You’re probably beginning to wonder where your book is. It’s in rewrite. My brilliant editor has asked for some fairly dramatic changes. And since I agree with most of her ideas I making them. I expect to get the manuscript back to her before the end of this month. Hopefully she will love it and send it on to it’s designer, copy editor, proofreader and libel lawyer. I can’t tell you how long they will take, but I’ve always been surprised at how slow they are. So all I can ask you for is the patience of the Haida, who have waited about ten thousand years for someone to tell this part of their amazing story.

Made my deadline. The Haida Gwaii Lesson, draft one, is now in the skilled hands of it's gifted editor Jennifer Sahn, who brought me and the book into Inkshares. Jennifer and I have produced many works together. I write them, she makes them sing. She is one of the few editors I have worked with in my fifty writing career who I ever care to set eyes on again. 

It took me about a year to research and write about the five centuries that colonialism took to destroy a few thousand Indigenous cultures around the world. It should take much less time for those communities to recover what they’ve lost. Many of them are working hard on that. Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul calls it a “comeback.” 

The success of the Haida and other Canadian First Nations’ land claims have inspired aboriginal peoples throughout the Americas and beyond. Hopefully this strategic playbook will soon be in print, in many languages, and will smooth the path to sovereignty and land title for millions of people around the world.

Thank you once again for your support.

                                                                  The Argument

 In the course of petitioning federal and provincial governments for self-determination the Haida have inadvertently created a generic argument for sovereignty and aboriginal title, an argument that should work almost anywhere in the world. It's fairly simple, is addressed to the colonizer and starts with the obvious: 

 • We have lived here for a very long time on land we have always assumed was ours. 

 • We were here long before you “discovered” us and our homeland, which we have never left. 

 • For all this time we have thrived alone, without foreign assistance, on the resources of our land and water. 

 • Despite the fact that we were secure on lands we stewarded, in a culture we developed, with a religion we owned, under laws and life ways of our own making, you assumed when you first observed us, that we were a bunch of ignorant, heathen savages who had no idea how to manage land, forage and cultivate food, harvest medicines, worship our creator, trade with neighbors, conduct our ceremonies, build homes, create art or govern ourselves. And you coveted our land, and the resources on and beneath it.

 • So you conquered and subjugated us, and behind the superior fire power of your weapons, you assumed title over our land and sovereignty over us.

 • You kidnaped and “educated” our children, erased our language, sold our resources to others, extinguished our rights, attempted to convert us to your religion and turned the best of our rituals into crimes. 

 • We eventually asked you to reconsider your actions and the assumptions that informed them. You agreed to do so. 

 • Amicably we negotiated an agreement of understanding, or a governance protocol, a land use co-management plan, or a treaty. And amicably you signed it. 

 • But before the ink was dry you broke it, and returned to confiscating our land and selling our resources to people we had never met. 

 • While we are close to giving up the idea of sharing sovereignty with you, we have decided, one last time, to file a claim in your courts, where … 

 • … we seek only what we believe we deserve — self-determination, sovereignty and Aboriginal title to our land; not to some of it, but to all that we say is ours. 

Some of you have asked me why there aren't any proper names of Haida leaders and heroes in the updates I've been sending. Here is a short passage from my Preface which explains why that is.

       "You will notice as you read along that I have used very few proper names. That will seem strange to many readers, particularly those who enjoy reading about colorful personalities or have read enough Haida history to know that there were definite heroes, bold and sacrificing men and women, in their long battle for freedom and self-determination. But I have minimized using names and profiling heroes because the Haida are a profoundly anti-narcissistic culture, and it’s their story that they want the indigenous world to know, not celebrity biopics and colorful anecdotes about colorful elders, warriors and hereditary chiefs. This does not mean that they’re aren’t creative, selfless, tireless Haida leaders, who have served faithfully in key positions of power. In fact in Haida Gwaii I found some of the most remarkable people I have ever met. 

        But one of the characteristics that stood out for me about Haida leaders, men and women alike, is that they do not strive for fame or name recognition. What they do, they do for their community, not just for themselves, their immediate family or historical recognition. Nor do they take well to having their leaders receive hero status either in the community or in mass media. As one former Haida Council President observes: “Focusing on the individual is not the Haida way.” OK, I’ll tell you his name. It’s Guujaaw, who is an affable, mischievous, humorous and brilliant man, and a talented artist, who inspired and lead many of the decisive Haida battles of the past half century. Forgive me Guujaaw. I won’t do it again. 

        Of course the Haida are acutely aware of what Guujaaw and other leaders have accomplished, and those men and women are held in high esteem on Haida Gwaii. But fame is not their goal, which is, in a word, independence, which they know is something that is never won by one or even a handful of people. It is won by a nation, as the story in this book attests."

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