99 Year Old Teslin Tlingit Elder Pearl Keenan Has Passed Away

Wednesday, 29 January 2020 14:48

Pearl Keenan in an undated photo (Image courtesy 93 Regimental Canada)

Pearl Keenan (née Geddes) was a champion of the Tlingit language as well as traditional culture and knowledge. She was known for her passion for education, engagement with youth and raising awareness of environmental issues.

Throughout her life Keenan experienced enormous changes. She was born in 1920 in a cabin on the Nisutlin River, about 40 kilometres from Teslin and received much of her education on the land. Her father George Geddes was a Scot who moved to the Yukon and worked as a trapper and a mink rancher. Her mother Annie was a full-blooded member of the Eagle and Whale clan. When growing up on the family mink ranch the only way to get to town was by dogsled or boat.

One of the most abrupt changes in her life came in 1942 when the Alaska Highway began construction. In past interviews she recalled that her family was aware of the ongoing war and the bombing of Pearl harbor, but no one had heard anything about the coming of the Highway. She described sudden influx of southern soldiers, and recalls taking black soldiers into her house to warm them up.

In 1947 Pearl married Hugh Keenan and raised two sons and a daughter. Her son Dave later served as Yukon NDP Cabinet Minister from 1996 to 2001. From the Teslin area Keenan moved to British Columbia. Over her life Keenan worked as a homeschool coordinator in the BC public system and later counselled prison inmates in the Vancouver area.

Keenan was known as a dedicated volunteer who supported many causes including the Yukon Human Rights Commission, the Council of Yukon First nations’ Elder Advisory Committee, the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre and the First Nations Education Commission. As an advisor on the Yukon Salmon Committee she helped break a 17-year deadlock between Alaska and Yukon fishing interests on the allocation of the Yukon River salmon stocks. From 1993 to 2001 she served as the Chancellor of Yukon College - the college's longest serving Chancellor. In 2007, Keenan was awarded the Order of Canada.

Over her life, Keenan was always known for her work with youth and environmental issues. Based on these passions she served on a guest lecturer on northern First Nations culture at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and the University of Regina.

Keenan’s profile in the Order of Canada described her as an invaluable source of wisdom for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the North.