ANNIE & JOE HENRY

Joe Henry was born in 1898 in the Blackstone River drainage. He married Annie Mitchell in 1921 in an arranged marriage and the couple lived the rest of their long lives together, raising 11 children and knowing more than 100 direct descendants.

Joe and Annie had traditional skills and were well known for their strong and elegant snowshoes; Joe made the frame and Annie wove the babiche mesh. They also had all of the modern skills and over his long life Joe held many jobs. He learned English as he worked on the sternwheelers running freight from St. Michael to Dawson. He ran the mail to Eagle, worked for the RCMP, guided cat trains that traced out the first route of the Dempster Highway and piloted the Brain Storm up the Porcupine River to Old Crow.

Joe built three cabins for his family, two on the Dempster where he trapped and one at the Moosehide Village where he and Annie moved in the 1930s so their children could go to school.

When the school moved to Dawson, so did the Henrys but they returned to their beloved Dempster country after the children were grown and stayed there until Joe was in his 80s. 

In 1978, Ye Sato, a forerunner to Northern Native Broadcasting, produced their first film, a twenty minute documentary profiling Joe and Annie Henry. In 1989, the Henrys worked with Louise Profeit-Leblanc to record First Nation history along the Dempster Highway. Joe and Annie have always shared their lives and their knowledge with family and friends and the Yukon has greatly benefited from their generosity.