“I have listened to each one of you because my job is to listen to each one of you, and to learn from each one of you...I will be thinking about what all of you have said to me over these past three days about the land.”

Rest in peace to a man who actually came and listened.

In his 1977 final report, after hearing 3 days of testimony in the village of Old Crow from youth to elders, Tom Berger recommended against the Mackenzie Valley pipeline due to its “social impact” which “would be devastating to the people of Old Crow.” https://www.pwnhc.ca/extras/berger/report/BergerV1_complete_e.pdf

He wrote, “The caribou have been the mainstay of the native people of Old Crow for thousands of years. Today these people are apprehensive, because they fear that the caribou, and thus they themselves, are threatened.”

“They know the power of the white man. They know that elsewhere the great animal herds have died off with the advance of agriculture and industry. They have seen the white man come and dominate them and their land.”

“These people fear that the white man may destroy their land and the caribou. They and the caribou have made a long journey together across time and the continents. Is this journey to end now?”

This is a treasure of archives from the Inquiry including translated transcripts from those 3 days in Old Crow. I often go back and read the words of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and my mom who was a teenager at the time: https://www.pwnhc.ca/exhibitions/berger/

The Inquiry Film: https://vimeo.com/73908877 

Closing statements (and gifts) from Vuntut Gwitchin Chief John Joe Kyikavichik to Commissioner Berger. July 13, 1975.