Indigenous jurisdiction an ancient and modern reality​​

Indigenous jurisdiction on the west coast

Indigenous life on the west coast of Canada . . .

Theatre One Presents: Maker of Monsters

I attended the Theatre One presentation of Maker of Monsters: The Extraordinary Life of Beau Dick, a film screening at the Avalon Cinema in North Nanaimo, Jul 9, 2018.

I was fortunate to befriend Beau Dick and it was a long-standing friendship. I had several periods of exposure to Beau and his methods of working in culture, the maintenance of Indigenous national power was coming from the very core of his being, it seemed to me.

He talked about the Homatsa society from time to time. It was a recurring topic of discussion and he was adamant about the importance Homatsa warriors had in the Potlatch culture of governance. Homatsa warriors were high on the totem pole in terms of contribution to international relations. It always seemed to me Beau was a liberal minded free trader, which, I think, is something he believed about Potlatch.

I enjoyed the movie at the Avalon Theatre in Nanaimo. I felt at home with the man on the screen while he was alive, I loved Beau like a brother. I felt as if I received one last chance to spend an evening in his illustrious company. I think the movie did him justice.

Beau met with Royals of the British Monarchy, Prime Ministers, world leaders, and hosted the most eclectic gathering in Alert Bay you could ever imagine. One period of winter back in 2009 he invited me to stay in his home, and again in 2011. I learned then Beau Dick loved to watch movies. I'm glad to see he is recalled so vividly in film.

Goodbye My Friend Beau Dick

 We will treasure your art and I will treasure my memories of your great spirit.

One of the top contemporary Indigenous artists in the world, Beau Dick, famous Aboriginal artists, collectors, and others recognize his renown for representation of ancient Indigenous art, has passed away in 2017 on Canada's west coast.

This generous spirit was

Born: November 23, 1955, Kingcome Inlet, B.C.
Died: March 27, 2017, Vancouver, B.C.

I came upon this fellow Beau Dick in a place where people are steeped in stories of soul travel and soul capture, and witchcraft, and that is the old way, they say, which just so happens to be relatively preserved one ferry ride beyond 'the last outpost.' At times, to my way of thinking, "it's the only way."  Even with all this goodness to draw upon, the majority wear the yoke of modernity around their neck, so they eschew their own medicine, but Beau Dick was a man who set himself apart from modern beliefs.Beau Dick, Indigenous artist of the North West Pacific Coast tradition, was a leading proponent of the collective experience when it comes to builders and artisans cooperating on big projects. Beau saw a shared burden strongly reflecting the traditional life of Indigenous communities of the North West Pacific Coast. 

"The time-line in the experience is all shared," he explained, about working on cultural projects. Beau was a man with strong connections to the coastal past, born in 1955 and raised in Kingcome Inlet, B.C. (an inlet flowing deep into the mainland coast) there to grow up with a lot of culturally-grounded individuals.

Beau lived his first few years surrounded by extended family including Elders, uncles and aunts, and others who maintained the society of Big House Potlatch culture. They lived in personal contact with pristine surroundings of Kingcome Inlet, rooted in history, sustained by hard work and preserving a once-thriving culture by manufacturing various arts and crafts. 

Beau's early years were spent fully immersed in Kwakwala, the language of the nation. Beau sat amongst carvers, father, grandfather, and uncles, and listened to histories, legends, laws, jurisdiction, in Kwakwala, and learned the way things came to pass. Beau became vigilant about maintaining and passing along that knowledge for the rest of his life.

Beau was still young when the family took him to Vancouver to get serious book learning. He described a culture shock that lasted for a few adolescent years. Upon return to the Pacific North West the family was separated from Kingcome Inlet and Beau settled in Alert Bay, B.C., on Cormorant Island. His early life lessons began to percolate. 

Beau was a hereditary chief in the Kwakwaka’wakw society called Homatsa. It is the warrior society in coastal clans holding jurisdiction in this part of the world.

In 2009, Beau was at a culture camp on Yukusem (Hanson Island), a semi-remote site 15 km south of Alert Bay accessed by boat. It was an informal project supported by a lot of volunteers from the beginning of July through the month of August that year.

