Sam Johnson Sr.
	
Sam Johnson and Jimmie Joe were Indigenous wranglers hired to transport the Alaska Highway survey crew into the bush outside of Burwash Landing. Eugene Jacquot's horses were expected to carry a 200-pound cook stove until Jacquot stepped in a substituted two light sheet metal stoves. The cook nearly quit when he was expected to cross the Donjek River. It was feared locally because of deposits of quicksand that occurred in the spring. At Pickhandle Lake, the cook left for better pay elsewhere and Sam Johnson and Willis Grafe, one of the surveyors, took over the cooking duties. They were the only ones not given the opportunity to decline. The pilots would dive bomb the campfire smoke.((Ken Coates, //North to Alaska!// Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992: 71-74.)) 
	
Sam had a trap line cabin in the Kluane Game Sanctuary. The government was powerful, and Sam didn’t speak English, so he didn’t really understand why the rules were changing. He was forced to get someone to move his cabin out of sight and sneak across the highway to get meat for his family. Sam’s daughter Agnes Johnson left the Lower Post Residential School after eight years and started to help on her parent’s trapline. The line went all the way from Duke Meadows to Thè K’u Salmon Patch. They had a fish camp down that way in the fall. In the spring they snared gophers at Duke Meadow and John Trout’s Place. It was emergency food for the winter.((“Agnes Johnson” in //Kluane Lake Country People Speak Strong.// Kluane First Nation, 2023: 178, 180.))	
	
Sam Johnson became a respected Kluane elder and renowned hunter. He was arrested in May 1980 for trapping muskrats at Andrew Atlin Lake in the Kluane Game Sanctuary. Late the same day, Sam Johnson had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. The Kluane people blamed the stress of the situation, accused the Yukon government of causing his collapse and sued for damages. Trapping in the Sanctuary was illegal, but members of the Kluane First Nation had occupied part of the sanctuary the year before to protest this, and the government was in negotiation to reach some sort of compromise. Swede Hanson, the Yukon minister for Renewable Resources, admitted that he had struck an informal deal to turn a blind eye to hunting in the sanctuary if the Kluane people would not advertise the agreement. He had neglected to inform the game wardens of his illegal agreement. ((Paul Nadasdy, //Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal-State Relations in the Southwest Yukon.// Vancouver: UBC Press. 2003: 57.))