Why can't one take away totem poles from Indian villages?

Haida Gwaii islands

The boat jumps over the waves like an angry horse but there are two engines and the boat moves quickly. It is almost a gale and it is raining, the drops smack the face as if trying to stop us going there. We are sailing to a world-famous tourist attraction, which consists of a handful of half-rotten and covered-in-moss wooden poles on which something has been carved long ago. Not much can be seen of the sculptures today, an eye peeping from under the moss here, bared wooden teeth there. Perhaps in another ten years nothing will remain.

Maybe this slow death is a magnet for tourists? But to travel to the ends of the Earth to see a few rotting wooden teeth? And pay a couple of hundred bucks for the pleasure to a company which will take you there in a boat jumping over the waves in the rain?

You can only get there in a boat jumping over waves. You could conceivably get there in a yacht or a kayak, but avoid the ocean waves you can't. Even if you are rich and come here by a yacht you won't see more than the few remaining rotting totem poles covered by moss. This is all that is left from a village of the Haida people, who once inhabited the whole archipelago. They were here when the English first came in the 18^th century and named the archipelago Queen Charlotte Islands. The archipelago today belongs to Canada but is located far into the ocean and cannot be seen from the mainland. Nobody knows how long the Haida people inhabited these islands but it must have been long, because their language is not similar to any language on the continent. They built their ocean-going boats, and like Vikings assaulted villages of other Indians. They lived in long houses solidly built with cedar planks and fished for salmon which in huge numbers entered their rivers to spawn. They carved totem poles and were famous as sculptors. Other tribes also carved totem poles, each tribe had their own style. The Haida poles are most attractive for viewers from other cultures.

Skedans village

The Haida had been carving the totem poles before the arrival of white traders. There are drawings and watercolours of early European explorers to prove that. However, the contact with white traders caused this art to explode because the traders brought with them steel tools, which greatly facilitated carving. The traders wanted sea otter pelts for their steel tools. Sea otters were at that time quite common in that area, the pelts were very popular in China and could be sold for huge profit there. The Haida didn't know about the existence of China, the Chinese didn't know about the existence of the Haida and so the profits were such that the European traders could finance a journey round Cape Horn to the North pacific and then to China and back home and still get rich. As a result, however, the sea otter became nearly extinct in British Columbia.

The white traders were very friendly but they brought with them a deadly enemy: smallpox germs, to which they themselves were immune. They didn't know about the germs because neither they or anybody else knew that germs existed, because this was long before Dr. Pasteur made his discoveries. Nevertheless, whatever anyone understood or didn’t understand, the process was merciless. In the second half of the 19^th century the Haida nearly shared the fate of the sea otter. As a result of epidemics of diseases to which the Europeans were immune, especially smallpox, 90% of the archipelago population died. This is a far greater proportion than during the Jewish Holocaust. The elders who remembered old traditions died out. People left the villages where the totem poles stood amid weeds as the only witnesses of their former greatness. Today we do not always know what the symbols carved on the poles meant because all those who could explain died out. The totem poles deserted more than a century ago, exposed to wind and rain, rot and fall; they go back to their mother earth from which they once grew.

An old Haida totem, now in a museum in Vancouver

Otters died out, people died out, forests remained. Lush virgin forests; some cedars growing in them were several metres thick. Trees of this diameter could be sold with good profit. The inhabitants of these islands died out so there was no need to ask anybody for permission to fell them. In the eastern part of Canada the government made treaties with chiefs and created reservations for Indians on land that the white men did not need, but in BC there was no need for treaties. Chiefs died out, there was nobody to make treaties with. One could just go in with chain saws and rape the virgin forests. To make sure that everybody knows this is a positive activity one could call this a “development of the country”.

In the meantime art collectors learned about totem poles standing in the deserted villages. Some went there in private yachts and simply took what was there. They seem to have assumed that these things stand in the middle of nowhere and nobody appears to be interested - so one can just take this stuff. Some of these sculptures ended up in private collections, others in museums.

However, the original owners of the totem poles didn't die out completely. 90% of the population died but 10% survived. Among the Haida the law of property was highly developed and consequently the law of inheritance was very precise. Those who survived the epidemics live now in just two villages on the biggest island of the archipelago but they are very much aware of who is the hereditary chief of each deserted village on other islands. Those chiefs don't live there any more but it does not follow that they allow the totem poles to be taken by just anybody. The sculptures were created for a purpose and should be left in the place they have been erected.

The Haida society also evolved during that time. In the old days a Haida chief inaugurated his office during a ceremony called “potlatch”, a huge feast with music and dances during which the chief gave presents to all who were invited. The guests came not from just one village but from a much wider area, sometimes from quite distant localities. During a potlatch the chief gave away all he had; it was in the days when respect was gained not by what one possesses but by what one gives away. Whoever was present at a potlatch was a witness to what was declared there - it had a legal function in a society that did not have a writing system.

Gaining respect by giving away all possessions? Isn't it pure barbarity? Canadian authorities decided it was a barbarian practice and banned it in 1884. Not only for organising it but just for participating one could go to prison. Canada also introduced obligatory education, boarding schools were created for Indians where children lived far from their parents. In schools with children from other tribes, with whom they could only communicate in English, the children forgot their language. Today only a few old people can speak Haida.