The island’s other occupants include the year-round Cultrally Modified Tree anthropology study area in the island's heights occupied by David Garrick. Also, Orcalab whale research station occupies the south-east corner; and a logging license is held over 70 hectares on the north east side around Dong Chong Bay. 

International kayak tours stopped beside the Yukusem culture camp at a lightly used campground to breath in the surroundings of Deep Bay. By the time tourist season arrived the Yukusem Culture Camp was in full bloom offering lessons to adventurous world travellers.

The culture camp on Yukusem was the brainchild of Beau Dick and the product of many hands. "It's a lot of teaching, cajoling, and inspiring, and convincing people the way forward is found by going through phases of knowing the past," explained Beau, willing and able to describe his extraordinary connections to the coastal past. Beau had worked with carvers of international reknown over the course of his life, Bill Reid included. 

Beau became a world-recognized carver of the Kwakwaka'wakw tradition and had the right to carve a Haida coat of arms and other styles because of his bloodlines from Tongass, Alaska. His great-grandmother was a high-ranking hereditary chief of the Tlingit and married a Hudson's Bay Factor who took her to Port Rupert, north end of Vancouver Island.

Oolican is an important fish to Indigenous people of the Pacific North West, a fish people use for many purposes, dietary and often healing. The oil is something they call 'gweena' and those of coastal bloodlines often have a bottle of oolican grease. "My grandmother inherited the right to first harvest of the oolican up Kingcome Inlet," said Beau, one balmy afternoon in the centre of the culture camp on Yukusem. "My great grandfather had inherited the right to 'first fish' from this river because his great grandfather brought the oolican to Kingcome Inlet." 

Brought the oolican to Kingcome Inlet? Beau's ancestor took two canoes out to sea and paddled to Bella Coola. Once there he obtained oolican fry and eggs which he carried in his second canoe and returned south (and east up the distinctively remote Kingcome Inlet) to seed the river with oolican. That gave family rights to the first fruits in perpetuity, a valuable asset. The claim is recognized in a large copper in Beau's possession as the physical testament.

Beau recounted stories passed down generations in relation to first contact with Europeans on the Pacific North West coast. One of these stories described the fate of the first domesticated cat, another, the chiefs reaction to the rum custom of the British Navy.

The Spanish sailed up the Pacific North West coast and explored the islands and archipelago as early as the mid-1500s. But the domestic cat made its first appearance at a Kwakwaka’wakw ville in the Pacific North West in the mid-1700s when the Spanish landed inside the Kwakwaka'wakw nation to begin conducting business.

This Kwakwaka'wakw nation of houses, clans, and villages occupies the mainland, several archipelago islands, and the top of Vancouver Island on both sides. When the Spanish sailed up to one of the well-populated villes they were immediately visited by the chief who greeted the ship’s captain with a cordial welcome to the Kwakwaka'wakw nation. At this first meeting the chief saw a cat capering onboard the Spanish ship.

The Kwakwaka'wakw chief was enthralled with the creature and the animal was brought before the chief for closer inspection. After playing with the cat the chief believed he had received possession of it.

Beau ascribes the captain’s devotion to his pet as enormous, and the captain of the Spanish ship refused to relinquish the cat. A couple of intrigues later, and the Kwakwaka'wakw chief was in full possession of the cat.

The infuriated captain of the Spanish ship soon unleashed a furious cannonade on the shore at the Kwakwaka’wakw community blowing apart war-canoes parked on the beach in front of the bighouses. Canoes were never in short supply in a Kwakwaka'wakw community and a few minutes later a flotilla coursed toward the Spanish ship.

The Kwakwaka'wakw surrounded the Spanish ship and returned the cannon balls. They demanded the Spanish perform this excellent feat again. They were not, however, returning the cat.

The Spanish sailed away and left the chief in possession of the curious animal and he announced a special event to be held in his bighouse. Soon a gathering of chiefs and clan members was assembled and the stage was set to unveil the cat.

The chief reached into a large cedar basket and grabbed the terrified cat and threw it some distance against a wooden post where it stuck. Everybody oh'd and ah'd while the cat did a couple of frantic loops and took off never to be seen again.

The Spanish spent a number of years exploring and mapping the Kwakwaka'wakw nation, said Beau. They left the territory with a legacy of sketches of people, villages, ship’s log entries, and a few Spanish place-names.

