Taku River Tlingit’s Nation Building Story
Documenting History in the Watershed
What happens when a Nation takes steps to document its history before it is lost to erosion, flooding, and climate change?
For Taku River Tlingit First Nation, this work is about far more than archaeology. It is about protecting identity, preserving connection to the land, and ensuring that the history held within the watershed is documented for future generations.
Through support from the Nation Building Grant, the Nation has been able to carry out important work across the watershed to identify cultural sites, gather artifacts, and record places of deep historical significance. Using tools such as LiDAR, test pit excavations, and carbon dating, this project is helping preserve knowledge that might otherwise disappear over time.
Protecting What the Land Holds
As townsites throughout the watershed continue to degrade, there is a growing urgency to document what remains.
Climate change, weather, erosion, and flooding are all having an impact on these places, making it more important than ever to gather information, locate cultural sites, and create a record of what is there. This work makes it possible to move from site to site, identify areas of significance, and better understand the history held within the land itself.
The findings are more than artifacts alone. They represent a record of Tlingit presence on the land and help preserve important knowledge about occupation, connection, and history. In this way, the project is creating a lasting record that can continue to guide and inform the Nation for years to come.
Reconnecting Community to Place
The impact of this work extends beyond the field.
As knowledge is gathered, it is shared back with the community through engagement sessions, presentations, and conversations that bring people together around what was found, where it was found, and why it matters. These gatherings create space for learning, reflection, and reconnection.
For some citizens, this means returning, in a meaningful way, to places they have not seen in many decades. For others, it is an opportunity to deepen their understanding of their Nation’s history and their relationship to the river, the land, and the watershed as a whole.
Through this process, community members are not only learning more about the past, but also strengthening their sense of pride, belonging, and connection in the present.
Strengthening Identity Through Nation Building
At its core, this project is about identity.
By documenting history across the watershed, Taku River Tlingit First Nation is strengthening knowledge within the community and helping citizens reconnect with who they are and where they come from. The work reflects a community-led approach to Nation Building that is grounded in place, guided by shared knowledge, and shaped by the priorities of the Nation itself.
Nation Building takes many forms in communities across British Columbia. In this case, it means documenting history, protecting knowledge, and creating a stronger foundation for future generations through a deeper understanding of land, identity, and community.
Supported Through the Nation Building Grant
This project was supported through the Nation Building Grant, which invests in community-led initiatives that strengthen governance, identity, planning, and self-determined Nation rebuilding.
Through this support, First Nations across British Columbia are advancing priorities that reflect their own values, knowledge systems, and visions for the future.