A Whitehorse high school now has an Njel. That sets a precedent, vice principal says

Julien Greene · CBC News

· Posted: May 28, 2025 8:19 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

There was a clip erstwhile Njels were everyplace crossed the land.

"These are the types of houses we would person lived in," said Harold Johnson, a Southern Tutchone cognition keeper. 

"There was [sic] towns, villages, adjacent cities."

Now the traditional, full-sized dwelling stands gangly erstwhile more, down Porter Creek Secondary School successful Whitehorse. It's astatine the centre of a campy called Ǹtsǟw Chù Kets'edän Kų̀, which means "the learning location astatine Wild Rhubarb Creek" — the archetypal sanction of the area.

It's present each students volition acquisition first-hand the transportation of accepted knowledge. That includes stories from Elders and land-based learning similar fell tanning.

Hundreds attended a ceremonial hosted by the schoolhouse Wednesday, with speakers saying the Njel deepens and solidifies taste connections — some astatine the schoolhouse and the assemblage astatine large.

Funded by the Arctic Inspiration Prize and the Yukon government, Johnson and Meta Williams designed and built the Njel. Students helped. With the objection of a monolithic cedar log from Vancouver Island astatine the top, the location is built mostly of section spruce, the boughs of which screen the floor.

"To larn similar this successful a accepted operation is truthful overmuch much [beneficial]," Johnson said. "You're not explaining however a location looks, you're really successful it. Right disconnected the bat, [the students] wholly get it, you know? 

"There's nary words that I tin say. This location speaks for itself, basically. You conscionable gotta spot it."

'If you unrecorded here, you request to larn astir surviving here'

Vice-principal Nicole Cross said the municipality accepted campy sets a precocious bar, and astatine a schoolhouse wherever astatine slightest 40 per cent of younker are First Nations.

"I deliberation what this means for the schoolhouse is the quality to beryllium capable to genuinely incorporated taste learning connected a standard that isn't precedented really," she said.

"We privation to marque definite we're honouring that cognition and that culture."

The Njel provides a abstraction for taste teachings and ceremonial portion making place-based learning accessible to everyone.

"Where are students going to larn astir it if not connected the land, wherever it comes from?" she said. "This is simply a accepted gathering of this land.

"If you unrecorded here, you request to larn astir surviving here."

As for what acquisition volition look like, Cross said to commencement — teachings astir the Njel.

"What is its meaning, wherefore is it here, however was it built, and its accepted uses," she said. "Then immoderate benignant of learning. It's the abstraction itself that is portion of the magic. It's a surviving happening successful itself."

Cross hopes students from different schools tin acquisition the Njel too, and that elders travel by connected a regular basis. 

"It's a spot of a scaffolded situation," she said, noting students proceed to enactment connected the gathering and instrumentality portion successful a adjacent fell camp, which is on this week.

"When I accidental the students are driving it, they're driving it."