Soon the Spanish were usurped by the British who brought something other than a cat. Beau said the British Navy began snooping around the territory occasionally gunning the Spaniards out of the region and often stopping at houses of the chiefs of Kwakwaka'wakw communities.

The British had a custom of ending each occasion with the protocol of a shot of rum. At first the chiefs were kind of 'taken' but not all were happy with the custom and some were offended by the British insistence at imposing the bitter tasting liquid on these special occasions. Indeed a large argument ensued among the chiefs about whether to allow the British to stay. The argument that prevailed was, "Ah, let them stay. What harm can it do?" 

"Lineage is the most important part of our social structure," explained Beau. On Yukusem, conversation was supported by a chorus of nature, birds, crickets, frogs. "Talk about jurisdiction, I can describe the great divide. The Hudson's Bay Company conducted a slaughter of Haida people in the mid-1800s with poisoned blankets at the same time as the upper classes of England were amusing themselves by eating mummies," the remains of dead Egyptians.

The efforts of ‘blanket merchants’ failed to kill off the coastal people and small pockets of culture and Potlatch law continued to exist in tiny enclaves like Kingcome Inlet. By the 1930s the Kwakwaka’wakw were repeatedly jailed for Potlatches in hidden Big House societies, "My people were real rebellious. The Kwakwaka’wakw were tenacious about keeping their ways alive."

The rebellion would take dramatic form at times, for instance, when Beau's uncle Jimmy Dawson raised a totem pole for King George V, "as a celebration of the king’s coronation. And at the time of the event, the question was simple, What are the authorities going to do about that? Nothing. There was nothing they could do."

Beau credits his forefathers for being adept at the art of deception and using double entendre to send a message, "The pole stands beside the Anglican Church in Alert Bay today," he said, "along with the commemoration plaque for the English king."

Those days and weeks spent with Beau at Yukusem were highly instructive. I had visited the area before, and left and did not return for a few years. When I did, I found myself living like Bakwis, wildman of the woods, and perhaps I had become one of those. I stayed with a politically astute fellow named George, on Atli Road. Atli means bush or forest. George explained how the community exists under a communications embargo, what George called 'Coercion by economic sanction.' 

I stayed a few nights with George, which dragged into a couple of weeks but repeated visitations by a few party animals wore me down. That's when I took another refuge with Beau Dick, in his house/carving studio/classroom/crossroads on the beach. Instead of night owls and other faeries, I hung around artisans and culture mavins. They continue to carve a language that says a couple of things to God in statements that have no meaning to anybody but Him anymore. So the statements are not exactly meaningless, but who knows the mind of God?

Well, there is one fellow out in the territory possessing some deep insight. The study of Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) is the study of human beings organized around rainforest resources. What David Garrick, anthropologist, uncovered on Hanson Island (Yukusem) is the "transgenerational" management of forests by Indigenous people at the northern entrance to the Inside Passage. 

This transgenerational management of forests was comprised of a complex arrangement of separate preserves under jurisdiction managed to both maximize and distribute essential resources. Social groups conducted specialized horticulture within groves of cedar on Yukusem’s 16 sq. km..

One aspect of the cultivation involved shaping cedar trees to produce tree bark in surplus while keeping the tree alive. They maximized cedar bark production stripping bark lengthwise up a trunk, thus allowing the tree to heal, thrive, and produce surplus bark. This strategy illustrates how cedar bark was a staple. Cedar bark was produced for an apparently endless array of manufactured goods. The rule was to cultivate cedars into giant sources of raw material for production of manufactured goods. In the transgeneration aspect, people of Yukusem 1,350 years ago cultivated a grove of trees to furnish Beau Dick with raw material in 2009.

Beau's Alert Bay studio involves a lot of interaction with local artists and carvers. A couple of these artists are devoted to Jesus. I might have tried to explain that I do, really, believe in Jesus. In order to steal this continent and launch a genocide they needed an inside job. That's how Jesus enters. He's the inside job. 

Beau finds this line of reason amusing but my friendship with Wayne becomes elusive at the point when I am demonstrating heresies in a couple short, disturbing arguments. I rarely feel friendship in the morning hours until Wayne has had a gallon of coffee to derail his brain. 

