The huge, often violent struggle over land and land rights throughout the world has often come down to a simple one syllable word. Here's a paragraph from The Haida Gwaii Lesson that describes the conflict.

       "It has always been rather difficult for the European colonial mind to understand native peoples’ relationship to land, or grasp the difference between living on and living with the land. In all their struggles, communications and litigations with government and extractive industry, that tiny one-word difference has been the hardest message for the Haida to get across. That is why they felt compelled in 2004 to draft and issue a Land Use Vision, which is merely a statement of their land values and a description of a land tenure system they believe will work for them and the government. For them living with the land is not only right living, it is in the end the only way to survive. Living on the land is seeing it as a platform, a substrate upon which life and economics proceed without much concern about what’s underfoot. Living with land is the aboriginal way. And individual ownership of it is to most aboriginal communities of the world a mistake. In the aboriginal worldview land does not belong to people, people belong to the land."   

 For full text of the Haida Land Use Vision go to :

 http://www.haidanation.ca/Pages/documents/pdfs/land/HLUV.lo_rez.pdf 

A nice lady walked up to me last week and said: "Our book club is reading your book." "Which one? "  I asked (I've written seven). "The one you're writing," she said. So this update is for her and her club.

Many of you still refer to Haida Gwaii as "The Queen Charlotte Islands" or "The Charlottes." You really have to stop doing that. This short paragraph from the last chapter explains why.

        On June 17, 2010 the Haida invited the Premier of British Columbia to visit their islands for a sacred ceremony. He agreed to come and arrived to find a large gathering of the most powerful and respected members of the Haida Nation, all dressed in full ceremonial garb. They had invited him there, they said, to give him something … well to give something back. It was the name “Queen Charlotte Islands” which a British colony had bestowed upon the islands 150 years ago. The name for the entire archipelago would once again be “Haida Gwaii.” And the Haida wanted the Premier to know that they were not renaming the islands or “taking back a name. We’ve always known this place to be Haida Gwaii. We’re giving you back a name given to us by the Crown.” Before the Premier could express his gratitude the President of the Haida Nation added this: “What we are really doing here is unwinding colonialism.”

When you signed up to support this project one of you told me that the Haida were slavers. I knew that North and South American tribes frequently enslaved each other, but I wasn't sure abut the Haida. Here's what I learned.

This will be a sidebar in the book:

                                                               HAIDA SLAVERY 

 There are dozens of conflicting accounts and descriptions of slavery on Haida Gwaii, about the ways slaves were taken, traded, bought, sold and treated. Here, based on multiple common accounts, is what seems certain: The Haida had slaves. Truth is many north and south American tribes enslaved each other, and Africans, and in at least one well documented case, The Haida’s, they enslaved white people. 

 At one point up to thirty percent of he Haida population may have been slaves. Most Haida slaves were the defeated warriors of other First Nations that had the temerity to attack Haida Gwaii. With their prisoners of war the Haida had three choices. 

1. Kill them? Too harsh. 

2. Send them home? Really …. to be rearmed and sent back for another assault? Dumb idea. 

3. Enslave them humanely, for a probationary period, try to rehabilitate them. Then either release them or invite them to stay on. 

 Option three appears to have won. So prisoners of war were definitely one source of slaves for the Haida. But there are also accounts of Haida going on lightening raids to kidnap or capture slaves from neighboring tribes. And what seems certain is that the Haida may have been the first, and possibly the only non-white civilization in history to enslave white people. The whites were mostly British soldiers who either committed crimes while on leave, or worse made eyes at a Haida woman. That could get your ship burned to waterline with all your fellow sailors taken prisoner. Among the Haida’s white slaves were also gold miners, thieves and whiskey traders. 

 Haida slaves were a commodity, traded frequently for other commodities and occasionally used to pay debts and buy wives. Slaves were allowed to marry, even to a Haida woman if she’d have him. But the children of slaves were enslaved. Slaves did menial work and paddled war canoes. 

 Where the legend gets dicey is in conflicting accounts of how the Haida treated their slaves. Rumors range from generous to brutal, from kindly to vicious. There’s an oral history of a white slave remarking that he’d been well treated and never had a better meal than he’d had while enslaved by the Haida. But there are also possibly apocryphal tales of Haida sacrificing slaves as an offering to visiting dignitaries, and refusing the bury them on the islands when they died, instead simply throwing their corpses into the sea. 

