Northern Lights: Yukon Community Experience
Partnership and Place
In partnership with the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun First Nation in Mayo, Yukon, students collaborate on community-led programs, school activities, youth engagement, cultural projects, and relationship-building. The Mayo section emphasizes reconciliation learning, co-creation, and projects defined entirely by community priorities in a northern Canadian context.
Example Projects Students Have Worked On:
- Youth programming and engagement strategy development
- Cultural digitization and language preservation tools
- Sport and recreation program design
- Community event planning and execution
- Food sovereignty and traditional knowledge projects
- Digital tools for community communication
- Community mural
- Skateboard entrepreneurship project for youth
MAYO
400
Kilometers north of Whitehorse on the Silver Trail
500
People live in the Mayo Area
-50 to +30 C
Mayo is the coldest AND hottest place in the Yukon
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The Yukon is a vast northern territory of mountains, rivers, and tundra, known for its dramatic landscapes and strong Indigenous cultures. With long winter nights and bright summer days, it offers an unforgettable setting where Sprott students have the opportunity to experience remote living, cultural learning, and hands-on projects.
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Mayo is a small, remote northern village set along the Stewart River, with a population under 500. Rich in mining history and surrounded by vast wilderness, it offers a rare opportunity to experience life in a tight-knit northern community shaped by resilience, culture, and deep connections to land and place.
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The First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun, meaning “Big River People,” is a self-governing Northern Tutchone First Nation whose traditional territory surrounds Mayo. Their culture, governance, and deep relationship with the land shape community life, offering students meaningful opportunities to learn through respectful engagement and collaboration.
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J.V. Clark School is a K–12 school at the heart of Mayo, serving a small student population in a highly personalized learning environment. Students and educators collaborate closely, and visiting Sprott students engage in creative, hands-on projects that connect education with community life and real-world impact.
Field Trip Description
The 10-day field trip to Mayo consists of a flight from Ottawa to Whitehorse, and then a 6-hour drive on the Klondike Highway north to Mayo. In Mayo, we stay in comfortable cabins outside the village. We make most of our meals ourselves (buying the majority of our supplies before leaving Whitehorse), and eat together in a larger cabin. Each morning we head down to the village to work on our projects and conduct activities at the school. The timing of the field trip generally coincides with the Mayo winter carnival, so you will have the opportunity to help run one of the community events, and will have activities to choose from every evening. Weather is cold but varies greatly at the beginning of March. The aurora borealis is also generally visible at night at this time of year.