A Yukon landmark that has highlighted the connection of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation (CTFN) with the land and caribou of their traditional territory has made it to the list of Canada’s list of tentative UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The announcement was made Wednesday with the release of a list of eight potential sites across the country.

“Canada is full of hidden gems and exceptional, inspiring places,” said Catherine McKenna, the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change as well as the minister responsible for Parks Canada.

“I’m grateful to the Canadians and communities across the country who shared the places they cherish to be considered as potential future World Heritage sites.

“To cap off the Canada 150 celebrations, I am extremely proud to announce Canada’s newest official candidates for recognition as UNESCO World Heritage Sites,” McKenna added.

“These national treasures represent the very best that Canada has to offer from natural wonders and maritime heritage to Indigenous lands and culture. These places will showcase Canada to the world.”

The Yukon Ice Patches are the only site from the territory on the list of eight released.

“We’re super-excited,” Jennifer Herkes, a heritage consultant with the CTFN, said in an interview Wednesday.

The CTFN and the Yukon government’s heritage branch worked together to put forward the ice patches for consideration after a call went out for potential nominations as part of the nation’s 150th birthday celebrations.

As it was noted in Wednesday’s release: “As part of Canada 150, and for the first time ever, Canadians from coast-to-coast-to-coast were invited to nominate Canada’s most exceptional places to be future candidates for UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

“ ... (Wednesday’s) announcement is the first update to Canada’s Tentative List for World Heritage Sites since 2004.”

Herkes said making the list of eight from 40 applications that were submitted across the country is a great achievement, but it is also only the beginning of a process that will take years.

“It is just the first step,” she said.

Both she and Greg Hare, a Yukon government archeologist, pointed out the ice patches discovered in the late 1990s in the southern Yukon have shown and reinforced the connection the First Nation has to the land and caribou.

The ice patches have both strong cultural and natural values.

First Nations tools, thousands of years old, have been revealed almost perfectly-preserved conditions in the sites providing insights to that connection with the landscape, mountains and caribou.

As Herkes said, the discoveries of tools have meant CTFN members have gotten to hold the same impliments their ancestors grasped and used all those years ago.

Along with the cultural connection, Hare pointed out the discovery of the ice patches has also provided an understanding of the importance of ice patches for caribou as well as plant life and the connection between the animals and the land.

With the ice patches now on the nomination list for potential consideration as a World Heritage Site, the territory and First Nation will begin work – expected to take years – on documenting the values of the ice patches.

Both Hare and Herkes said it also takes years before a site may be considered by UNESCO.

Hare said he understands that Canada can submit one application per year from its tentative list to UNESCO for consideration.

Work will begin in the new year to consider the values and document them to further the process for the World Heritage recognition.

While the ice patches are the only Yukon site to be added to the nomination list, the Klondike was put on the list in 2004, with the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in leading that effort.

The other seven sites being considered from across the country that were announced Wednesday are:

• Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound Glass Sponge Reefs in British Columbia;

• Stein Valley, also in British Columbia;

• Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatchewan;

• Anticosti Island in Québec;

• Heart’s Content Cable Station Provincial Historic Site in Newfoundland and Labrador;

• Qajartalik in Nunavut; and

• Sirmilik National Park and the proposed Tallurutiup Imanga/Lancaster Sound National Marine Conservation Area in Nunavut.