There is considerable interaction and especially rancorous moment during which I say things like, "I cannot get divinely inspired by a manager of a sheep abattoir," and Wayne replies about ghosts not supposing to have voices, while painting messages in all kinds of uninterpreted ways, language being used like a sharp detailing knife. Wayne reiterates I should inhabit the vicinity like a ghost.

During the drunk and smoke fuelled evenings up Atim Road, George called the Kwakwaka'wakw communities part of a League of Autonomous Collectives, formerly tight competitive, industrious organizations oriented to acquire by trade. 

"And warfare," according to Beau, who informs me the organization was codified in Wakashan, composed in a legal motif hieroglyphically rendered, a language emanating coast-wide (which Wayne describes as "the longest coast-line in the world.")

The archipelago was home to people cultivating immense riches. They had growing populations, educated in craftsmanship like house building, canoe-making, weaving, carving, resource extraction, a group of nations thriving on abundance. 

I am tempted to suggest the hieroglyphic language carved on poles, painted on house fronts, sewn into chilkat blankets, was on the verge of a continental breakout. "There is a strong desire to build something but an awareness that others have standards which may be too high to be met by the revival of a cultural experience," Beau explained.

The culture camp on Yukusem had been a collective of builders and artisans volunteering to live rustic, practically remote, and, says Beau, "The question was, are you a camper? Camping is by definition a completely interdependent experience. The burden is shared and activities are shared. The time-line in the experience is all shared."

Beau returns to story-telling, "The Bella Coolas were primarily Salishan people who over a period of time had occupied the area up Burke Channel, halfway along the B.C. Pacific coast, and after this came a period of encroachment upon the Kwakwaka’wakw territory," Beau explained, for Bella Coolas had long been envious of Kingcome Inlet resources, he said.

It was therefore predictable to Homatsa society a large party of Bella Coolans would arrive at the entrance to the territory at Gilford Island. The arrival of the lead Bella Coolan party was made in peace and bearing gifts, a disarming presentation drawing the Homatsa society into a lull, while a second party descended and destroyed the Gilford Island settlement and left many heads on sticks and took Kwakwaka’wakw  women away to Bella Coola.

Beau continued, "These women retained their names and their titles, but only gradually did the truth about their origins begin to emerge." He explained family status in a coastal nation is paramount and hierarchy composing the society is immutable. "Eventually the elevated status of those women and their offspring emerged and altered the face of a Salishan principality."

Mamalillikullu and the Haida were accustomed to crossing the Kwakwaka’wakw  waters every year during the summer to conduct trade missions with the Cowichan and Salishan nations. When Hudson Bay Company arrived and a fort was established at Fort Rupert the HBC immediately set about usurping Kwakwaka’wakw jurisdiction. This made peace untenable, said Beau, once Haida traders arrived at Fort Rupert and bypassed traditional protocol of stopping at the clanhouses of Kwakwaka’wakw chiefs. Instead they opted to gather around the HBC fort and ignore customary exchanges with Kwakwaka’wakw.

In response to this diplomatic snub Kwakwaka’wakw messengers spread word and soon Homatsa society arranged their own reception. The Haida were intercepted as they continued a southward journey through the Inside Passage. The interception occurred at modern day Kelsey Bay deep in the present day Johnstone Strait. It was here they were surrounded and slaughtered. The heads of the Haida chiefs were taken back to Fort Rupert to the women who stood on the beach holding out their aprons.

As the Kwakwaka’wakw rowed past they tossed the heads ashore, said Beau, onto the aprons of the women. The head of one Haida chief tore through the apron of his wife and rolled along the beach, and the story is told, he was still trying to get away from the Kwakwaka’wakw.

Language was extinguished in an onslaught of flames and reeducation. The systemic racism remains intact via modern schools. Dissidents are held inside internment camps and gulag reservations are filled with dissident elements of a remaining population, some of those governed by a re-constituted national identity expunging traditional values, others suffering the lash of authority but defying all descriptions of servitude.

