John Brown Nulata (1922 – 2006)
John Brown was born in 1922 at the hay ranch below Champagne. He grew up at Six Mile across Dezadeash Lake. He was a member of the Wolf Clan and the son of Kitty Johnson and Johnny Brown. As a youth he trapped with his family around Kathleen Lake, Mush and Bates lakes, and on the Tatshenshini River. John lived on the land and raised foxes and mink with his family at Six Mile in the 1920s and ‘30s. He travelled by horse, dog team and even skated to Champagne on the river.1) In September 1928, John Brown sold twenty mink to George Simmons for a good price. Simmons took them to his ranch at Carcross.2)
In 1948, John Brown married Sadie Jackson at the Anglican Church in Haines Junction and they settled in the community. He guided fishermen, did maintenance on the Haines Road, and worked at the Experimental Farm. He was a maintenance worker for Kluane National Park for more than ten years. During the last thirty years of his life, he was an ordained minister with the Pentecostal Church and founded his own chapel in Haines Junction. John was an excellent dog musher. He won his first race in 1945 and was awarded $500. He shared his knowledge of traditional trails and helped to preserve his native languages by providing places names in Tlingit and Tutchone. He played the guitar and fiddle and was a social man who enjoyed time with family and friends, entertaining them with music and stories. John provided religious services at several potlatch funerals with his wife at this side.3)