That Which Makes Us Haida

An interview with Nika Collison, one of the major influencing forces in my life right now, on That Which Makes Us Haida, an incredible book and currently also a new exhibit at the Bill Reid Gallery at MOA. The Haida language revival process here is an amazing thing to see; I've been very lucky to see inside the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (SHIP) which is the school that Nika talks a bit about in the interview. It's an amazing group of Elders and teachers working tirelessly to save, preserve and revive their language. I'm learning tiny bits here and there and loving every minute of it.

Also....

This weekend? Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site. Trip of a lifetime.

Snowshoeing and Disney Princesses

Sleeping Beauty is the gorgeous mountain peak that dominates the skyline on the west end of Charlotte.

The suuuuuper snowy one towards the right

 Last Sunday dawned bright and sunny and, with the help of a local friend who owns a truck and a LOT of pairs of snowshoes, a group of us decided to climb it.

Me in my gear! Also, I have red hair now.

The bay on the left is Charlotte. We're a long way from home!

Blue line on the horizon? Yeah, that's the ocean.

 

That's just as steep as it looks. And there was about six feet of snow. Thank GOD for snowshoes.

Tankers? No thankers.

My dear Babz (daddy) informed me today that it's been about ten days since I posted last. I couldn't actually see him shaking an admonishing finger at me but I could imagine it. So, here I am!

We just started our final course, Rain Forest Ecology. Though the class is interesting I'm definitely starting to check out of the school part of this experience as I start to think more and more about what my life here is going to be like. I have paying-the-bills-and-having-a-good-time-type work lined up for the summer and two solid leads on career-furthering-and-actually-using-my-skills-type work, one lead in Charlotte and one in Skidegate and Old Massett.

I played hookey today and yesterday to attend the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Joint Review Panel (JRP) in Skidegate. The experience was absolutely incredible. The point of the JRP, at this point in the process, is to hear oral evidence from the Haida and non-Haida residents of the communities that will be affected by the proposed pipeline and, in our case, super tankers in the Hecate Strait. It was two solid days of oral history, personal stories, origin stores, Haida language, songs and prayers. The anxiety and distress about the proposed project is tenable here. The fear and anger in the room was incredible. The idea of a spill in the Hecate and the affect that would have on every single person living on these islands is something the people here cannot allow. Everyone here depends on the ocean for the majority of their food. Fishing, and shellfish and seaweed gathering are major events here. The communities empty when the fish are in season. Actually empty. Businesses close. For days on end. The west beaches of the islands are already occasionally filled with the strange flotsam and jetsam of the shipping lines out in the Pacific. Today I heard a friend tell of a kayaking trip up the west coast during which he found over 150 Thermarest mattresses. Another friend told me there were a couple of months when the beaches, even on the east side, kept washing up left-handed hockey gloves.

It's also very strange to be learning about Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, the protected area that is the bottom third to a half of Haida Gwaii, an area that let (forced?) the federal government and Haida Nation have agreed to set aside their differences in order to co-manage, and simultaneously know that the government is considering running supertankers on a route that would be profoundly changed by the introduction of any toxic substances. What are we even protecting this for?

I was talking to the professor of our case studies class last night and she made a great point. We've been learning all through this program about the Haida value of Yah'guudang (in English, respect) and she got this funny look on her face and said, "You know, I think if we could just get this whole respect thing, that would be the end of research. The answers would be so obvious. It wouldn't be 'hey, how much of this toxin can we put in this river without poisoning everything? It would just be 'hey, that's a terrible thing to put in that river cause it might poison stuff.' You know?" This is not some island hippy saying this, this is a woman who describes herself as a scientist (and rightfully so) and told us on first meeting us that there's nothing magical about Haida Gwaii, it's just a place like anywhere else (much to all our horror in our shiny-faced enthusiasm).

What my prof said rang very true for me. Its frustrating, having worked now in several different health fields and learning what I have about natural resources over the past three months. If people would just think and stop throwing money and economics around like it's going out of style. Just stop and think about how to do things in an adaptive, place-based, respect-driven way. Wouldn't we all be better off?

Today's Accomplishments

1. Made it from my lovely warm bed to my seat in the classroom in 35 minutes. One small step for Cait, one giant moment of hate for daylight-savings-time-inspired-dark-mornings.

2. Learned about and ate a lot of seaweed. It's delicious, nutritious, abundant and FREE.

3. Biked to Lawn Hill. 44km round-trip. Exercise win but planning fail due to unexpectedly intense headwind on the way home. In combination with snow. And forgetting to bring a snack.

4. Made a beautiful fire and heated my home with my own two hands.

This evening's plan: finish my lentil soup and grilled cheese, make some tea, write about the ecology and history of the Sgaan Kinghlas Seamount, read birth stories from Old Massett and peruse a thesis I stumbled upon on retention of rural physicians that just happens to use the Queen Charlotte Hospital and Haida Gwaii as its case study.

I miss you all so very, very much but this experience and this time in my life defies description. The agony and the ecstasy.

Best. Day. Ever.

...which is what I say every day. Seriously. Every day. But this one might actually be the best day ever.

This morning we heard from John Broadhead, who's part of the Gowgaia Institute which is a kind of now dead-ish organization that focused on environmental issues, mapping and creating knowledge for the Haida title case during the worst of the logging industry. Gowgaia, specifically John himself and another geographer, produced some incredible maps including this one.