Friendships for me are illusive but people on this Indian Reservation come in waves to visit and work and confer with Beau Dick. It is a multi-user art studio, Wayne's, Marcus', Sean's, and tonight Thomas Bruce paints here. I once stayed at Beau Dick's two or three months a year previous. I have been here several times. I've been hanging around since the 90s. Several people are acquainted with me. Sean carves and paints a modern version which Beau Dick encourages as avant garde, and they are saleable pieces.

As I sit around, Sean tells me he is leaving shortly to spend Christmas in Port Hardy, a neighbouring town. Wayne inhabits the workplace daily but with the permanence of a sphinx. Beau Dick produces several pieces at a time, ruminates on new ones, uses a vast library and historical record in his designs. The library includes Beau Dick and Wayne's own knowledge orally transmitted and accompanied by images.

I am making my fifth, sixth, journey to the territory. It is now December 23. My activities this visit included scrapping with George's gang (testing my aptitude for listening), but Beau Dick and his immense Homatsa knowledge keeps the warcanoe on an even keel, his strength, and endless rounds of conversation in a circulating fashion in the studio, makes the stay worthwhile, such as when Wayne says, "There are six species of wolf on the north west coast. They can swim. They eat brains." I restrain myself from saying, "I guess you're safe."

On this Christmas Eve I am ending the visit to the Indian Reservation. Beau has been aloof my whole visit. This last evening was one of the rare occasions we are alone in the house. I am leaving in a few minutes. "I had a dream the other night and in this dream I was in Kingcome. I held a spear and several of us were holding spears. We had a big black cat in front of us. Eight of us circled around this cat and we weren't attacking. We were cornering the cat to put it in a cage." 

"One night in the 1970s," I replied," I did a hallucinogenic drug, some organic mescaline, and 'transformed' into a puma. I had been injured the year before and the experience stuck with me, because, ya know, Beau, a wounded animal wants to kill every in sight."

Beau went to another room in the tiny house and came back with a t-shirt, smiled broadly, and he held it up, "This is you." It says, 'Ruined.' We laugh under a cloud of smoke. I leave a minute later to catch the last ferry of the night. It was the last time I ever saw Beau Dick. He was my friend. May he Rest In Peace.

Beau's daughter Kerri Dyck

Beau Dick- Maker of Monsters! Teller of Stories

The study of Culturally Modified Trees is the study of human beings working to organize themselves around rainforest resources. What David Garrick, anthropologist, has uncovered is the "transgenerational" management of Hanson Island (Yukusem) by First Nations at the north end of the Inside Passage, and it is amazing.

This transgenerational management of First Nation forest resources in coastal rainforests was comprised of a complex arrangement of activities. Special preserves of rainforest under carefully defined jurisdictions were ‘managed’ to create and provide essential resources.

Social groups conducted large scale horticulture within particular groves of cedar trees on Yukusem’s 16 square kilometres, doing so on a truly grand scale. Together they made cedar trees do the most amazing things horticultural. David Garrick uncovered cedar-shaping in CMTs during his long and fruitful tenure of archaeology onsite at Yukusem. This amazing horticulture involves planning that spans centuries.

This horticulture was done in a manner that shaped trees and modified them to produce a surplus of bark while maintaining the integrity of a living cedar tree. These First Nations maximized cedar bark production for a particular resource and did so in a way that left the cedar tree to heal, thrive, and produce even surplus bark. It was a strategy of development that occurred because cedar bark was a staple product in their social development. This cultural product was used in an apparently endless array. The rule for many centuries, even millennia, was to cultivate giant cedars to make trees produce surplus cedar bark into a raw material for production of manufactured goods.

Nothing was left to chance or went to waste. The term old growth forest was meaningless to a culture that practised continuous and highly specialized cultivation in the growth of the forests over millennia. Even a burnt forest was an opportunity to exploit a different set of highly prized resources. Everything was planned around the need to produce cedar bark for future generations.

A prime example of the transgenerational planning policy occurs on a site called Bear Grove on Yukusem. David Garrick’s maps point out the existence of at least 55 shaped cedars per hectare in the Bear Grove sector of the island. This is an intense concentration of evidence for creating surplus bark. From concentrations of CMTs of this magnitude it becomes obvious that an organized effort was made to cultivate and exploit cedar bark in patterns showing sustainable, long-term, transgenerational planning processes.

