrows featuring barbed antler arrowheads. One features a small copper end-blade and the other does not.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
A ground slate end blade with a residue of adhesive. This piece is 500 years old and was likely affixed to the end of an antler arrowhead. Examination of the residue by the Canadian Conservation Institute indicates this adhesive was made from spruce sap mixed with charred vegetation.
Dated by AE LaLonde Carbon Dating Lab in Ottawa Canada
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Tamika Johnson is a young Teslin Tlingit Council citizen and took part in her first search of the Ice Patches at Kloo Lake Camp in 2024.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Levi Graham is a Land Guardian. Champagne and Aishihik First Nation Land Guardians work year-round to track environmental change, support wildlife research, and safeguard culturally important places across the landscape.
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
Portrait of Archeologist Dr. Gregory Hare. Hare has spent 30 years working as a field archaeologist with the Government of Yukon, he is one of the pioneering researchers in the Yukon Ice Patch Project and one of the founders of the emerging field of Glacial Archaeology.
“ You know, in the subarctic and even in other boreal forest areas in Canada, the soils are so acidic from the spruce and pine needles breaking down, that the things that are deposited in the ground, contained in archeological sites, anything that's organic and that's made of water and feathers and leather, nothing is preserved for more than a very short period of decades.
So the archeological record in most of Canada is characterized by stone tools and stone tool fragments of flakes that come along, which is probably less than two or 3% of the material assemblage that people have been using in order to make a living.
This is one of the first times the objects coming out from under the ice that were so well preserved and frozen in time since the day they were lost, that we were seeing complete hunting arrows starts with not just the stone points, but they had at some points they had which wooden shafts or reflections, sinew, wrappings.
So again, we saw for the first time that the stone points were such a small part of the hunting assemblage that people were using, like if you took all of this stone material that we found from the ice patches, vs you look at all the things that we found, it's a hundred times more.”
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Roberta Nakoochee on working in lands and heritage for Champagne and Aishihik First Nation. “I’m from, you know, the northeastern Ontario and my ancestral land is the Mushkegowuk area, the Hudson Bay lowlands near the west coast of James Bay. And so being, above the tree line and hiking 20 kilometres a day through Muskeg in hip waders was very common for me. That's where I learned how to survive the field in a way. And working on the Ice Patches always just reminds me of home, being in the alpine in the mountains.”
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
Millenia-old Yukon ice patches continue to shrink under a warming climate, exposing layers of melt and history that were once locked in place by perennial snow and cold.
Champagne and Aishihik, and Carcross Tagish, First Nations Traditional Territory.
Splintered remains of a 6,000 yar-old throwing dart that was exposed to the elements for an unknown period of time before being recovered. In the absence of coordinated monitoring efforts, ancient hunting tools do not last long when exposed to sunlight and strong winds.
Dated by AE LaLonde Carbon Dating Lab in Ottawa Canada
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
The broken end of a 1500 year old throwing dart recovered with the point and shaft seperated. The sinew was found still attached to the stone point
Sinew is the tough connective tissue (tendon) from animals, processed into durable fibres and used to bind, sew, and reinforce hunting tools.
Dated by AE LaLonde Carbon Dating Lab in Ottawa Canada
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Juliette Joe, a highschool student and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations citizen looks over the Gladstone Ice Patch. Shortly after this photo was taken she spotted a piece of an ancient dart shaft.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Kenny Joe scans the horizon through binoculars, keeping a watchful eye over the ice patch landscape for the returning helicopter ride back to Kloo Lake.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
"Kloo Lake, or K’ǜa Mǟn in Southern Tutchone—meaning ‘whitefish lake’—has long been a traditional camp for the K’ǜa Mǟn people. Today, this historic landscape continues to connect people to the land, in 2024 while making this photo series we hosted an ice patch camp which brought participants to the west side of the lake, near the remnants of the old village to speak about the future of Ice Patch monitoring, education and storytelling.
With our grant funding we hired Capital Helicopters, an Indigenous owned company to bring a cross section of representatives; elders, youth, land guardians and heritage specialists from the six Ice Patch Nations to explore and search for artifacts. We also held talks about what was important to this story and had a chance to interview attendees about their experiences on the land.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
A helicopter lands at the base of Little Gladstone ice patch. Most ice patches are so remote they are only accessible by air.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Caribou tracks press into the melt mud below the Gladstone Ice Patch, marking a place they’ve returned to for generations.
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating is a high-precision scientific technique using this machine that determines the age of ancient organic materials by directly counting carbon-14 atoms relative to stable carbon isotopes
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
Senior Conservation Scientists Dr. Jennifer Poulin and Dr. Kate Hedwig at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa Canada.
