‘Peaceful passing’ for former NCS board member, Indigenous activist, Raymond Yakeleya

She said he had always planned to continue writing as his health declined, but as his condition worsened and his illness began to take away his ability to write, he started discussing the possibility of ending his treatments.

“He was himself to the very end. It was a peaceful passing,” said Salo.

Yakeleya had already suffered a limb amputation, kidney failure, and heart disease, and as his condition worsened, his vision began to fail as well, she said.

His last dialysis treatment was on Aug. 14. The following Sunday, his family came together in Edmonton at his request

“He had always told me that he would haunt me if I had a funeral for him,” she said, laughing. “Because nobody loved a party as much as Raymond. He was incredibly social, and he said he wanted a celebration of life party, so he could say farewell to all of his family and friends, and so we did that on Sunday.”

Salo said Yakeleya had become very close to his extended family over the years.

In addition to his work in the early years of Native Communications Society work to set up CKLB while running the Native Press, more recently he wrote a paranormal phenomenon column for Northern News Services, He covered topics from Bigfoot sightings and abductions, to past lives, werewolves, and residential schools.

Yakeleya, who hailed from Tulita, was one of several beneficiaries of the 1993 Sahtu Dene and Metis Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement; a treaty signed on Sept. 6, 1993, that granted legal land ownership and resource rights to the Dene and Métis of the NWT’s Sahtu Region.

Salo said that after Yakeleya spoke on behalf of his community during the 1972 Berger Inquiry into the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline, his career in activism took off.

“He’d always been extremely passionate about his people, the Dene,” she said. “Raymond got up and spoke, I gather, very eloquently, and that kind of began his advocacy, if you will, for his people,” she said.

“He was an inspiring man, truly one of a kind.”

Yakeleya is survived by his wife, two children, and four grandchildren.

Before his passing, he had been working on a book and documentary, both titled Ghosts of Grollier Hall, documenting and sharing the stories of the nearly 20 suicides that followed the closing of the Grollier Hall residential school in Inuvik.

“Raymond lived every day to the fullest,” Salo said. “And whatever the Creator had in line for him, he was prepared for that. Life was to be lived … and he had fun doing it.”

Kody Ferron, Local Journalism Initiative reporter/Yellowknifer