“DON’T GET LOST IN THE TRANSIT MINDSET”

Christine Genier guides you on a journey down the Alaska Highway from the Carcross Cutoff to the Klondike Highway turn-off, down a route of personal stories and memories that give new life and presence to this everyday commute. 

Joining her for a phone conversation along the way, her mother, Ta’an Kwach’an elder Shirley Adamson, reflects on the history of local landmarks Mt. Sima, Mary Lake, and Wolf Creek and the importance of their original Southern Tutchone place names. Meanwhile, Genier's father makes an appearance in the form of remembered French folk songs, sung by him during the car rides of her childhood. Under Genier's guiding voice, this all-too-familiar route becomes profound in how it holds so many experiences together.

Artist Biography

Born and raised in the Yukon, Christine is a Wolf Clan Woman and citizen of the Ta’an Kwach’an Council. The Alaska Highway has been the backdrop of her life in the north, bringing with it a complicated relationship between two ancestral lines. In this PIVOT piece, Christine explores one facet of this relationship through a childhood lens and draws a story from the stretch of asphalt that has always been home and how the city has grown since the early 80s.

Christine Genier is a Yukon writer, performer, public-speaker, broadcaster and story gatherer. Her work speaks to her lived experience working and living in the North as a mixed-raced Indigenous Woman,Tagish language revitalization, and working with her family’s restaurant on the Alaska Highway.

Facebook / Twitter: @ChristineGenier