A dream becomes reality

Donna Johns on the water. Photo supplied.

Donna Johns is a member of the Daklaweidi (Killer Whale/Eagle) Clan and is Tlingit and Tagish First Nations from Carcross, Yukon on her mother’s side and Cree from her father’s side in Alberta. She is a single mom and survivor of multi-generational trauma and addiction. 

This June, Johns is graduating from the University of Alberta with a BA in recreation, sport and tourism and a certificate in Aboriginal sport. “I’m pretty proud of that,” she says. “The certificate is the only one in Canada.” She plans to use her degree to help expand the healing retreat centre she and her family run in the Yukon. But it all started with a dream.

When Johns was in her early 20s, she dreamed she was in a very long cedar canoe, filled with many people. They were on the ocean, trying to find their way to an unknown place when they came upon a huge glacier blocking the way. In the dream, “I told my crew to pull up to the edge of the ice shelf so I could scout the area and see how we would proceed,” says Johns.

“What’s funny about this dream, I found out later, is that my people have an oral history of how some of our ancestors left Alaska to find their way into the interior of the Yukon. The legend goes that they paddled ancient cedar canoes until a giant glacier blocked their way. Two old women volunteered to paddle alone under this mountain of a glacier to see if they could make it to the other side. Being old, they figured they had lived their lives and so offered to try to find the way. They made it through and guided everyone to safety. This was how our clan came to live in the Yukon and upper B.C. area. I was amazed to learn that my dream was an actual event.” 

When Johns woke up, she knew what she had to do. “My entire soul yearned to be on the water, in a canoe. I knew I had to be out there.”

Remembering

As no one had taught Johns how to be on the water, she bought a canoe and taught herself how to paddle. She completed a wilderness guiding certification course at Yukon College and soon began canoe guiding. In 2015 she was invited to join a voyager team in the Yukon River Quest — the world’s longest canoe and kayak race, extending from Whitehorse to Dawson.  

A gruelling river marathon, the quest usually takes from 12 to 18 days to complete. The first year Johns was in a canoe that placed 58th. By the second year, her team’s canoe, which entered in the men’s division, placed first. The third year, her canoe completed the quest in 46 hours.

“I had a vision. These grandmothers came to me on the water,” explains Johns, who then asked the grandmothers to help her guide the canoe. “I sat there, looking at the river. Then, all of a sudden, I could see it. I could see exactly where we had to go to get the current.”

As Canoe Leader for her community, Johns has since led several groups of youth on canoe journeys where she encourages them to remember who they are and where they come from. “The one thing I always tell the youth I teach is that ‘this is in our blood’ and as hard as our colonizers tried to wipe out our memory of who we are as a people, who our ancestors were, our culture, our ways of knowing how to BE on the water, that can never be erased because it is truly in our blood.” 

The youth are also trained to be river guides and protectors of the land and water. In addition, Johns helps them find their superpower — like the time one youth was literally swinging from the rafters, shouting out that he had ADHD. “That’s just a label they gave you,” Johns told him. “In my eyes, you have a superpower. That means you’re going to be at the front of the canoe setting the pace for everyone.” Their canoe won the community race that day.

Overcoming obstacles

A friend suggested the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation’s BARST degree to Johns. Thinking it would mean getting to paddle in places such as Jasper and Banff, Johns applied. 

To her surprise, the degree program did not include trips to the Rockies; instead it offered other types of learning, such as how positive recreation changes lives. “I’m a living example of it,” says Johns.  “When I began canoeing, I was still in the throes of addiction myself. Being out on the water and then winning the quest changed my life.”

Since she began her BA seven years ago, Johns has lost more than 60 close friends and relatives to addiction — primarily drug poisoning. Johns says the opioid epidemic alone is claiming three to four lives a day in the Yukon. 

“The grief led me back to the sweat lodge,” says Johns. “I started healing and gathering my strength.” In 2020, Johns’ younger sister Darla-Rose died from alcoholism. 

“She wanted other people to learn from her story — that we need to begin healing our spirits,” says Johns. “So we named Rose Haven after her. This is what drives me to create a healing place so we can bring healing and ceremony back to the Yukon.”  

Looking to the future

Johns hopes the knowledge she gained at U of A will help her create an Indigenous-led tourism arm of her family’s camp that can help finance the healing centre at Rose Haven. She explains that when people come to the Yukon to have an Indigenous experience, they often end up with guides who are Caucasian and don’t know the history. “Indigenous people were cut out of the economic pie,” she says. “I aim to change that.”

Rose Haven offers Indigenous families and individuals a combination of trauma-informed holistic practices with traditional medicines and teachings — and an opportunity to reconnect with the land, water, ceremony and themselves. Johns hopes to partner with other traditional healing centres to bring in a Medicine Man and other Elders who can assist with addictions healing and restoring people’s spirits.

Johns is in the process of creating a language nest — a space to continue the work of her grandmother, Clara Schinkel, who won the Order of Canada for her research and perseverance to preserve the Tagish language. Schinkel also founded the Tagish Nation Dancers of which Johns is a member.

Johns has been facilitating Warrior Women healing retreats at Rose Haven since 2019. This year she plans on running a women’s retreat, a healing canoe journey for Indigenous youth who have lost a parent to addiction, a family camp and a men’s retreat.

“Part of my purpose in life is to bring back our warriors,” says Johns, “and our Great Canoe Culture, for we were the People of the Great Canoes.”