Susan Noyes Platt Volume 19: Race — Under Our Skin 37
Haida Gwaii
Tradition Resurrected
by Susan Noyes Platt
Part I: Haida Gwaii, Tradition Resurrected them all, discovered human beings in a large clam shell on the beach, and because he had hen you visit Haida Gwaii you can feel just gorged himself on the foods of the sea, he the magic of 10,000 years of continu- coaxed them out and let them flourish. He then ous history. Haida Gwaii (formerly intersected with them playing tricks, causing WQueen Charlotte Islands) is the homeland of the trouble, bungling his greedy ideas, and generally Haida. As you approach on the long ferry rides playing with right and wrong. from Vancouver Island and then Prince Rupert, Eagle swoops from on high to grab small the mountains descend to the sea steeply, cov- birds and fish, lands on high perches. He stands ered with uninterrupted forest; the sky expands; above us all. Bear is the caretaker animal, who the sea stretches; the clouds dance high and low often is seen on poles protecting people and other and the fog sometimes hangs below the moun- creatures. Killer Whale (Orca, actually a Dolphin) tains, sometimes enveloping us. The sun breaks often is depicted with a human on his back, a through clouds of many grays, waters of many woman kidnapped and then later recovered. blues, greens and silvers. The rain pours out of All of the stories are part of an oral tradition distant clouds. that has been passed on for centuries and is still We see the flash of salmon leaping, and the being passed on although now there is also a incredible grace of huge whales surfacing as they written language (and only thirty fluent speakers blow out water in a big spray, and then dive with exist today). Pansy Colllison, in her book, Haida their tales sweeping up. Eagle Treasures: Tsath Lanas History and Narra- Many eagles fly in the sky, dozens of ravens tive (available to order at the Haida Heritage and crows scavenge on the ground as we arrive. Center), describes the stories she heard from On the islands we meet people (both First her grandmother and her mother, as lessons in Nation and white) who live off the land, crab- how to behave. They all have a larger theme of bing, fishing (catching the spring salmon or understanding the results of your actions. scallops, or halibut or cod), catching deer (intro- duced, of course, along with rats, raccoons, and Today, Haida are closer than ever to their squirrels), growing vegetables, and harvesting past, as they raised a legacy pole on Windy Bay berries, just like the ancient Haida. (Hlk’yah GwaGa) on Lyell Island, on August 15, Along with this basic existence, which is 2013. This is in the Gwaii Haanas National Park increasingly crucial for survival today, given Reserve, also a National Marine Conservation the expense of living on this remote island, the Area Reserve and Haida Heritage Site. Raising Haida also have survived by logging, working in a pole takes a long time and a lot of people. canneries, and industrially-linked fishing. The legacy pole celebrates twenty years of But we feel the closeness of the natural world cooperation in managing this precious group and the human world in the Haida myths — the of islands, between the government of British people intersect with their animals and birds, Columbia and the Haida. The cooperative agree- and they intersect with each other, help each ment was the result of years of Haida resistance other, and collaborate to confront emergencies. actions, starting on Lyell Island in 1985, continu- Raven, the trickster, the most provocative of ing up to the present. 38 the Raven Chronicles Cultural Geography
The legacy pole is the first pole installed in songs, their dances, their potlatch tradition. this southern area of the Islands in one hundred Many of these actually belonged to specific and thirty years. During those years the poles people who died, but who gifted these tradi- of the seven villages on the island (which lasted tions. While much has been lost, much is being until the late 19th century) were removed to gained, as these ancient traditions intersect with various museums, except for the mortuary poles. modern ones. Pole carving is one of those lively Some are in the museum near Skidegate, the traditions that is practiced by several master Haida Gwaii Heritage Center. Since 2001, poles carvers assisted by many others. Robin Wright representing each of those villages have been has just published a book on Northern Haida raised at the Heritage Center Master Carvers. The long-inhabited villages were forced to be abandoned when their populations were Part II: Haida Gwaii, Thanks, But No Tanks decimated by smallpox introduced by European traders (in some cases intentionally). In addition hrough the windows of the Haida Gwaii to smallpox, there was also the time of residen- Cultural Center, the beach and sea and tial schools, when many children were sent sky and birds beckon us to embrace the away and stripped of their identity. Christian