NOW IS THE TIME A Fine Day in Masset: Christopher Auchter Revisits Crucial Moment in Haida Renaissance By Philip Lewis August 13, 2019 It was a fine day in Masset: August 22, 1969. For the first time in living memory, a traditional totem pole was being raised in the community. Surrounded by their extended families, members of the Eagle and Raven Clans formed parallel teams to leverage the towering structure into place alongside the old church where it still stands to this day. A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION NOW IS THE TIME A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION NOW IS THE TIME Elders would speak of “a forest of totem poles,” recalling a time when the giant carvings were common throughout the Haida Gwaii archipelago, but by the late 1960s most had vanished — suppressed by Christian missionaries and assimilationist laws that aimed explicitly to eradicate Indigenous identity from the Canadian landscape. The new pole was the brainchild of Robert Davidson, also known by his Haida name, Guud San Glans, a visionary young artist who would reinvigorate the tradition, becoming a central figure in a vibrant Haida renaissance. While previous generations had kept Haida art alive with small-scale wooden and argillite carvings, Davidson was working a monumental scale that had not been seen in almost a century. Twenty-two-year-old Robert Davidson and his grandfather, Tsinii Robert. Hardly out of his teens at the time, Davidson and his project were the subject of a short NFB doc, released in 1970, called This Was the Time. But the film raised more questions than it answered, presenting events through the muddled lens of the dominant Euro-Canadian culture. Five decades later, as part of the 50th anniversary of Davidson’s radical gesture, filmmaker Christopher Auchter, another native son, is bringing the story back home. Now Is the Time, his remake of This Was the Time, reframes footage and out-takes from the 1970 production, juxtaposing this material with animation, contemporary interviews and remarkable, newly unearthed archival sound. A short documentary produced by the BC & Yukon Studio, Now Is the Time got its world premiere at the 2019 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival. A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION NOW IS THE TIME “Beautiful education in my own culture” “It’s been a beautiful education in my own culture,” says Auchter, who won praise for his 2017 directorial debut, The Mountain of SGaana, vivid animation inspired by Haida mythology. “I myself have been surrounded by Haida art all my life, but it hasn’t always been that way. Robert Davidson grew up in a generation very different from mine. He told me that he once went door to door in Masset, searching for Haida art that he could study, to learn how the old masters worked, and he only found one object: a painted Bentwood box.” Christopher Auchter on set. Photo by Teri Snelgrove. “When I tried to understand for myself what happened to all the totem poles, I was even more perplexed. It was only when I unearthed 50-year-old taped recordings of elders giving first-hand accounts that I finally grasped what had actually happened to the carved poles. You’ll have to watch the film to find out that answer. It was only when I heard those tapes that I fully understood the significance of Robert’s famous Bear Mother Totem Pole, the first in nearly a century, the effect it had our community — and the effect that it has had on me.” Now recognized as one of Canada’s most distinctive visual artists, Davidson looks back on that August day as a turning point in his creative trajectory. Speaking to journalist Mark Follman for a 2013 profile in Mother Jones magazine, he states: “The totem pole caused an incredible change in my life, in my understanding of ceremony, of what art means to the people.” A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION NOW IS THE TIME Brothers Robert and Reg Davidson demonstrate raven rattles in Robert’s studio. In revisiting the events of 1969, Auchter situates Davidson’s achievement squarely within his people’s historical experience with colonialism. “Why did the totem poles disappear in the first place? Why wasn’t the potlatch allowed to happen? I get to explore that history, and I get to tell the story of how Robert’s totem pole helped bring back our artistic culture. His pole is still there, in excellent condition after 50 years, looking as beautiful as ever. Except now it’s not alone. Other poles have been raised since then. Not in the same numbers as the old days, but very significant all the same.” A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION NOW IS THE TIME Barbara Wilson: Haida scholar and voice from the past Barbara Wilson One