The people of Yukusem living 1,350 years ago cultivated a specific tree to furnish Namgis carver Beau Dick with raw material for his canoe project in 2008. Also in this transgenerational context, those people provided a chain of modern evidence to Harry Alfred and Don Svanvik, CMT researchers from Alert Bay, B.C., who are able to clarify First Nation present day jurisdiction over Yukusem cedar groves. The vital (and missing) evidence was produced from messages in trees hundreds of years old. The fingerprints of this jurisdiction have been uncovered in all the lands and forests of B.C., even so, it was a long and arduous 20th century for the folks around Yukusem (as everywhere).

Only in 2004 did the First Nations recover their jurisdiction over Yukusem. CMTs studied in this way by David Garrick therefore provided scientific resources and empirical evidence giving First Nations the necessary proof of a their missing jurisdiction.

It is odd to note, however, how there was no apparent conflict over the management of the Yukusem resources until about 1930, says Garrick. His archaeological timeline shows that before the cataclysmic culture shock treatments took form (residential schools, banning of potlatchs, et al), the arrival of industrial foresters was a not unwelcome event to a degree. The industrial foresters were cooperative by only taking a few trees from Yukusem’s treasured groves, and David reports they apparently left cedar trees untouched, leaving them to the cedar shapers who used the resources in specially managed (and closely regarded and cultivated) patterns.

The two management paradigms co-existed! It required an exercise of government policy to alienate the First Nations from their ownership, management, and jurisdiction over the cedar shaping activities of their culture. From the time such draconian policies were introduced until Yukusem Heritage Society was formed in 2004 the Yukusem cedar groves were facing dire consequences. David Garrick’s archaeological study was the only thing standing in their way. In a pleasant turn since his studies began a series of scientific facts have unleashed a people to exert their sovereignty.

An even more compelling figure in the territory, now, sadly, dearly departed, was Beau Dick. He was a some sort of timeless person, He danced in the Big House. He danced in the forest. He was musical, played guitar, wrote songs. He told amazing stories. Some of them even related to his culture.

Beau Dick is recognized as a masterful artist of the Pacific Coast tradition, a leading proponent of the collective experience in producing the art of Coastal Nations . He believed builders and artisans cooperating on big projects was naturally a shared burden, strongly reflecting the traditional values of the traditional nations. “The time-line in the experience is all shared,” he once explained about the intricate details of working his branch of cultural awareness.

Beau was a man with direct connections to the coastal past. Born in 1955 and raised in Kingcome Inlet, B.C. (a deep  inlet flowing into the coast), where he stayed until 1965. In the first half of the previous century it was the site of a remote fish cannery and a lot of culturally-oriented individuals.

Beau lived his first ten years with extended family including Elders, uncles and aunts, and others who maintained society of the Big House. There are societies organized in Potlatch culture, the purveyors of their history are 'artists.'

In Kingcome Inlet, Beau clearly described, they lived in close personal contact with the pristine surroundings in Kingcome Inlet, which worked like a petri dish of culture remote enough to sustained in the face of draconian laws about Potlatch, Nationhood, Language, and livelihoods. They continued by hard work, s striving in the conduct of various cultural activities and art forms while they participated in the fisheries and logging in their traditional territories.

These early times for Beau were spent fully immersed in Kwakwala, the language of the nation. He sat among the carvers, these were his father, grandfather, and uncles, acting  secretly in traditional societies, Beau listened  to a steady stream of conscious histories, legends,  laws, jurisdiction in Kwakwala, and Beau learned  the way things cultural came to pass and became a significant impressario of the way cultural things would become.

It was a purity of vision, and hugely perceived for the quality of the artform, which conformed  to direct interpretations of cultural facts, a tangible historical brand of knowledge about the  ways and means of the coast. He was the most knowledgeable historian I ever met.

When Beau was 10 years old the family sent him to Vancouver to live with aunt and uncle so he could get some serious book learning.  He was in  culture shock for a few adolescent years.  Upon return to the Pacific Northwest the  family was separated from Kingcome Inlet  and Beau settled into Alert Bay, B.C..

