Irene Adamson, nee Slim (b. 1927)

Irene Adamson was born to parents Frank Slim and Agnes (Aggie) Broeren. Her siblings include Sophie (Miller), George, Owen, and Virginia (Lindsay). ((Archives Society of Alberta, Frank Slim fonds description. 2018 website: https://albertaonrecord.ca/frank-slim-fonds)) Irene Adamson is a member of the Ta’an Kwäch’än First Nation and she married John Adamson, of coastal Tlingit and non-native descent. ((Roxanne Livingstone, “Shirley Adamson: Biography” in Mark Nuttall, ed., //Encyclopaedia of the Arctic,// New York, Routledge, 2005: 9.)) Irene was born and raised in the bush and spent most of her life there until about 1980. She lived around the Fox Lake area before the Klondike Highway was constructed. She heard about the horse teams that took freight up to Dawson and about a big meadow at Lake Laberge where up to 200 horses were kept over the winter. In the 1920s a herd of caribou came through and walked right over the barbed wire fence and took it down. In the spring of 1933, the family was living at Braeburn. Her father wanted to get groceries from Carmacks and so Irene went with him by dog team from Twin Lakes. She had never been to Carmacks before. They took the old Overland Trail by Montague House. There was one big meadow that they all knew about, and thousands of caribou had dug up the snow there. The last time she saw a caribou herd come to Fox Lake was in 1937 when she was ten years old. They were barren ground caribou - from the Fortymile Herd. ((Doug Urquhart ed., “Two Eyes: One Vision.” Conference Summary, April 1-3, 1998. Whitehorse: Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board. 2001: 56-7.))\\

In the 1930s, the federal government grouped the Ta’an people with the Kwanlin Dün and others in an administrative unity they called the Whitehorse Indian Band. Land granted to the Ta’an Kwäch’än as a reserve was largely abandoned, including the former village site at Lake Laberge. The Ta’an Kwäch’än were without a voice when the Kwanlin Dün agreed to some mineral exploration in an area that would encroach on Ta’an cultural sites. Irene Adamson went to an assembly at Teslin and explained the Ta’an Kwäch’än’s concerns. She asked to join and became a member of the Council of Yukon Indians (now Council of Yukon First Nations). Irene and others worked hard to gain official recognition of the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council as a separate First Nation and this came to be in the 1980s. ((James Miller, “I am Ta’an Kwäch’än: How a Yukon First Nation came back from the brink.” CBC News, 2024 website: I am Ta'an Kwäch'än: How a Yukon First Nation came back from the brink | CBC News))\\
	
Irene Adamson served as an Elder with the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. She was the Elder Enrolment Commissioner on the Yukon Enrolment Commission (YEC), a body engaged in final land claims implementation activities with the power to determine eligibility for enrolment as it relates to the Umbrella Final Agreement. Adamson retired from the Commission in December 2003. ((“Yukon Land Claims and Self-Government Agreements, Annual Report 2003-2004,” Indian and Northern Affairs: 4.))