Celebrating 115 Years since our Declaration

Tahltan Day Events

Head Chief Nanok and his wife, Shutīn, c. 1910.

One hundred and fifteen years ago, over eighty members of the Tahltan Nation gathered in Telegraph Creek to discuss our rights and title, and sovereignty over our land. We held meetings on October 17th and on October 18th drafted and signed our Declaration of the Tahltan Tribe.

Lanyards made for Orange Shirt Day. Dease Lake Community Director Christina Callbreath co-hosted lanyard making with Jodi McKen, victim services worker for the People’s Haven

We sent our Declaration south, where it was typeset, printed on a broadsheet, and presented to the government to assert our Rights and Title and add our voice to the Native Rights movement. In addition to our Declaration, our head chief, Nanok, signed a Memorial to the Federal Minister of the Interior, along with 68 other chiefs from British Columbia.

In the past, each of our six clans had its own chief and territory, and each territory had a principal fishing village that was a kind of headquarters for the clan. We first elected one chief, Nanok, to lead all Tahltans, in the 1870s. Waves of epidemics, the flood of the gold rushes, and the arrival of the wage economy had forced us to consolidate in a central village. Gūne dah chege became our headquarters. We built a modern settlement, which came to be known as Tahltan village.

Though our central government and bands are a modern creation, reflecting contemporary realities and pressures, in some respects they reflect our move towards centralization that began with the arrival of Europeans on our Territory just over 150 years ago.

We have never given up our governance. To this day, the Declaration is our founding document establishing Tahltan sovereignty:

“We claim the sovereign right to all the country of our tribe—this country of ours which we have held intact from the encroachments of other tribes, from time immemorial, at the cost of our own blood.”

We have never relinquished our rights and title to our land. We never signed a treaty with the province, and we never acknowledged that our land belonged to anyone else.

Here’s our celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Declaration in 2010: