TETLIT'ZHEH/FORT MCPHERSON - Literally and figuratively, Robert Alexie is a trailblazer.

The 75-year-old from Fort McPherson has been hunting and trapping along the Peel River since he was a teenager, when he would walk ahead of his father's dog team to clear the way.

Robert Alexie Sr. recently won the Fur Institute of Canada's Jim Bourque award for excellence in trapping after more than 50 years experience as a hunter. - Katie May/NNSL photo

Now, Alexie works with the GNWT Department of Environment and Natural Resources on trapping programs for young people, often bringing a few of them to his hunting cabin at the mouth of the Trail River in the Yukon - the heart of the Teetl'it Gwich'in traditional lands - along a trail that hunters had not widely used since the 1960s.

"It was almost forgotten about," said Daryl English, one of Alexie's colleagues at ENR. "Robert wanted to revive it and remind people that this was the traditional homeland that our people lived in."

English nominated Alexie for the Jim Bourque award from the National Fur Institute of Canada, which Alexie received earlier this summer for his commitment to passing on the traditional knowledge that his father, Abraham, once passed on to him.

"He was my university teacher, you see. That's where I learned from. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be out on the land now," Alexie said. "If my father was alive now, he'd get this," he said of the award. "I'll turn it over to him. I thank my father for this now."

During the summer, Alexie works at the Nitainlaii Territorial Campground off the Dempster Highway, where he shares his stories with visitors. But he still goes out hunting every chance he gets.

"My mind is out there at all times, out on the land," he said. "I want to be out there."

Even while he worked on the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line sites in the 1950s and for oil companies through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, he went back to the land to hunt and fish during his time off.

"I took my boys and my oldest boy is taking his little family up there now. The kids, they want to go up there all the time," he said.

He tries to emphasize to younger generations during the trapper training programs how much has changed for trappers today. A four-hour trip by snowmobile might have taken him four days on his snowshoes, breaking trails for the dogs.

"Today, it's too easy," he said.

Trappers make very little money today after accounting for the cost of fuel and supplies, Alexie said, but that doesn't matter to him.

"I can go up there and get all my gas and grub - how much does it cost? Maybe a thousand dollars - and I don't get nothing. But I enjoy staying out there," he said. "That pays for the trip."

His greatest reward, he says, is returning from a hunting trip with young people and hearing them say they want to go out again.

"All I say is 'thank you,'" he said. "I done my work. They can take over now."