It doesn't follow, though, that the Haida forgot who they were. The white Canadians didn't try to understand the legal system based on meetings with music and dance, but the Haida young people having gone through the Canadian education, understood the legal system based on meetings of men dressed in gowns and wigs. Interesting things resulted from this.

Haida Watchmen girls in Skedans

Firstly – Canadian law does not allow taking away sculptures because nobody is watching them. One day a hereditary chief of a deserted village of Skedans, who worked as a fisherman on a boat based Prince Rupert, learned that in one of the yachts mooring in the port there was a sculpture just taken from Skedans. He informed the police, the sculpture was confiscated and returned to the rightful owners. To prevent similar thefts the organisation called Haida Watchmen was set up. Its members (today mostly young people) stay in the deserted villages to make sure nobody takes away anything.

Secondly – companies logging the forest have concessions from the Canadian government, but does the Canadian government have the right to give those concessions? Is there any document stating that Canada has this right? According to the ancient law based on potlatch it was known which of the hereditary chiefs is entitled to sole use of a particular area; other chiefs respected this right, but white people came to rape the virgin forest without asking anyone for permission. They claimed that they had a concession from the government but nobody checked if the government was entitled to give it. Anyway, who would pay attention to detail if the villages in those forests were deserted anyway? Even if there are some hereditary chiefs, they work as simple fishermen on boats based in Prince Rupert.

Well, somebody did pay attention to details and with interesting results. Young and educated Haidas decided to prove in Canadian courts that the government had no right to give concessions and... won the case! On 18 Nov 2004 The Canadian Supreme Court decided that the government of British Columbia broke the law by giving concessions to log forests without any agreement with the original owners. This is a key precedent not only for the Haida but also for Indians in other parts of Canada. Earlier, during the 1980s, protests against logging of the virgin rainforest led to the creation of a national park in that part of the archipelago where some of that forest survived. The park is administered jointly by the government of British Columbia and the Council of the Haida Nation.

Guujaw, who travelled with a Haida passport

Today the Haida nation is not represented, as it was in the 19^th century, by the hereditary chiefs (who still do exist) but by democratically elected Council of the Haida Nation, which was created in 1974. At one point the Council decided that there are no treaties transferring the sovereignty over the islands to the government of Canada and therefore it is an independent nation called Haida Gwaii. The Council even started issuing passports separate from the Canadian ones, some people travelled with these passports and were allowed to enter some countries. A musician known as Guujaw (who does not use a surname because traditionally the Haida didn't have surnames) told me that he travelled the whole world with this passport, he was allowed to enter France and China. Only Hungary wouldn't let him in, but he didn't know why.

The interest of art collectors in sculptures from deserted villages had another side effect: production of totem poles for a new kind of customer. Originally a totem pole stood in front of a house in which an extended family lived and was a kind of a coat of arms. It declared to everybody which clan occupied this house. There were also totem poles marking a tomb of a great chief. Nowadays the Haida live in the same kind of houses as other Canadians. They have cars standing on a drive in front of the house instead of a totem pole. The art of totem pole carving, however, didn't die out. As a result of interest shown by art collectors the totem pole art became famous and its creators are proud of it. Recently even UNESCO declared one of those deserted villages (the one with the biggest number of not-quite-rotten totem poles) a World Heritage Site. Nowadays totem poles are created for institutions that want to put one up in front of their office block. For art collectors, a new art genre was created: a miniature totem pole carved in argilite, black rock that can only be found at Haida Gwaii archipelago.

These days the Haida – who went through the same schools as other Canadians and see the world in a similar way – are art collectors themselves. Chief Demsay Collinson became famous when in 1973, while inaugurating his office, he organised a potlatch, the first one since the ban was abolished. He passed his collection of argilite sculptures to a museum in Skidagate. This way the circle closes – the Haida produce art for themselves again.

It was a pure chance that on the same day that I sped in a boat jumping over waves towards the deserted village of Skedans, in the evening in the museum in Skidagate there was an opening of an exhibition of works of modern artists. I mean modern in time only, no bizarre post-modernist stuff there. Sculptures in cedar wood or in argilite, fabrics made from cedar bark fibre, masks used for traditional dances. Traditional music and dances were also part of that event. They weren't folk dances for the tourist market - the audience was almost exclusively Indian. The ceremony was opened by Peace Dance, during which eagle down is scattered around. Guujaw and his group performed traditional songs with the vigour of a modern folk band, not as an ethnography document.

Haida art will live as long as there are young people who create it with enthusiasm. It lives and continues the old forms even though it is created for a different purpose and for different public. Partly it is created to be exhibited in a museum and the exhibition to be opened with dances. The old art, despite similar forms, wasn't created for museums. The funeral totem poles were created to decompose and fall, to return to the Mother Earth from which they once came. This is the cycle of life, even the great and famous chiefs and all their riches have to come back to the Mother Earth. The young Indians today make sure it happens.   

Haida peace dance

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":