ISLANDS AT THE BOUNDARY OF THE WORLD: CHANGING REPRESENTATIONS OF HAIDA GWAII, 1774-2001 by JOEL BARRY MARTINEAU B.A., University of British Columbia, 1993 M.A., University of British Columbia, 1995 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Faculty of Graduate Studies Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard The University of British Columbia December 2001 © Joel Barry Martineau, 2001 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department The University of British Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) Abstract This dissertation investigates the ways visitors to Haida Gwaii (sometimes called the Queen Charlotte Islands) have written about the islands. I argue that accounts by visitors to Haida Gwaii fashion the object that they seek to represent. In short, visitors' stories do not unproblematically reflect the islands but determine how Haida Gwaii is perceived. These perceptions in turn affect the actions of visitors, residents and governments. I contribute to that representational process, striving to show the material consequences of language and the ways discourses shape Haida Gwaii. The dissertation consists of three sections. "Early visitors" focuses on the last quarter of the eighteenth century, studying the earliest documented visits by Euro-American mariners and fur traders. "Modern visitors" concentrates on the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when some visitors were busy imposing colonial forms of government and social organization, while others were resisting these projects. "Recent visitors" concentrates on the final quarter of the twentieth century, examining the campaign to save a portion of the archipelago from clearcutting and efforts to develop alternatives to resource-extractive economic practices. By examining three case studies for each period, I argue that the ways visitors imagine the islands have been transformed in each of these periods. u Contents Abstract / ii Contents / iii List of figures / iv Acknowledgments / v Opening remarks / 1 Early visitors (1774 - 1800) Introduction / 17 1. Juan Perez's accidental visit / 23 2. Captain George Dixon and "true commercial principles" / 46 3. The Boston men, "transients on a savage coast" / 67 Modern visitors (1876- 1928) Introduction / 90 4. Reverend William Collison's modernizing project / 97 5. George Dawson and "the better Class of old-time unimproved Indians" / 123 6. Emily Carr, the ambivalent visitor / 146 Recent visitors (1974 - 1998) Introduction / 167 7. Haida Gwaii as "the Canadian Galapagos" / 173 8. Bill Reid: the Haida nation in motion / 194 9. Econarratives and Haida Gwaii / 218 Concluding remarks / 241 Notes / 247 Bibliography / 265 iii List of figures Figure 1: Map of Haida Gwaii. Page 3. Figure 2: "A Young Woman of Queen Charlotte's Islands." Sketch by Captain George Dixon, 1787. Page 62. Figure 3: "Skidegate Indian Village." Photograph by George M. Dawson, 26 July 1878. National Archives Canada. PA 37757. Page 139. Figure 4: The Raven and the First Men. Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia. Photo by Bill McLennan, MO A. Used by permission. Page 202. Figure 5: The Spirit of Haida Gwaii. The Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC, August 2000. Photo by Shamsah Mohamed. Used by permission. Page 211. iv A cknowledgem ents Creating Islands at the Boundary of the World has been a long journey. In a sense, the project began in my childhood, when Dad taught me to question everything and Mom taught me to believe anything is possible. Thank you, Mom and Dad. Back in the early 1990s, Margery Fee, Amanda Goldrick-Jones, Sherrill Grace, Bill New and Kate Sirluck whetted my academic interests. More recently, Derek Gregory, Eva-Marie Kroller and Laurie Ricou have supervised my research, consistently encouraging me to push onwards and to be more rigorous en route. I have cherished Laurie's gentle, nurturing pedagogy since the day I met him. Then there is our reading group. Noel Currie, Janice Fiamengo and Gabriele Helms have read my work these last few years and always assured me that it has a future, "probably on the ferries." Guy Beauregard and Julie Walchli have proven time and again that my most valuable possessions are my friends. Thirty-four years ago, Janice Kelly rescued me when I was adrift in Mrs Dallamore's Grade 13 English class. She continues to nudge my thoughts into words. v Opening remarks After dreaming for years about journeying to the Queen Charlotte Islands, I embarked on my first visit in 1995. I travelled there in a small commercial salmon-fishing boat I owned. I can reconstruct my arrival by opening the logbook for the Gypsy Ways and turning to the entries for the morning of 14 June 1995: 0420. Passed a dragger working a mile or two to the south. The swell has gone down. 0530. First sighting of land. There is a purple smudge in among the clouds. 