| Summary: | Specialization: History Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Abstract: This study examines the colonial history of gold mining in the Klondike region of the central Yukon from 1890 to 1940. The Klondike Gold Rush marked the beginning of major transition in the lives of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in that lasted well into the 20th century. Mining worked to reorganize and disassemble the local Klondike environment through both placer mining and industrial dredge mining. Along with direct environmental impacts, gold mining had indirect impacts such creating competition for resources and conflicts over access to resources, and the emergence of a new industrial economy to the Yukon. Throughout this period the state imposed southern colonial bureaucracies and administration in the Yukon that favoured colonial ideologies and practises of land use over local Indigenous practises that led to the displacement and relocation of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in peoples from previously used areas. State imposition often clashed with colonial authority on the ground, creating a complicated history of colonization of environment and humans in the Yukon. This study also examines the various ways in which Indigenous Yukoners shaped the structure of colonialism in the Yukon through a variety of responses. It argues that the Klondike Gold Rush began a pattern of long-term systemic alienation of Yukon First Nations from traditionally used resources and areas; in part this resulted from the physical impacts that mining had on the environment of the central Yukon, but Indigenous displacement also resulted from the role of colonial bureaucracies and state extension into the Klondike. The colonial structure of the Yukon was complicated and contested, creating conflicts between colonizers over how best to administer to the realities of the Yukon; it was also shaped by the responses and contributions of Indigenous Yukoners who frequently challenged their loss of access to resources and the outside imposed changes mining brought to their lives.
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