The importance of his early life lessons began to percolate. He came to be a man who lives to learn, and who passes along the lessons to the entire strata of  Indigenous people, and, equally, uniformly able to impart those lessons to English speaking people, and the lessons were  masterfully illustrated with iconic artistic manifestations.

He would give you a voluminous account an image, a manifestation of art, how it contained specific responsibility to co-exist with legendary stories. His art was a shared experience, a modernized  tradition, the art was responsible for keeping  a nation existentially important in the Broughton Archipelago.

Beau is a hereditary chief in the Kwakawak Awak society called Homatsa, they call it the 'cannibal society.'  I don't know why. It's a warrior society in the  coastal clans, they worked in groups of six, and they ran across the land where they held jurisdiction, and plyed the waters.

They conduct a particular form of economy and governance called the Potlatch.

In the lands and waters of this country, it was their history told in the art prior to the imposition of the Indian Act and Beau was able to reproduce the lost histories in story, song, dance, and art.

Beau Dick points at sketch of the Yukusem culture camp

The first cat in Kwaguilth

Beau Dick recounts a couple of stories passed down by generations in relation to first contact with Europeans on the coast of the Pacific North West. One of them describes the fate of the first domesticated feline, and another the chiefs reaction to the rum custom of the British Navy.

The Spanish had sailed up the outside coast of the Pacific North West islands and archipelagos as early as the mid-1500s. But the domestic cat made its first appearance at a Kwakwaka’wakw ville in the Pacific North West in the mid 1700s when the Spanish landed inside the Kwakwaka'wakw nation to begin conducting business.

This nation of Houses, clans, and villages occupies the mainland, several islands in an archipelago, and the top of Vancouver Island, both sides. When the Spanish sailed up to one of the well-populated villes they were immediately visited by the chief who greeted the ship’s captain with a cordial welcome to the Kwakwaka'wakw nation. At this first meeting the chief saw a cat capering onboard the Spanish ship.

The Kwakwaka'wakw chief was enthralled with the creature and the animal was brought before the chief for his closer inspection. After playing with the cat for a spell the chief believed he had received possession of it.

Beau ascribes the captain’s devotion to his pet as enormous, and the captain of the Spanish ship refused to relinquish it. A couple of intrigues later the Kwakwaka'wakw chief was in full possession of the cat.

The infuriated captain of the Spanish ship soon unleashed a cannonade on the shore at the Kwaguilth community blowing apart several war-canoes parked on the beach in front of the bighouses. Canoes were never in short supply in a Kwakwaka'wakw community and a few minutes later a flotilla coursed toward the Spanish ship.

The Kwaguilth surrounded the Spanish and returned the cannon balls. They began demanding that the Spanish perform this excellent feat once again. (They were not, however, returning the cat.)

The Spanish sailed away and left the chief in possession of the curious animal and he announced a special event to be held in his bighouse. Soon a gathering of chiefs and important clan members and associates had been assembled and the stage was set to unveil the cat.

The chief reached into a large cedar basket and grabbed the terrified cat and threw it some distance against a wooden post where it stuck. Everybody oh'd and ah'd while the cat did a couple of frantic loops and took off never to be seen again.

The Spanish spent a number of years exploring and mapping their explorations into the Kwakwaka'wakw nation. They left the territory with a legacy of sketches of people, villages, ship’s log entries, and a few Spanish place-names.

Soon the Spanish were superseded by the British who brought something other than a cat. Beau said the British Navy began stopping around the territory occasionally gunning the Spaniards out of the region and often stopping at the houses of the chiefs of Kwakwaka'wakw communities.

The British had a custom of ending each occasion with the certain protocol of a shot of rum. At first the chiefs were kind of 'taken' but not all were happy with the custom and some were offended by the British insistence at imposing the bitter tasting liquid on these special occasions.

Indeed a large argument ensued among the chiefs about whether to allow the British to stay. The argument that prevailed was, "Ah, let them stay. What harm can it do?" Beau Dick harbour’s little doubt that there may be an element of conspiracy in the rum strategy.

Pat Alfred Memorial Potlatch

 Pat Alfred's Memorial Potlatch took place mid-spring 2011 in Alert Bay, B.C., and the gathering came to the Big House of the Namgis Nation on Cormorant Island. The Alfred family was preparing the Potlatch for late April or May, and the Alfreds received a lot of community support. They gave a treasure of memories and gifts in return.
 