0810. I've finally located myself on the charts. I'm about ten miles north of where I expected to arrive. The 249 bearing that I've steered all night is taking me toward East Copper Island light and Skincuttle Inlet, on chart 3809. I wanted to arrive at Houston Stewart Channel, which separates Kunghit Island from Moresby Island and leads through to Anthony Island and Ninstints. I'm reluctant to turn back and down, even though Ninstints is reputed to have the most interesting Haida totems. 0945. Anchored at Jedway. Now, years later, the entries remind me of the tense night of navigation. I can recall the physical exhaustion: I hadn't slept for more than thirty hours and had crossed the widest part of Hecate Strait, an appropriately named stretch of water. The crossing took seventeen hours, with land out of sight for ten hours. No matter how fine the charts, how true the compass, or how modern the loran, radar, depth sounder, and autopilot, navigating a small boat with no land in sight and no consort stretches the nerves. I had left a shoreline that I knew well and crossed into a space that I sensed would be dangerous but exciting. 1 Once I found my bearings I proceeded straight into a snug harbour. Too excited to sleep, I put the skiff in the water and rowed ashore. As I rowed, I contemplated — the Queen Charlotte Islands; Haida Gwaii (Figure 1). I recalled my first memory of the islands: I was nine; Jack James and Dad were sitting on the steps of the general store we owned, and Jack, with his huge round face and flowing white hair, was telling how Haida raiding parties used to swoop down the coast in their giant canoes, striking fear into the Kwakiutl, who would retreat up the mainland inlets until the Haida passed.1 The islands became for me a place of wonder, always situated over the horizon, always concealed, always farther west than wherever I happened to be. I had anchored in Jedway, the site of many stories that swirl around contact and trade and copper and smallpox and more, but as I stretched my legs on shore that morning in 1995 I saw only endless mine tailings sprouting alders. I rowed back to the boat and tried to relax. Restlessness won out. I pulled the anchor and travelled slowly up the eastern side of the archipelago, following the path of George Dawson, the famous Canadian geologist who surveyed the archipelago in 1878. I planned to stop at what I had always heard referred to as Hotspring Island, although one of the charts I had on board marked it in Haida as Gandla K'in. I noticed that Dawson had applied the English name, an act so routine to Dawson that he would mention the naming in his report to the Geological Survey of Canada, but not in his journal.2 Late in the afternoon I anchored. As I puttered about the boat, smoke drifted up from two cedar-shake cabins that I assumed housed Haida Watchmen. Other fishers had mentioned the Watchmen: "There'll probably be some Haida at the hotsprings." "They might let you ashore, they might not. Depends how their land claims are 2 HAIDA GWAII LANCARA ISLAND Massett GRAHAM ISLAND Skidegate O n K'una rqauu • LYELL\ ISLAND D Hlk'yaah Y- P. Gandla K'in GWAII \ HAANAS Sgan Gwaii • Watchmen sites 0 30 km 1 going." "Two years ago they were charging you to go ashore, but last year they weren't. You never know until you get there." After dinner I slid the rowboat into the water and went ashore. A path led past the cabins, to a shower hut, and up a few metres to the hotsprings. I gently hailed the cabins. An elder came onto the porch and asked me in "to sign the guest book." It turned out there were four workers for the Haida Gwaii Watchmen program at Gandla K'in: two female elders, a young granddaughter, and a taciturn young man. The elders answered my questions about the strips of halibut that hung curing from every rafter, then pointed me toward the hotsprings. Later they asked where I was headed. When I explained that I would leave for T'anuu in the morning, one of the elders said that her daughter Melody would welcome me there.