Tstunning land that belongs to the Haida people missionaries also did a lot of purposeful destruc- today and has for the last ten thousand years. tion, although today many Haida are Christians. Although their traditional communities The descendants of those ancient peoples live were decimated by small pox, and by 1900 the in two villages on Haida Gwaii, Skidegate and Haida were reduced to only three hundred Old Masset. people concentrated in two villages — Old Among the historic villages in Gwaii Haa- Masset on the northern end of Graham Island nas, we visited Skedans, a site with beaches on and Skidegate on the southeast — these villages both sides of a spit. Its sheltered mooring was full today are active centers of Haida culture. And of bull kelp, another source of food. At its peak in 1985, Bill C-31 enabled First Nations peoples this village had twenty-six to thirty longhouses, in Canada to regain their status, and Skidegate fifty pieces of monumental sculpture (of which welcomed people to return there. twenty-two were house frontal poles), eighteen In the windows of the Haida Gwaii Cul- single mortuary poles, three double mortuary tural Center, curator Nika Collison has placed a poles, five memorial poles, and five mortuary succession of quotations from the Joint Review figures. Panel Hearings on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Today we see only a few mortuary poles and Pipeline project — a proposal to construct twin indentations in the land where longhouses were pipelines, the westbound pipeline to export as- located. The continuity of history and the earth phalt/bitumen, heavy tar sands oil diluted by reclaiming its own is deeply moving. toxic chemicals imported from China, from Al- A watchman guide wearing a traditional berta to Kitimat, British Columbia, and send it by cedar hat and a red jacket with the watchmen giant tankers through these delicate shorelines insignia (which appears on many poles) takes us and seas. The hearings were held all over British through the site pointing out a fallen log that is Colombia, as well as on Haida Gwaii, in 2012. actually a crouching bear; an eye on the side of a Tribal leaders testified eloquently, pointing fallen pole with a tree growing out of it; a square out that the project failed to accurately measure indentation is a house where thirty people slept. the risks: “Northern Gateway does not appear We see a tall pole with simple indentations that to understand the responsibilities that flow becomes, when explained, a multilayered pot- from being inextricably linked with the natu- latch hat, one layer for each potlatch, suggesting ral environment” (as quoted in the Haida Laas, enormous status; and another falling pole with Newsletter of the Council of the Haida Nation). salal actually keeping it from falling apart. If you want to see the propaganda for the project The Haida have survived, as have their from Enbridge you can read it here. They even stories of Raven, Eagle, Bear and Whale, their have a link titled “benefits for aboriginals,” Susan Noyes Platt: Haida Gwaii Volume 19: Race — Under Our Skin 39
“Anti-Enbridge Campaign,” Digital Print, 2012, by Michaela McGuire which gives them a ten percent share! “Thanks, But No Tanks,” twenty-five striking Collison alternates quotes between tribal works of photography, animation, cartoons, leaders and other opponents with the words of paintings, and sculpture by both native and the oil company. In this particular setting we non-native artists that protest the pipelines and can sense the absurdity of the oil companies’ tankers. perspectives to their fullest. We can understand A young woman named Michaela McGuire the deep divergence of the two mind sets, one was so affected by the hearings that she decided, offering “jobs”and ”economic opportunity,” the as an amateur photographer, to make images other saying the land, sea and sky’s health is about the significance of the threat of the tankers more important. to Haida culture. The result was a series of staged The quotations provide the entrance to photographs (developed in a collaborative 40 the Raven Chronicles Cultural Geography
workshop) with Haida youth, men and women plants, necromancy, and sorcery. That protest wearing traditional regalia, standing by the sea successfully moved the Exxon Oil project to or in the forest, with a brief text that brings home Alaska, and we all know what happened next — the meaning of the destruction of these lands for the Exxon Valdez oil spill that still has not been Haida people. cleaned up. Leaking tar sands out of old tankers In addition, McGuire created a potent self could never be cleaned up at all, so thick is the portrait of her oil-soaked hand reaching out tar coming from the Alberta fields. toward the camera, her screaming face visible Kayoko Daugert was accustomed to making through her fingers. joyful watercolors about nature, so this dark sub- As curator Collison told me: “the strength ject was a challenge for her. “Catching