Yukon who is who

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Johnnie Johns //Yêl Shàn// (1898-1988) 
	
Johnnie Johns was born near Tagish Lake to parents Tagish Johns //Kaauineek// and Maria //Klaoos Tlaa//. He was a Dèshìtàn (Crow clan) and a member of the Tagish Kwan. //Yêl Shàn// was the eldest of his family. He attended school at Carcross for 24 months and finished Grade 4. Johns' father died of the flu in the 1920s and Johns became the provider for the family. He started a guiding business at the age of nineteen in 1917. He was very successful and hired many indigenous families. ((Elaine Ash, “Johnnie Johns.” //In Their Honor,// Ye Sa To Communications Society, Whitehorse, 1989: 47-48.))\\ 

When his son Art was old enough, Johns included him in his company, Johnnie Johns & Son. The business had about forty horses, plus trucks, boats, and camping and riding equipment. His brochure guaranteed clients good food, good trophies, and a good time. In the 1930s, Johns took out as many as seventeen hunters at a time and was charging a hundred dollars a day per hunter. His expenses were high. He earned and gave away fortunes, but for him the job was more about lifestyle than money.((Dianne Green, “Johnnie Johns.” //The Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 28 May 2021 [reprint].))\\
	
Johns and Gladys Roberts married, and they had daughter Ada Johns.((Craig Mishler and William E. Simone. //Han Hwech'in: people of the river.//  University of Alaska Press. 2004: 257.)) Ada (Haskins) spoke Tlingit when she was growing up as she could speak with her grandmother Maria and aunt Angela (Sidney) when she was not at residential school in Carcross. When she told her father about some of the practices at school he wrote a letter, and she left school.(("Tlingit literacy workshop draws on elder's knowledge," //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 19 March 2001.))\\
	
During the construction of the Alaska Highway Johnnie and his brother Peter Johns were hired to use their horses and guide the soldiers from Tagish to Watson Lake. They consulted George Sidney, from the Teslin area, as he often travelled by dog team from Teslin to Tagish and Carcross to buy groceries before they had a store in Teslin.((Helene Dobrowolsky interviewed Ida Calmegane in 1991 for the Alaska Highway Interpretive Milepost Project. Heritage Branch files 4057-5-8 II.))\\
	
Johns and Anita married sometime in the 1960s. Anita was from a farming community in the United States and she and Johns had four children. Anita ran their ranch with him, and she booked all the hunters, cooked, kept books and tended supplies. They had thirty-nine hunters, from all over the world, through each season.((Ursula Heller and Barry Gray, //Village Portraits,// Toronto: Methuen, 1981: 105, 112-13.)) They started a lodge and cafe at Judas Creek called Johnny's Place. After 50 years, Johnnie Johns sold his guiding business to Dennis Callison but continued to work as a guide. Johns would never leave a camp without checking to make sure the proper respect was given to the land by leaving it the exact way it was before he came.((Elaine Ash, “Johnnie Johns.” //In Their Honor,// Ye Sa To Communications Society, Whitehorse, 1989: 47-48.))\\
	
Johns worked with the Council for Yukon Indians (now Council for Yukon First Nations) for many years in the early land claims process. Johns was also involved in drawing up the Yukon’s hunting concession boundaries for big game outfitters in 1958. ((Jim Robb, “It’s Johnny Johns, of course.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse, 29 October 2007.)) He received many awards including the Commissioner's Award, an Appreciation Award from CYI, and the Native Celebrity Award from the Native Council of Canada.((Elaine Ash, “Johnnie Johns.” //In Their Honor,// Ye Sa To Communications Society, Whitehorse, 1989: 47-48.)) Johns taught songs and dances to students at the Carcross school.((Jim Butler, “Heritage awards presented.” //The Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 20 February 1986.)) He received a heritage award for 1985 from the Yukon Historical and Museums Association to honour his life-long efforts to preserve the language and culture of Yukon First Nation people, especially in the Tagish area. His willingness to share his information significantly contributed to the documentation of the Indigenous history of the area. He was an important communicator between cultures.((Philip Adams, “Three honoured by heritage group.” //The Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 12 February 1986.))