Joe Joe Johnson (1938 – 2010)
Joe Joe Johnson, Southern Tutchone leader and elder, was born in a bush camp at Red Tail Lake on the east side of Kluane Lake.1) He attended the Baptist Mission School in Whitehorse in the late 1940s and left school after grade eight to go to work. He returned to Burwash and worked for the Dicksons as a wrangler and a guide. He later worked as a logger in British Columbia with his cousins. He returned to Burwash in the 1970s to spend time with his father, Moose Johnson. He worked as a hunting guide and trapper and was involved with land claims from the beginning.2)
Joe Joe was committed to the protection of wilderness throughout his life and believed that as the environment was changing, so people must change the way they think about their environment. Johnson was chief of the Kluane First Nation for the first time in 1973. After his final term he was ten years on the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board. He served as the wildlife monitor for the Kluane First Nation until he became too ill with pancreatic cancer. Johnson was known to be kind and respectful and always with a smile. Kluane area youth looked up to him as a positive role model and a strong leader. Johnson and his wife Sandy boarded many kids when they attended high school in Haines Junction. He often took kids out on the land to teach them traditional ways and the stories and legends of the area. Joe Joe Johnson and his wife have four children and four grandchildren.3)