Jimmy Johnny, respected elder and 'treasure of the Yukon,' has died

Jimmy Johnny, a long-time hunting guide, beloved and respected elder of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun, and prominent advocate for protecting Yukon's Peel watershed region, has died.

His First Nation announced his death this week, offering condolences to Johnny's family and many friends, and paying tribute to his "wisdom, teachings, and commitment to the land."

Frank Patterson, also a Na-Cho Nyäk Dun elder, was close friends with Johnny for decades. The two got to know each other when Patterson was a horse wrangler and Johnny was teaching him to be a guide.

"We had a lot of joy in our life, with each other's company," Patterson said.

"He had a really wonderful life on horseback. He was out there for 50 years, and when he retired he wanted to go back out there so bad."

Johnny was still a teen when he first started exploring the vast Peel watershed region. It became his life's passion, to share his love for the land and to protect it, Patterson said.

"He always talked about teaching the young generation about what the land was all about, plants, medicine that his grandma taught him, about medicine on the land that he walked," Patterson said.

"He wanted to cherish the land, protect it for the younger generation to make sure that they were able to see what he's seen through his lifetime."

Johnny's deep connection to the land and water led him to join the fight to protect the vast and pristine Peel watershed region. The area was the focus of a prolonged legal battle over land use, that ultimately led all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2017.

Johnny was involved in many public demonstrations through those years, and was a prominent advocate for limiting development in the region. When the celebrated American news program 60 Minutes came to Yukon to cover the story in 2014, Johnny — an avid photographer himself — went along into the remote region with the show's film crew.

"To Jimmy, the water was the most valuable medicine on earth, because the water brought life to everything. The trees, animals, the land — everything," Patterson said.

'One of the last cowboys in the Yukon'

Kevin Barr, a former MLA and good friend of Johnny's, calls his late friend a "treasure of the Yukon."

"He was one of the last cowboys in the Yukon, I think," Barr said.

Barr, a musician, said music was also a huge part of Johnny's life. He often had a guitar tucked away in his truck, and loved to pull it out to play some of his favourites, by Hank Williams or Kris Kristofferson. Me and Bobby McGee was a particular favourite, Barr says.

"I would always get him up to sing a song, wherever we would be," Barr recalled. "He would always finish off by saying, 'hot dog!' And always give a little laugh."

Barr says he always looked forward to getting a phone call from Johnny, saying he was coming down from Mayo to Whitehorse for some reason.

"He'd say, 'I got something for you guys.' And we'd meet on the street and he'd go in his truck and he'd bring a big bunch of moose meat and dry meat, and make sure we share it with some of the elders around Carcross," Barr said.

Barr also delighted in another memory of Johnny, and how he may have inspired some infamous bumper stickers that can still be sometimes seen around the territory.

It was during the height of the battle over the Peel region, and then-premier Darrell Pasloski — a former pharmacist — was the focus of much ire for his government's push to open more of the Peel region to development. Barr recalls sitting with Johnny in a Whitehorse eatery one day during that time. 

"And [Johnny] says, 'I think Darrell should go back to being a pharmacist.' And I guess there was some folks overhearing that, and I think within a couple of days we ended up with that bumper sticker, 'Pasloski for pharmacist,'" Barr said.

"That's where that came from."

Barr describes his friend as "just a true human being that loved and cared for the land and people." 

"His life was a story. And his stories were real, and that's why they were so strongly remembered, and people would listen when he would talk," Barr said.

Barr said one of Johnny's great pleasures in life was to sit on his porch in Mayo, enjoying his morning coffee with a view of the mountains he knew so well.

"So I hope wherever he's going, the happy hunting ground, he gets to spend his mornings just looking out over the land," Barr said.