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probably being plucked from the maws of angry sea
lions up in Kingcome as we spoke. When conversation
turned to aboriginal tourism, she was skeptical. “I don’t
know if there is really such a thing as cultural tourism,”
my friend said as we ate the oolies, which were oily and
smoky and delicious. “Whose life, after all, gets marked
as ‘culture,’ and whose remains unmarked?”I
spent the night across town at Skwachàys
Lodge, which adver tises itself as a 'fair trade
gallery, boutique hotel, and an urban
aboriginal artist residence.' The building,
owned and operated by the Vancouver Native
Housing Society, contains 24 shelter-rate
apartments for aboriginal people at risk of
homelessness. There are 18 hotel rooms on the top
three fl oors, which has walls hung with works by
a team of aboriginal artists. My suite was near the
smudging room, where cedar, sage, and sweetgrass
are burnt during traditional cleansing rituals.
The next morning I caught a fl ight to Haida Gwaii,
an archipelago of around 150 islands that sits at the
north of BC’s coastline, just south of Alaska. The islands
are separated from the mainland by the capriciouswaters of the Hecate Strait, named after a British vessel
that bore the name of the Greek goddess of magic and
witchcraft. It’s a region where weather slips around
from hour to hour, and rain might appear six times
in a day. Even the name of the islands has shifted—
they were known as the Queen Charlottes after their
'discovery' by the British in 1787. In 2010 they were
renamed Haida Gwaii, or 'islands of the people.'
The Haida are one of the most celebrated, and
perhaps infamous, tribes of the Pacifi c Northwest.
They’ve been dealing with the vagaries of the chilly
Pacifi c for thousands of years and were known for
their lightning raids up and down the coast, the
islands acting as their launching point and fortress.
They are said to have travelled in canoes wrought
from a single cedar, each warrior rubbed down with
grease and charcoal and wrapped in the hides of sea
lions and elk to keep the elements at bay.
At the time of fi rst colonial contact, in the late 18th
century, there were around 10,000 Haida, and the
remoteness of the islands meant it was tougher for
missionaries to spread the word to Haida Gwaii,
though they did eventually make the journey. As did
smallpox, which decimated the Haida in the 1860s.
The population dipped to a mere 500 in 1900.
Nowadays, signs of resilience are evident across the
archipelago. When I was there, the carving house at the
Haida Heritage Centre at Kay Llnagaay, an ancient
village site, contained two new totem poles, the curving
beak of an eagle emerging from fresh cedar shavings.
I was staying in the town of Skidegate, on Graham
Island, the archipelago’s second largest. At my
lodgings, Jags Beanstalk, I was met by the proprietor,
Jags Brown. A rangy man with salt-and-pepper hair,
Brown is a member of the Juus Xaayda clan; his Haida
name is Yestaquana. When he was young, he became
one of Haida Gwaii’s fi rst Watchmen, a group that
protected the community’s ancient sites. On his early
travels around Gwaii Haanas, the island’s national
park, he would fi nd bones and other moss-covered
remains of smallpox victims in the brush; in one cave,
he found a cedarwood box containing a shaman’s
wand. Back then, his group protected the sacred sites
from looters and vandals. Today, their role is to
educate, off er marine forecasts, and make sure visitors
don’t leave any traces behind when they leave the park.
If you want to go somewhere in Haida Gwaii, it’s
best to learn the original name. Skedans, for example,
comes from a European rendering of a chief’s name;
the traditional name, K’uuna Llnagaay, means 'Village
on the Edge,' and in the 19th century, this wind-
whipped peninsula was the winter home of around
450 Haida. Early one morning, I headed there in a
Zodiac, out past the village of Sandspit on a thudding
journey of extraordinary beauty, islands looming and
receding through the mist. Along the way a rainbow
formed, and, in the waters just past Sandspit, I saw
a humpback breach.A path leading into
the forests of
Naikoon Provincial
Park in Masset,
Haida Gwaii.