Specializing in chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) they have analyzed archaeological residues, including amber and resinites, to uncover the chemical signatures of artifacts from Yukon ice patches.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
Caribou (tiny) run across the landscape.
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
CO₂ is used in ice patch artifact analysis to keep tiny, fragile samples extremely cold. This preserves delicate organic residues and prevents chemical changes before they are analyzed with techniques like FTIR or GC-MS at the Canadian Conservation Institute.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Two adults and one young caribou race across an Ice Patch.
Overlapping Kwänlin Dün And Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
“Big Bend” Ice Patch because it over looks the big bend of the Watson River.
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
Sarah Murseli is the Laboratory Manager for the Radiocarbon Sample Preparation Laboratory, and has been with the AEL AMS team since 2014. Her fields of expertise include isotope geochemistry and she is responsible for radiocarbon sample preparation.
“In the lab when we accept a sample. We have to think about what is the component we want to date. So a piece of wood we're actually interested in getting the cellulose of the tree. For a piece of bone, for example, we're interested in isolating the collagen fraction, the organic component of the bone.“
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Dr. Alyce Johnson, Kluane Elder reflects on an arrow, “This technology, and this tool is much lighter and faster and probably just as accurate, however rifles, the trajectory can go quite the distance as well. Our uncle Jo Jo, we went over and he was sharing stories about how the musket was so heavy, they couldn’t pick it up fast enough so they picked up their bows and arrows first. And I think one of the families has one of the bows from a long time ago, that they kept, in their family. So technology changes but what we have to do is remember that the land keeps that knowledge, and when we go to the Ice Patch that ice has kept the knowledge of our people. And we go back and look at it, and every generation looks back to the past to understand the story and to understand themselves.”
Algonquin First Nation’s Traditional Territory
Natasha Luckovitch joined the Radiocarbon Laboratory in 2022. She received her B.Sc. in Environmental Biology and Technology from Nipissing University. She sits examining a sample of wood found in an ice patch under a microscope.
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Climate change is causing permanent ice patches and permafrost to thaw, which is revealing well-preserved ancient animal remains that were previously frozen for centuries or millennia.
Carcross Tagish Traditional Territory
Keith Wolfe-Smarch is a master carver, life long trapper and hunter, and a citizen of the Carcross Tagish First Nation.
“A lot of these places, like where I go most often to hunt moose, I went there the first time, I went there when I was six years old, with my father and my uncle, and I still go to the same exact spot. It's just, again, passed down. I know how you can keep that association with the places. Keep passing it down. Keep passing it down.
I'm teaching my son-in-law. I've been taking him sheep hunting. Because one day I'm not going to be able to make it up there. That's what I realized. He's committed to it. He said, yeah, one day I'll be up there. I'll bring you some sheep meat. Sheep meat is the best thing in the world if you eat it. I’m going to keep passing on. Just like my father and my uncle did to me. My uncle, Sammy Smarch, that's who taught me how to hunt.
And I've been spending years in the Wheaton Valley since I was in my early 20s. I think we pulled out 20 rams in 20 years. Again, same thing, teaching children different places.
The rams they, don't take a second thought about it. Sneak right up on them. And there's nothing, there's nothing like laying 50 yards from a bunch of rams for an hour and they don't even know you're there. I've done it many times. I've crawled up and it's not big enough or something and I just sneak away and crawl away. All the way to the end of the line, they don’t know I was even there. 50 yards at least. It's a lot of fun to be able to do that.”
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Mary Jane Johnson Kluane First Nation Elder walks across an ice patch and reflects on the change in the landscape she has witnessed. "We didn't get a moose last year in all of our life. First time we weren't able to provide for our own self. No moose, no caribou, no salmon, now we got no sheep. Mom said I guess we have to be farmers. I don't want to be a farmer. I didn't even know how to farm. I just heard somebody say, oh, you need potash. What the heck is potash? If you want to do large-cale farming. So that is all going to change. Not in my lifetime, but in the younger people's lifetime, all that kind of changes is going to happen. And how do you live with that?"
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Traditional Territory
Odessa Shuquaya, is from Burwash Landing and lives in Vancouver British Columbia. She spent the summer of 2024, and doing some language classes in Southern Tutchone, Dän kʼè
“I’ve always wanted to learn my language. I think it's just something that if you don't have the language as a first speaker, that's just something like a sorrow that you always carry with you, you know. I'm lucky enough that I have memories of my elders speaking Tlingit to me, and just around”
Some words I’ve learned include Caribou - “Mazi” and “Tan-TA” is edge of the the glacier.