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Revolutionary spirits that go bump in the night
Former Vancouver Sun writer Ian Gill knows that talk is not cheap.
As he points out in All That We Say is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation (D&M $34.95) it is talk-oral history and storytelling-that has served the Haida nation as the basis for reviving its culture.
And it was a fervent conversation between two men after a chance meeting in the middle of the night that revolutionized the political landscape of Haida Gwaii.
in All That We Say is Ours, Gill has refracted the history of the Haida through the prism of one man, Gary Edenshaw, first known as Giindajin, a name that means "full of questions,"; who was born in 1953 into a family of nine children at the town of Masset on Haida Gwaii. He did not go to residential school. As a young tough working at the Dragon Bowling Alley, rowing, singing and drumming, he gradually evolved into a man with answers, to be known instead as Guujaaw.
It was "the narrowest of threads";-dancing at the feet of his great-grandmother and demonstrating a keenness for listening to the stories of his elders-that connected Guujaaw to the Haida's vast culture. Guujaaw's mother died when he was fifteen. He learned carpentry as a trade, leaving the island for a few years before returning to his hometown in the early '70s, when Haida Gwaii had begun to attract some counter-culture types. Jenny Nelson, a flower child from Ontario, would become his wife and mother of his children.
In 1974, Thom 'Huck' Henley, an American setting up in Haida Gwaii, arrived at Masset. During his stay at a cabin, Henley literally bumped into Guujaaw in the middle of the night. They struck up a conversation and sat down and drew a line on a map of South Morseby that Gill describes as "the most incredible act of kitchen table cartography."; The line wasn't arrived at through any science or protocol, "It was just a couple of guys in the middle of the night with the hare-brained notion that everything below that line"; should be spared from industrial logging.
Today that line is the northern boundary of Gwaii Haanas, now a world-protected area.
Haida Gwaii ("Island of the People";) according to Haida legend emerged from a cockle shell at Rose Spit over 10,000 years ago, off the coast of British Columbia. A land of great abundance and beauty it was inhabited by tens of thousands of Haida for over six thousand years. On a clear day Alaska to the north is visible but mainland Canada is never in its sights.
In 1787, the islands were surveyed by Captain George Dixon and named by Captain Dixon after one of his ships, the Queen Charlotte. At the time of colonial contact, the population was roughly 10,000 to 60,000. Ninety percent of the population died during the 1800s from smallpox; other diseases arrived as well, including typhoid, measles, and syphilis, affecting many more inhabitants. By 1900, only 350 people remained.
Industrial logging arrived in the early 1900s. The Gowgaia Institute has estimated that 70,000 hectares were logged over the next century-enough wood to circle the earth with a six-foot diameter log worth about 20 billion dollars. Whole hillsides were laid bare as the increasing mechanization of forestry allowed loggers to travel further and take more.
From an aboriginal perspective, ownership of the land was never in question until someone arrived to contest it. Beginning with Sir James Douglas and the Hudson's Bay Company, there was no real distinction between the goals of government and those of business. Successive B.C. governments went out of their way to avoid settling the land question, or even acknowledging there was a "question"; at all. Native people were herded onto reserves and left to their misery.
By the 1960s, Masset served as part of the Canadian Forces supplementary radio system. Tension between the young soldiers and the young Haida men was growing. On June 3, 1978, Giindajin and a small gaggle of protesters came to protest the presence of the military base. This happened twelve years before the Oka crisis. Reaction from members of the community was mixed but it was clear that Giindajin and the concerns he represented were not going away.
During a potlatch in 1981 to celebrate the completion of a longhouse, Giindajin was given another name-Guujaaw (meaning "drum";). The name inferred he was authorized to articulate a Haida worldview through his oratory. His talk. There were very few Haida at in the early 1980s who were taking a prominent role in the South Moresby conservation campaign, or the other environmental campaigns on the island.
As the issue of logging grew, it became imperative to "restore what had become an environmental issue into a Haida issue."; As a result only Haida would man the blockades-an environmental issue, but a Haida responsibility. The first blockades opened a significant new chapter in Haida mythology, and gave rise to a song that today is a kind of national anthem for the Haida Gwaii.
On July 7, 1987, a deal was struck to establish Gwaii Haanas National Park. An elder was overheard at the signing ceremony saying it was "far more significant than the signing of the South Morseby agreement. It marks the rebirth of a nation."; It was also a milestone in the ascendancy of Guujaaw.
In 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada had found in Delgamuukw, that aboriginal title had not been extinguished in Canada despite Canada's and British Columbia's claims to the contrary.
Ian Gill has provided a thorough analysis of the forces that contributed to the fall and rise of the Haida people. With All That We Say is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation, he has given voice to the struggles of the Haida people and their fight for self-determination while at the same time raising troubling questions about Canadian political values.
All We Say is Ours offers a social history of the transformation of a people and its relation to the logging industry in cahoots with the provincial government. While a more complete history of the Haida might be found elsewhere, what Gill contributes is a rethinking of the facts especially as personified by Guujaaw and his truly revolutionary ardor.
[Grant Shilling is the author of The Cedar Surf: An Informal History of Surfing in British Columbia.]
