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. 1)
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.2)
Johns and Gladys Roberts married, and they had daughter Ada Johns.3) 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.4)
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.5)
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.6) 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.7)
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. 8) 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.9) Johns taught songs and dances to students at the Carcross school.10) 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.11)