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A Story as Sharp as a Knife (D&M $45)
In the fall of 1900 a young linguist named John Swanton (1873-1958) took the coastal steamer Princess Louise north from Victoria, headed for Haida Gwaii. He received his first Haida lessons on board from master carver Daxhiigang, known in English as Charlie Edenshaw (1839-1920).
Swanton's way was charted by his mentor, anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942), who understood the need to document Haida culture during a period when the overall Haida population was estimated at 1,000. Swanton found approximately 700 Haida in the mission villages of Skidegate and Masset.
"Haida culture never had a more devoted foreign student,"; says Robert Bringhurst in his landmark study, A Story as Sharp as a Knife (D&M $45), subtitled The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World.
The young ethnographer hired a teacher, guide and assistant named Henry Moody to help him accurately record the first written pieces of Haida literature from an hereditary chief named Sghiidagits.
"But why, we may ask, is Sghiidagits, a Haida, telling John Swanton a Tsimshian story?"; Bringhurst asks. "Is this what is known nowadays as a cultural appropriation-or is it a sign of healthy intercultural trade?"; Bringhurst answers his own question when he points out that Swanton bought his first story from Sghiidagits, thereby proving his respect for Haida protocol.
Bringhurst reports that Swanton paid his co-worker Moody $1.50 per day, six full days a week. He paid poets, singers and storytellers 20 cents an hour and budgeted $35 per month, a princely sum at the turn-of-the-century, for this purpose. "If we compare these rates to Swanton's own workload and salary, we will find that he was paying his Haida colleagues pretty much the same hourly rate he was making himself.";
During the year that followed Swanton transcribed the oral work of Haida poets, most notably Skaii (John Sky) and Ghandl (Walter McGregor), the 'Homer' of his literature. The latter spent a month painstakingly dictating about 5,000 of his poetry.
"Why Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaana of Qaysun has not also been adopted with full honours into the polyligual canon of North American literary history I do not know,"; says Bringhurst. "He seems to me a great deal more accomplished-and therefore far more worthy of celebration as a literary ancestor-than any Canadian poet or novelist who was writing in English or French during his time.";
Bringhurst has been reworking Swanton's phonetically transcribed versions of Haida myths, stories and songs for many years. He began to study the Haida language in 1982 and has published previous translations of Haida poetry in scholarly journals. He studied linguistics with Noam Chomsky in the 1960s and has worked as a translator from Arabic and Greek. With photographer Ulli Steltzer he co-authored The Black Canoe: Bill Reid and the Spirit of Haida Gwaii. With sculptor Bill Reid he produced The Raven Steals the Light. 1-55054-696-1
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Swanton's way was charted by his mentor, anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942), who understood the need to document Haida culture during a period when the overall Haida population was estimated at 1,000. Swanton found approximately 700 Haida in the mission villages of Skidegate and Masset.
"Haida culture never had a more devoted foreign student,"; says Robert Bringhurst in his landmark study, A Story as Sharp as a Knife (D&M $45), subtitled The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World.
The young ethnographer hired a teacher, guide and assistant named Henry Moody to help him accurately record the first written pieces of Haida literature from an hereditary chief named Sghiidagits.
"But why, we may ask, is Sghiidagits, a Haida, telling John Swanton a Tsimshian story?"; Bringhurst asks. "Is this what is known nowadays as a cultural appropriation-or is it a sign of healthy intercultural trade?"; Bringhurst answers his own question when he points out that Swanton bought his first story from Sghiidagits, thereby proving his respect for Haida protocol.
Bringhurst reports that Swanton paid his co-worker Moody $1.50 per day, six full days a week. He paid poets, singers and storytellers 20 cents an hour and budgeted $35 per month, a princely sum at the turn-of-the-century, for this purpose. "If we compare these rates to Swanton's own workload and salary, we will find that he was paying his Haida colleagues pretty much the same hourly rate he was making himself.";
During the year that followed Swanton transcribed the oral work of Haida poets, most notably Skaii (John Sky) and Ghandl (Walter McGregor), the 'Homer' of his literature. The latter spent a month painstakingly dictating about 5,000 of his poetry.
"Why Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaana of Qaysun has not also been adopted with full honours into the polyligual canon of North American literary history I do not know,"; says Bringhurst. "He seems to me a great deal more accomplished-and therefore far more worthy of celebration as a literary ancestor-than any Canadian poet or novelist who was writing in English or French during his time.";
Bringhurst has been reworking Swanton's phonetically transcribed versions of Haida myths, stories and songs for many years. He began to study the Haida language in 1982 and has published previous translations of Haida poetry in scholarly journals. He studied linguistics with Noam Chomsky in the 1960s and has worked as a translator from Arabic and Greek. With photographer Ulli Steltzer he co-authored The Black Canoe: Bill Reid and the Spirit of Haida Gwaii. With sculptor Bill Reid he produced The Raven Steals the Light. 1-55054-696-1
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Submitted on July 9, 2003 in By David.
