Creating Desired Futures: Kluane First Nation's Politico-Legal Enactment of Value in Southern Tutchone Lhù'ààn Mân Kéyi

Abstract

Since the signing of their Final Agreement and Self-Government Agreement in 2003, Kluane Fist Nation (KFN), located primarily in the southwestern Yukon, has been navigating their post-settlement realities as an autonomous self-governing First Nation. According to the Canadian state, these Agreements intended to achieve certainty for all Parties, including certainty over jurisdiction, and KFN's ability to govern their own land and peoples. Two decades into the implementation of their Agreements, I ask, what has been achieved in actuality? In partnership with Kluane First Nation, this research sought to produce results KFN desired and found valuable. As such, it explores KFN's chosen topic of Traditional Leases, alongside essential entwined elements such as KFN's enactment of value, their navigation of uncertain and precarious land claim legislation as techniques of jurisdiction and territoriality, and taking control of research within their Traditional Territory. This exploration stems from our research partnership, my ethical commitments to KFN, and research's methods and methodologies. I argue that in their work with researchers, and their policies and practices on the land, KFN is enacting their vision for a meaningful and good life, within ongoing settler-colonial attempts to maintain control. KFN is engaging in and enacting what they find valuable in their use of their land despite ever-increasing obstacles, and often in ways which remain invisible to the settler-state.