 What most historians seem to agree with is that the Haida kept their slaves for a limited period, ranging in accounts from seven to ten years, at which point they were with either released or invited to stay in Haida Gwaii as second class citizens. Some even married into the tribe, although until quite recently the Haida seemed to remember who was and who was not descended from slavery. And for some reason former slaves and their descendants all seemed to have settled in one community.

Thought you might be interested in this short footnote from the book. The graveyards mentioned here were actually mass graves containing the remains of thousands of Haida who died during a short but devastating epidemic of small pox. Here's the footnote:

      "In one of the world’s most egregious acts of cultural vandalism (“elginism”), many of those graveyards were dug up by anthropologists who carried skeletal remains off to museums and DNA labs for genetic screening. A small group of Haida have travelled the world politely asking scientists and museum directors to return their ancestors, and in most cases have succeeded in bringing them home. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which had stored the Haida bones in sterile basement vaults for almost a century, not only paid to have the intact remains of close to 150 people shipped back to Haida Gwaii, they picked up the airfare of the Haida Repatriation Committee members who had flown to Chicago to ask for them. At home they were ceremoniously laid to rest again, in the forest where they were born and where they belonged."

Reader Writer · Reader · added over 8 years ago
Hi Mark, 

My name is Daniel Roher and I am a Documentary Film producer from Toronto. I am working on a unique TV Doc that I would like to tell you a little more about so if you wouldn't mind shooting me an email. daniel@loudroarproductions.com, I will send a formal message. 

Thank you kindly, 

Daniel Roher

                                          THE ANNUAL HAIDA GWAII BEAR HUNT 

       Between 1983 and 2013, approximately 1200 Black bears were shot on Haida Gwaii by trophy hunters from around the world. The Haida had always opposed the annual hunt, but the Province of British Columbia, which simply claimed sovereignty over the islands, ignored their protests for thirty years and issued licenses to kill the bears. 

 Most of the hunters were guided to the docile and fearless bears by two outfitters approved by the Province. One permit was held by the owners of the Tlell River Lodge on Graham Island. The other by Pacific Bear Outfitters (PBO). Despite widespread public revulsion for trophy hunting, and research indicating growth opportunities in eco-tourism activities — such as bear viewing in their natural habitat — license owners continued to offer provincially approved “recreational bear hunting,” aka. “trophy hunting” tags. 

 No words were minced on licensee websites. Bear hunters traveling to Haida Gwaii, one site assured, “have a 100% opportunity with about 90% success at taking home a trophy bear.” 

 “It’s a world class animal,” another boasted, “you get a chance of killing a real exceptional old animal.” 

 PBO’s fee for the first bear shot was $9850 (an additional bear could be taken for $4250). But the site stipulated that "trophy fees are paid on all animals shot— whether killed or wounded." 

 All the bears killed or wounded on Haida Gwaii were a rare subspecies (ursus americanus Carlottae), found nowhere else in the world. They are also the largest Black Bear on the planet. UA Carlottae is considered a "keystone species" on the islands because the bears transport salmon remains into surrounding forests of Haida Gwaii, where they fertilize the trees. 

 In 1995, the Council of the Haida Nation passed a resolution at their Annual House of Assembly calling for an end to bear hunting on the Islands. The Province ignored it. Then in February 2004, at a Community Land Planning Forum, sponsored by the Haida Nation and the Province, the President of the Haida Nation restated the Nation’s position:

 “A just-completed economic study on grizzly bear hunting on the central coast shows that guide/outfitters could make more money viewing bears than they can shooting them. The Tlell River Lodge is in a good position to move from hunting to viewing. We ask you to please support the owners of the bear licenses on the Islands in making a transition from recreational hunting to sustainable tourism. Please join our initiative to protect the Haida Gwaii Black bear by sharing your feelings on recreational bear hunting. Send an email from the list below asking the Tlell River Lodge to explore sustainable and locally supported activities.” 

 Thousands of letters and signatures poured into the Lodge and the Province. On September 9, 2013 the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations closed the black bear hunting season on Haida Gwaii … forever. 

 The former Tlell River Hunting Lodge, now owned and operated by the Haida Nation and renamed Haida House, is the most popular eco-tourism resort on the islands. The Haida do not regard their purchase of the Lodge as a commercial venture. 

“We’re investing in life,” was their stated motive.           

Thought you might enjoy reading the Preamble to the Haida Constitution ... in their own written language (translation to follow).

