The discovery and reconstruction of what is believed to be Canada's oldest moccasin has been announced by Canada’s Tourism and Culture Minister Elaine Taylor.

The 1,400-year old moccasin was first recovered from a melting alpine ice patch in 2003 by Cody Joe of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, working as part of a multi-disciplinary research team. Originally thought to be a hunter's bag, the artefact was kept frozen until Yukon Conservator Valery Monahan could finish cleaning and assembling the pieces. Monahan painstakingly put over 240 hours into gently unfurling and cleaning the article, and re-piecing it to form the moccasin. It has now been thoroughly dried and reassembled and can safely be viewed and examined.

The moccasin is one of a very small number of pre-European worked hide objects found in Canada. Almost all of the other examples are from tundra regions and relate directly to ancestral Inuit culture. The moccasin is even rarer as it comes from the boreal forest and was likely to have been made and worn by early Athapaskan people.

Ancient ice patches in the Southwest Yukon have been the focus of research into human history and environmental change since their discovery in 1997. Annual fieldwork at the ice patches is carried out under a cooperative partnership between the department of Tourism and Culture Archaeology Programme and six Yukon First Nations with support from the Department of Environment.

Researchers have recovered more than 180 hunting-related artefacts to date. They range in age from several hundred to over 8,000 years old. The moccasin is the first sewn hide object to be found in an ice patch.