European Contact

Over the last 300 years of contact with Euro-Canadian culture, Aboriginal peoples in the RMWB have witnessed incredible changes. Beginning with the early explorers and the fur trade; the arrival of the missionaries, Christian churches and residential schools; a number of epidemics; the uptake of lands with Confederation; through various economic booms and developments including the Klondike Gold Rush, agriculture and forestry and, most recently, oil and gas; the opening up of the north with the railway and roads; and increasing government control of traditional lands from the signing of Treaty 8, the institution of a registered trapline system and other wildlife management policies, the traditional lifeways and economy of Aboriginal peoples living in the region have changed drastically. In spite of all of these influences, many Native peoples in the region continued to practice their traditional lifeways widely and freely well into the 1960s and 1970s.