“Iid kuuniisii asii id gii isda gan. Tllgaay ad siigaay Gan t’alang aaxana ad yahguudang. Huu tllguu Giidan hlk’inxa gaa.ngang xaayda hllng.aay gud giijaagids, gaay Gaaganuu gam gina daaGang.nga id gwii is hllnga Gang ga. XaaydaGa Gwaay.yaay Gaaganuu iid xaynanga ga. Asii gwaay.yaay guu, iid kuuniisii xaynang.nga, ad siing.gwaa’ad gan. Sah ‘Laana Tllgaay Gaa id gii kyaagang.ngaay Gaaw aan t’ang naaxang sGwaan.nang Gas ga. Iid sihlGa ga xaynangas gii t’alang t’aas.slas, asii kyang.gaay llgaay ‘waagii kilxii gang ga.”

Translation:   “The Haida Nation is the rightful heir to Haida Gwaii. Our culture is born of respect and intimacy with the land and sea and the air around us. Like the forests, the roots of our people are intertwined such that the greatest troubles cannot overcome us. We owe our existence to Haida Gwaii. The living generation accepts the responsibility to insure that our heritage is passed on to following generations. On these islands our ancestors lived and died and here too, we will make our homes until called away to join them in the great beyond.”

No other national constitution in the world makes reference to "land" or "sea"  ...  or to my knowledge, to  "the great beyond.''

Hi,

Still crankin' away. But I thought you might be interested in some insight into how power works for the Haida people, who seem to have found a unique and creative way to organize and express it in their day to day lives. 

Surface power, the power that governments have to deal with, the power that media covers, and lawyers interpret, resides in the Council of the Haida Nation (their federal government). But true power in the Haida Nation is covert. It derives from deep guidance transmitted by spiritual ancestors through small, select committees (one behind each powerful man) of living elder women, described to me by one of them, April Churchill, as "women past their moon.”  Before a chief or other patriarch steps out of the community to broker power, he spends time with his five or six member committee of elder women, who counsel him on how to deal with external powers. This method of power transmission may seem excessively spiritual, even a little "woo-woo" to the modern western mind. But it has some material support. 

A central purpose of all indigenous oral traditions is to keep wisdom alive. In most aboriginal languages there is a word for the people who store and transmit the wisdom of ancestors that was given to them orally by their elders. Wisdom Keepers are selected by their community  to be keepers of wisdom because the people who interact with them every day regard them as wise enough to sort out ancestral advice that still makes sense, still works. Pass that wisdom on as guidance and toss anything that turned out to be bad judgment into the dustbin of history. The selection of Wisdom Keepers differs from community to community. The women-past-their-moon model is not uniquely Haida, but it’s rare.  

 The system seems to work in Haida Gwaii because Haida men in power truly believe that it is only through elder women, women who they’ve known all their life, women past their moon, derided in most cultures as "crones" or woman past their prime, that wisdom that truly works can be objectively selected and accurately transmitted. 

What I describe in the rest of this book attests to the strong possibility that Haida men are right about that. Something is certainly working for the Haida, whose methods and expression of power in Canada and British Columbia is paying big dividends for them. 

I'm beginning to realize why the Haida are so exceptional, and why they are winning their struggle for sovereignty. It's not their carving (which is world famous) or their weaving, or fishing, or forestry, or their art, all of which they excell at. It's their philosophy; and it's so simple.

They know that they come from the sea, so they respect it in ways that few other cultures do. And they know that the land has to be cared for as well as their children if they are to survive. So the essence of their agenda is care of the land and the sea. 

"It's that simple, and our agenda hasn't changed for ten thousand years," a wise matriarch told me yesterday. And it's why they will never surrender title -- "Haida Title" -- to their islands or the sea  around them, where they have thrived for millennia. And it's why they are gradually winning back a homeland lost to the Crown a mere 200 years ago.

Greetings from Haida Gwaii. 

If you ever get a chance to travel here, do so. There really is nowhere in the world quite like it. I wish I could attach photos to these updates, but alas I am reduced to a word: FANTASTIC .... to describe this mountainous archipelago that rises out of the turbulent seas of the north Pacific. Amazing that people ever found and settled the place (the Haida truly believe they origninated here ...the truest of "aboriginals"). 

There is ample archiological proof that they were here at least 13,000 years ago, surviving the ice age and watching the first tree appear on the islands, a cedar. Imagine that, people before trees. And when the trees finally came they carved them into giant canoes that eventually carried them across the Pacific. In spirit they remain as rugged and resilient as the giant spruce and cedars from which they still carve their boats.

Haa Wa (thank you in Haida) for sending me here. You'll see the result of your generosity in less than a year.

Mark

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