of Auchter’s key interview subjects is Haida scholar Barbara Wilson, who was a young trainee filmmaker in 1969, present in Masset on that fateful day. As a contemporary of Davidson’s, she shared his interest in Haida cultural resurgence, and as a member of the NFB’s newly formed Indian Film Crew (IFC), she helped craft the initial proposal for the film, a project called Potlatch in which she positioned Davidson’s initiative within a broader cultural context, emphasizing themes of renewal and resilience. It was Wilson who brought the film crew to Masset for the big event, but having played a crucial role in pre-production and on the shoot itself, she found herself removed from key creative decisions when the film moved into post-production, with no say in how the film was edited. Produced with financial support from the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the film was released as This Was the Time, containing little of Wilson’s original vision. A romanticized and fragmented representation of events, finished by a nonIndigenous team and featuring a non-Indigenous narration, This Was the Time suggested a culture on the verge of disappearing rather than one poised for rebirth, and the French title, Héritage perdu, only emphasized this sense of elegiac doom. Although Wilson’s name appears in the final credits, she did not actually see This Was the Time until 2017 when she reached out to Michelle van Beusekom, Executive Director of the NFB’s English Program, asking to see a copy. People in Masset had started planning the 2019 anniversary and Reg Davidson, Robert’s brother, wondered whether the film might be made available for the occasion. “My instant reaction when I saw the film was, this is pure unadulterated propaganda for A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION NOW IS THE TIME Indian Affairs,” says Wilson. “They missed so much about Robert’s family and their participation. You can’t put up a pole without holding a potlatch. The two always go together. When Robert raised his pole, he also did a potlatch, and that’s hugely significant. I’m sure that they had lots of great footage of Robert with his family, his grandfather and grandmother, all the people who were instrumental in helping him get to that place where he could do a potlatch, but the film didn’t get that across.” The potlatch occupies a central place in Haida society and economy. Even when the potlatch was outlawed under the Indian Act, from 1884 until 1951, communities found ways to circumvent the ban. “People continued to do their clan activities under the guise of Christian celebrations like Christmas dinner or Easter, on holidays like May 24 or July 1, or as house prayer meetings,” says Wilson. As plans proceeded in Masset to mark the 50th anniversary, Reg Davidson, Robert’s brother, came up with a novel proposal: What if the story was retold from a Haida perspective? Wilson put this idea to van Beusekom, who liked the idea and confirmed that the original footage was indeed still available in the NFB archives: van Beusekom in turn discussed the proposal with Shirley Vercruysse, Executive Producer at the BC & Yukon Studio, who reached out to Auchter — a distant cousin of both Wilson and Davidson — and Auchter quickly embraced the idea. Striking gold at the BC Archives Imbert Orchard recording Robert Davidson on Aug 22, 1969. Photo courtesy of Robert Davidson. In fleshing out the story of Davidson’s historic totem pole and potlatch, Auchter spent months in archival research, unearthing invaluable material at the BC Archives, home to the remarkable Imbert Orchard/Living Memory Collection, A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION NOW IS THE TIME thousands of audio recordings made by journalist Robert Imbert Orchard during the 1960s for CBC radio. “I was just blown away by what I found. Imbert Orchard was in Masset for the pole raising and he recorded interviews with all kinds of people. There are interviews with elders, with Robert and Barbara, and great sound of the actual moment when they’re raising the pole. You hear guys from the Eagle Clan teasing the Ravens. ‘Hey Ravens, what are you doing on your side? We’re doing all the work here!’ A lot of the audio from the 1969 shoot has been lost, so this stuff is pure gold.” Florence Davidson, Robert Davidson’s grandmother, director Christopher Auchter’s Naanii, and head cook at his 1969 potlatch. Photo courtesy of Robert Davidson. The work of anthropologist Margaret B. Blackman has been another important source of material. Back in the 1970s, Blackman collaborated with Robert’s grandmother Florence Davidson to write During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, A Haida Woman, published in 1982 by the University of Washington Press.