Plus I scored a beautiful print of the same map. It shows the modeled data of the salmon runs on Haida Gwaii. The really big red river in the middle of Graham Island is the Yakun River, which is sort of the breadbasket of the sea for the interior parts of Haida Gwaii. We've been hearing a lot about the oceans and fisheries in class lately, partially because of our courses and partially because it's also the focus of the Enbridge oral history hearings that are going on right now. The ocean is incredibly, incredibly important to the Haida and their way of life, the non-Haida people and then general ecosystem of the islands. No part of Haida Gwaii land is more than 20km from salt water and about 25% of the land base is within 1km of the sea.

In the afternoon, we headed over to Skidegate to visit the elementary school and lose brutally at dodgeball to the grade 7 class. Twice. It rocked. Then we went over to SHIP, the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program. It's an amazing organization that's been around for about fourteen years that's focused on saving, reviving and teaching the Skidegate dialect of the Haida language. There are three dialects of Haida left, Skidegate, Massett and Haidaborg (from the Alaskan Haida). SHIP consists most of the Elders from Skidegate, some of whom are more fluent in Haida and work to document and preserve the language, including figuring out how to write the words using they alphabet they devised and going over maps of Haida Gwaii with a fine-toothed comb, documenting place names all over the islands. The maps they produce are invaluable to the Haida title case (which is currently in the judicial system but inactive I think) as it shows continual, exclusive occupation of Haida Gwaii by the Haida people. There are other Elders and a few youth involved in SHIP more on a learning level. Together they've also created school curriculum and the elementary school in Skidegate and the high school in Queen Charlotte both have mandatory Haida language curriculum now. We played bingo with the Elders.

After that we headed over to Ben Davidson's gallery to see some of his carving and photography. So beautiful!

Raven stealing the moon.

And this evening we're heading back to the K'aay Centre to watch Jenn, our esteemed leader, present the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society on Social Enterprise Dragons, a Dragon's Den-themed program for non-profit organizations. We made the top three finalists, fingers crossed for tonight!

Oh the Things You Will See

The Joint Review Panel was in Old Massett last week, Skidegate the week after next. A lot of powerful oral history in the air.

One of the teeny islands off Charlotte. We kayaked out, made a fire and had a picnic.

Charlotte, clinging to the edge of the island.

So happy!

Kayaking, sunset, friends. Yes please.

My home under a fresh dusting of snow. In March. Come on Haida Gwaii, it's spring time.

Seriously though.

Everything depends on everything else

The whale birds are starting to gather in groups in Skidegate inlet, meaning that the plankton and other tiny things are growing. The herring are coming. They will flood the inlet and spawn on the bull kelp that's been growing all winter. After the water turns milky, you have to wait four days and then you can start to harvest the k'aaw, the herring roe that's been laid on the kelp. When the herring come that means the orcas won't be far behind. The water is coming alive for spring and the food gathering season is beginning.

Summer 2012

Life is a strange beast, eh? I knew right off that bat that this experience would fundamentally change my career path but I had no idea that it would also fundamentally change my whole life. I am so incredibly far from where I thought I would be. Feeling incredibly vulnerable but also incredibly strong.

Now that I've committed to staying here I'm starting to check out of the school work part of this program. The class we've just started (and are now a third of the way through, modular courses are so weird!), First Nations and Natural Resources, is really great and involves a lot of guest lecturers and trips out into the communities of Haida Gwaii. I'm really loving it, the only problem is it also involves a lot of homework, which I'm not so in to. I feel like now that I've admitted that this program was kind of a 'gateway drug' to this incredibly new phase of my life that I'm no longer as interested in the program itself. But it's going so fast that I'm working hard to appreciate every moment.

One of the craziest things about small communities, at least the communities here, are the access we are given to important, busy people. Mayors, executive directors, presidents all come to our class and talk to us, take us on tours, answer our inane questions and enthusiastically welcome us to their homes. Literally, their homes. And then they feed us. It's so strange and wonderful. Today I went for dinner at the home of a friend of a friend. His parents fed us dinner and we talked and laughed like we'd all known each other for years, despite the fact that I met this guy a week and a half ago and the guy I know him through about six weeks ago. People here are extremely open. They are generous with their time, their ideas, their stories and their support. I've been teased in the past for trying to become best friends with every single person I interact with in a day but man, Haida Gwaii is giving me a run for my money. I'm positively unfriendly compared with the locals.

It's strange how recognizable I am here. I guess being a women with short, white blond hair I guess I shouldn't be so surprised - plus 'the students' as we're called are pretty well known around here and everyone who's new and young is assumed to be part of the mass - but I was at Howlers, the Charlotte bar, the other night and met a guy who I've known of for a long time but never actually met before (it's a small town, I've heard of pretty much everyone at this point I think) and he knew exactly who I was and introduced himself to me. People call me Cait Blue here, partially to differentiate my from my roommate who is also Kate and whose last name rhymes with mine. Guy from the bar walked up to me and stuck out his hand and said "Hey, Cait Blue, nice to finally meet you." And I knew who he was pretty quickly too cause he looks like his brother (Sorry for all the weird lack of names, I just don't want to identify people on this blog without their permission).

I've made a couple good friends up here outside of my program and their very enthusiastic about teaching the city girl about their islands. I've started a to-do list for this summer that's been eagerly endorsed.

Summer 2012

• Learn to shoot a rifle so that when deer season starts in the fall I can shoot a deer. And eat it.
• Learn to fish, from ocean or river to plate
• Learn to surf and spend entirely too much time at North Beach in the water
• Bike from Charlotte to Masset (the northern most town on-island)
• Learn to drive stick. I feel like it's a skill everyone should have, just in case
• Buy a car and possibly an outrigger and possibly a wetsuit. Eeep.
• Learn to light better fires. I'm getting pretty good at my fireplace but there's always room for improvement
• Chainsaw. Nuff said.
• Hiking and camping. A lot of both of these.

That's all for now, but I'm sure it will get longer in the future.