As he points out in All That We Say is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation (D&M $34.95) it is talk-oral history and storytelling-that has served the Haida nation as the basis for reviving its culture.
And it was a fervent conversation between two men after a chance meeting in the middle of the night that revolutionized the political landscape of Haida Gwaii.
in All That We Say is Ours, Gill has refracted the history of the Haida through the prism of one man, Gary Edenshaw, first known as Giindajin, a name that means "full of questions,"; who was born in 1953 into a family of nine children at the town of Masset on Haida Gwaii. He did not go to residential school. As a young tough working at the Dragon Bowling Alley, rowing, singing and drumming, he gradually evolved into a man with answers, to be known instead as Guujaaw.
It was "the narrowest of threads";-dancing at the feet of his great-grandmother and demonstrating a keenness for listening to the stories of his elders-that connected Guujaaw to the Haida's vast culture. Guujaaw's mother died when he was fifteen. He learned carpentry as a trade, leaving the island for a few years before returning to his hometown in the early '70s, when Haida Gwaii had begun to attract some counter-culture types. Jenny Nelson, a flower child from Ontario, would become his wife and mother of his children.
In 1974, Thom 'Huck' Henley, an American setting up in Haida Gwaii, arrived at Masset. During his stay at a cabin, Henley literally bumped into Guujaaw in the middle of the night. They struck up a conversation and sat down and drew a line on a map of South Morseby that Gill describes as "the most incredible act of kitchen table cartography."; The line wasn't arrived at through any science or protocol, "It was just a couple of guys in the middle of the night with the hare-brained notion that everything below that line"; should be spared from industrial logging.
Today that line is the northern boundary of Gwaii Haanas, now a world-protected area.
Haida Gwaii ("Island of the People";) according to Haida legend emerged from a cockle shell at Rose Spit over 10,000 years ago, off the coast of British Columbia. A land of great abundance and beauty it was inhabited by tens of thousands of Haida for over six thousand years. On a clear day Alaska to the north is visible but mainland Canada is never in its sights.
In 1787, the islands were surveyed by Captain George Dixon and named by Captain Dixon after one of his ships, the Queen Charlotte. At the time of colonial contact, the population was roughly 10,000 to 60,000. Ninety percent of the population died during the 1800s from smallpox; other diseases arrived as well, including typhoid, measles, and syphilis, affecting many more inhabitants. By 1900, only 350 people remained.
Industrial logging arrived in the early 1900s. The Gowgaia Institute has estimated that 70,000 hectares were logged over the next century-enough wood to circle the earth with a six-foot diameter log worth about 20 billion dollars. Whole hillsides were laid bare as the increasing mechanization of forestry allowed loggers to travel further and take more.
From an aboriginal perspective, ownership of the land was never in question until someone arrived to contest it. Beginning with Sir James Douglas and the Hudson's Bay Company, there was no real distinction between the goals of government and those of business. Successive B.C. governments went out of their way to avoid settling the land question, or even acknowledging there was a "question"; at all. Native people were herded onto reserves and left to their misery.
By the 1960s, Masset served as part of the Canadian Forces supplementary radio system. Tension between the young soldiers and the young Haida men was growing. On June 3, 1978, Giindajin and a small gaggle of protesters came to protest the presence of the military base. This happened twelve years before the Oka crisis. Reaction from members of the community was mixed but it was clear that Giindajin and the concerns he represented were not going away.
During a potlatch in 1981 to celebrate the completion of a longhouse, Giindajin was given another name-Guujaaw (meaning "drum";). The name inferred he was authorized to articulate a Haida worldview through his oratory. His talk. There were very few Haida at in the early 1980s who were taking a prominent role in the South Moresby conservation campaign, or the other environmental campaigns on the island.
As the issue of logging grew, it became imperative to "restore what had become an environmental issue into a Haida issue."; As a result only Haida would man the blockades-an environmental issue, but a Haida responsibility. The first blockades opened a significant new chapter in Haida mythology, and gave rise to a song that today is a kind of national anthem for the Haida Gwaii.
On July 7, 1987, a deal was struck to establish Gwaii Haanas National Park. An elder was overheard at the signing ceremony saying it was "far more significant than the signing of the South Morseby agreement. It marks the rebirth of a nation."; It was also a milestone in the ascendancy of Guujaaw.
In 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada had found in Delgamuukw, that aboriginal title had not been extinguished in Canada despite Canada's and British Columbia's claims to the contrary.
Ian Gill has provided a thorough analysis of the forces that contributed to the fall and rise of the Haida people. With All That We Say is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation, he has given voice to the struggles of the Haida people and their fight for self-determination while at the same time raising troubling questions about Canadian political values.
All We Say is Ours offers a social history of the transformation of a people and its relation to the logging industry in cahoots with the provincial government. While a more complete history of the Haida might be found elsewhere, what Gill contributes is a rethinking of the facts especially as personified by Guujaaw and his truly revolutionary ardor.
[Grant Shilling is the author of The Cedar Surf: An Informal History of Surfing in British Columbia.]
Submitted on September 27, 2009 in By David.
