The Yukon River is over 2300 miles long (~3700K) and has many different people and languages. The watershed covers even more area. While this means a huge variety of language, culture, tradition, and life, the people of the Yukon are finding a lot of commonalities while they are doing the grass roots work to clean up the river, live more sustainably, and regain self-sufficiency. Every other year the people who are member nations and tribes of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council have a big summit and I was lucky enough to get invited this year.
To get and keep youth interest there were alot of things to do. We brought some solar toys along, like solar powered boat kits, which were an obvious winner, we also hosted training on basic solar installations for adults. I put together all the parts for a remote battery system for your fish camp and folks were all over it. No more dragging fossil fuels at $8/gallon in remote areas, to burn it up in the pristine woods to run a generator. The people of the Yukon involved in the watershed council are very active in their communities and it's really inspiring to work with them toward the goal of energy self sufficiency.
I may not have caught all the jokes about the down-river people's funny accents, or the jibes about the salmon in the upper river, there was alot of fun to be had at the summit, as well as ceremony at times in the water ceremony, and educating each other. Lucky is the white man invited to share in these events!
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