Swarms of of the photos catalyzed the show.” Invasive False Promises” is a delicate watercolor Another dramatic response to the threat of that appears to be lighthearted until you look the tankers came from artist Janice Tanton, who closely and see that the children are picking up had supported herself comfortably with sales to globs of tar from the beach. patrons from the oil community. When she came Photographs by Natasha Lavdovsky look at to Haida Gwaii for a residency, she completely underwater life; Pierre Leichner created tableau changed her mind, and chose to oppose the En- of toy soldiers in a delicate marine environment, bridge project. possibly futilely trying to clean up, or suggest- Janice Tanton’s “State of Interdependence ing that the tankers are like a war on the world crossing Over at Alliford Bay,” her striking paint- under the sea. ing of “everyman” gazing out over Alliford Bay, Betsy Cardell’s hanging felted wool ap- shows the strength of her distress. As she crossed pears to have been eaten away by toxins; a big Alliford Bay on a small ferry she was crossing multimedia sculpture created collaboratively over not only physically, but also emotionally by eleven artists suggests all the forms of life and mentally, to another way of understanding under the sea:”The forest and ocean conceal little the world. It is easy to understand this change: known secrets. While we sleep a symphony of these islands exert a magnetic force. cacophonous life explodes — if we don’t hear it, Hanging from the ceiling in one room, is a does it exist? Invisible, palpable, ruckus, rich . . . ” paper maché head of Canadian Prime Minister One of the most striking works in the exhibi- Stephen Harper. It is one prop for a multime- tion is by Gwaai Edenshaw. “Hollow Promises: dia video called, “Haida Raid 2: A Message to Two Hundred Years of Pain and Exploitation” Stephen Harper.” An animated video includes a is cast of a fragment of a face mounted on a rap song performed by JA$E El-Nino that begins, rusty oil can. Edenshaw’s work addresses the theme of prostitution: oil boom territory leads “I met a Native man that did a span in Afghanistan to a six-hundred percent increase in transient He even toked hash with a clan of the Taliban” workers and transient prostitution. This ragged face exposes those ravages. I also read the piece The animation, by Haidawood, includes as a reference to the renewed threat to the Haida Raven reprogramming the computer so that the from the tar sands tankers. It is accompanied by oil is redirected into Stephen Harper’s face. a short poem: The curator also included a 1977 cartoon book, Tales of Raven, No. 1: No Tankers, T’anks. A hollow torn form smudged with greasy fingers. Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and John Broadhead A worn soul under the heel of “away from home” created it to oppose a previous disastrous project The price of money . . . we cannot bear it. that would have brought oil through Hecate The price of oil we will not carry it. Straits — the body of water between the BC mainland and Haida Gwaii, aptly named after The irony is that at the same time as the the Greek Goddess associated with crossroads, exhibition, the Haida were creating the legacy entrance-ways, fire, light, the Moon, magic, pole honoring twenty years of cooperative man- witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous agement protecting Gwaii Haanas, “from the Susan Noyes Platt: Haida Gwaii Volume 19: Race — Under Our Skin 41
bottom of the sea to the top of the sky.” Gwaai Edenshaw was an assistant along with Tyler York on the legacy pole, with lead carv- er Jaalen Edenshaw. At the dedication, the Haida declared their “responsibility to conduct ourselves in a way that hon- ors our ancestors.” Since those ancestors have recently offered fierce and successful resistance to destruc- tion of their land, we know what to expect next if Enbridge con- tinues.
The plan is to fight in the courts because the First Nations have never given up their lands in treaties in Canada, and they still have title to their land. But Stephen Harper, as Prime Minister, is doing everything he can to turn back the clock and take away “Stephen Harper’s Head,” detail, 2012, by Dr. Ken Leslie indigenous rights, while talking as though he is providing economic progress. Raven’s action in fixing the pipeline programming so that the opportunities, to allow the complete destruction tar sand squirts right in Harper’s face is a great of the land in return for some temporary jobs in idea. But Haida will be fighting with their bod- a toxic environment, is obvious from the vantage ies, minds and spirits, as will other First Nations point of Haida Gwaii. a groups, alongside U.S.-based tribes, and many other groups who are also fighting the tankers and pipelines across the continent.
Stephen Harper is trying to “reset” the rela- Note: Part I and II of this article are posted tionships with First Nations, meaning apparently on Platt’s blog/website at