Valerie Salez is spearheading a project with the Yukon Arts Centre in partnership with Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Heritage Department titled Conversations. This New Chapter project centres around activating a document held in the archives of the Trondek Hwechin Heritage Department (The Han Gwich’in Peoples Government in Dawson City, Yukon). The document contains the minutes of an impromptu meeting between Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and five Yukon First Nations leaders in August of 1977, regarding the then-approved Mackenzie Pipeline. The minutes of this meeting clearly reveal two opposing cultures and two opposing ways of understanding economic, social and cultural development, with the land and its inhabitants as the focus.
While researching events and people connected to this document, Salez noticed there was a lack of information available. Online searches have become a valuable first step to researching any topic. Wikipedia gained its name to fame as a peer-sourced online encyclopedia. However, there is little to no information regarding key Yukon First Nations people. Let us indigenize Wikipedia with a Wikithon Event (or edit-a-thon). The goal is to have Yukoners create and/or add to wiki pages that highlight Yukon First Nations leaders, policymakers, politicians, cultural workers, artists/crafters, hunters, gatherers, community contributors, aunties, uncles, grandparents. This can be anyone alive or passed.
We are proposing a drop-in style event to allow people to contribute to Wikipedia. We are inviting people from the public and from organizations to contribute to writing, editing, or posting to Wikipedia about Yukon First Nations people.
Indigenize Wikipedia is presented by the Yukon Arts Centre in partnership with the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre. This event is one of the two hundred exceptional projects funded by the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter program. With this $35M investment, the Council supports the creation and sharing of the arts in communities across Canada.
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