allen edzerza

My name is Allen Edzerza. I am from the wolf clan, T’logodena, of the Tahltan Nation. My Tahltan name is Ma-lah. I’m currently living in Abbotsford, B.C. My parents were George and Grace Edzerza and I am the fourth youngest in a family of 20 children. My grandmother’s Tahltan name is Etheny. I was born in Lower Post, British Columbia on December 27, 1949. My mom told me it was 75 below zero that day. We moved from Lower Post to Atlin, British Columbia around 1954, and I was raised in Atlin, and went to high school in Whitehorse, Yukon. Both my dad and mom were born and raised in Telegraph Creek, British Columbia. Every summer they would take us to Telegraph Creek and we would put up fish. Now our family has a fish camp in Telegraph Creek, and we go there every summer: sixty to a hundred people, all family. 

What gives me hope is our younger generation… What can I share with them? I want to share with them our culture. I want to tell them it’s the salmon, it’s the moose, it’s the caribou, it’s our food security that will sustain us.

Telegraph Fish Camp

The Council of Salmon