Tr'ochëk National Historic Site of Canada

Tr’ochëk was designated a national historic site of Canada in 2001 because:

• it is representative of the Hän cultural landscape of the middle Yukon River valley;
• the site speaks to the Hän peoples use and understanding of their traditional territories and the land’s role as source and carrier of their traditional knowledge;
• the value that they place on this landscape is reflected in their oral histories, language, place names and continued use of the site.

Tr’ochëk is representative of the Tr’ondëk Hëwch’in ‘home’ in the middle Yukon River. It contains late prehistoric and protohistoric archaeological resources that attest to the profound influence of the Yukon River on traditional Hän culture, oral histories, language, and place names. For countless generations, the Hän spent the mid-summer to late fall at fishing camps at Tr’ochëk, where they harvested and dried fish, cleaned skins from moose and caribou and prepared other foods for winter storage. The Hän made seasonal use of this site, named Tr’ochëk to signify “the place at the mouth of the river,” until the arrival of thousands of gold seekers during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 19th century disrupted their traditional patterns.

The Hän people derive practical value from the river, which they use as a transportation route, a source of food, and spiritual value through the associations, stories and symbolic connections that the people have made to it. This cultural landscape also consists of trails and lookout points linked to the oral histories and traditional hunting, fishing and gathering practices of many generations of Hän people.