David Paul Porter (b. 1953)
David Porter was born in Lower Post, British Columbia and is a member of the Kaska Nation. He grew up on a trap line near Good Hope Lake, British Columbia. He attended residential school in Lower Post and in Whitehorse. He attended Confederation College in Thunder Bay studying communications and broadcasting and took pre-law at the University of British Columbia. He worked briefly for CFWH in Whitehorse before joining CBC and moving to Yellowknife, NWT as an announcer. He covered the public hearings of the Berger Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry.1)
Porter was a founding member of Northern Native broadcasting. In 1978, he was elected for the first of two terms as a vice-chair of the Council for Yukon Indians (CYI, now CYFN) for economic development. He also served as an assistant land claims negotiator for CYI.2)
David Porter was elected to the Yukon Legislative Assembly in 1982. He was appointed Minister of Tourism and Minister of Renewable Resources in May 1985 when the Yukon NDP was elected. He became Deputy Premier when the NDP were re-elected in 1985. He represented first Campbell riding and then Watson Lake.3) He did not run in the 1989 Yukon election.
After leaving the Yukon Legislature, Porter was executive director of the Yukon Human Rights Commission, then Deputy Minister of Culture and Communications in the NWT. In the 1990s, he was Assistant Deputy Minister of Aboriginal Affairs for British Columbia. In 2002, he was elected Chair of the Kaska Dena Council and in 2006 and again in 2006, he was on a three-member political executive of the First Nations Summit, the Summit Task Force. He became the CEO for the BC First Nations Energy and Mining Council and president of the Dena Kayeh Institute (DKI).4)