The passing of Pat Alfred came as a blow to the community when he died by accident on the Inside Passage. He was 75 years old when it happened and Pat was working in the depth of a winter night as  another member of a fishing crew in the herring fishery.  When the herring boat called the Westisle was hauling in a catch at about midnight January 7, 2008, Pat was swept away to die by hypothermia and drowning in the waters beside Vancouver Island.
 

It happened because the ball of herring took off into a panicky swim and pitched the loaded vessel to its side so fast nobody wore the safety suits. Watching his crew mates struggled to gain a way out of the deadly situation, Pat Alfred, esteemed Namgis Elder, lifelong fisherman, important First Nation Canadian citizen, waved the crewmen away to their own salvation. Pat's body was found the next day on the shores of another Inside Passage island. His family and 400 mourners laid Pat to rest the following January 12th, in Alert Bay, BC.. 

Pat was an Elder who believed in the work of the commercial fishery in Coastal First Nations. He was known as a man who was able to preserve a vestige of a formerly prosperous occupation. He had served as an elected chief, was holder of Hereditary Title, and Pat raised a family in Alert Bay with his wife Pauline. In his life, as in his passing, the world changed under his feet, and the traditional ways of his people as gregarious and successful commercial fishers collapsed along the coast.

Before his life, his forefathers fought a secret battle to preserve Kwakwala-speaking culture. The government had outlawed their system of binding society. Potlatch preparation takes immense energy from a group known as Homatsa, a secret society of warriors whose skills include carving. Pat was never a carver. He was born in the middle of the Canadian government's effort to extinguish First Nation culture. 

Pat's sons are carvers. One is Wayne Alfred, renowned master carver who exacts images of old from photographs and artifacts. Pat's grandson, Marcus Alfred, developed his skills since childhood and has become a highly proficient carver following the guidance of masters like his father, and Beau Dick. These cultural artisans are inspired by Potlatch as they carve in a language that seems to make profound statements that have no meaning to anybody but God anymore.

The world today is allowed to marvel without understanding the complexity of the sign language found on the west coast. At Pat's upcoming Potlatch the community will witness a pole-raising ceremony, Pat's memorial pole. This pole is presently being written like a Talmud that supports the oral tradition of Pat's heritage. The carvers dig into the past to make actual pieces that express great heaps of tradition knowledge. A language once removed may actually someday be restored! 

In days of old the highest achievers in a Potlatch culture were artists and artisans, and the compositions were knowledge banks, like books. These compositions described who was doing what (and where they did it) for their livelihood. This region of the world was rich in processed goods long before European merchandise was traded.

The riches came from cultivating the 'tree of life' (they called it) and designing their lives around cedar and seafood.  Eight Potlatch nations on the coast each had their own sets of autonomous collectives. Beau Dick, Homatsa chief, says the autonomous collectives operated like leagues, “often competitively.” A system of hereditary clan houses communicated knowledge via societies. Each of the eight nations on the coast in the Potlatch system was entirely informed of national protocols by reading things on poles, in house fronts, in chilkat blankets, and in all the forms of 'art' that was reproduced.

The art contained written identification of wealth and fiscal origins of manufactured goods. Tthis information was made available to identify the order of society, and the flow of wealth. Crests and logos adorned every piece of equipment, fishing tools, carving tools, all household items, canoes, the housefronts of the House chiefs. This part of the world developed an economy that strongly resembles the stock exchange of today through corporation development of logos and imagery identifying the money trail.

The old St. Michael's Residential School stands in Alert Bay, built in 1929. Pat was a student at the school. “The school should continue to stand,” says Wayne Alfred. “They keep Auschwitz standing as a reminder of the past.” Some of the carving for Pat's coming Potlatch is underway in the basement by carvers who work all hours of the day and night. (The rest of the haunted edifice is deserted.)
 

This Pat Alfred Memorial Potlatch in the Broughton Archipelago occurred as a reminder of enduring strength of those autonomous collectives that Pat came from. It occurred in the traditional home of the Kwakwala speaking nation. The Pat Alfred Memorial Potlatch lasted a couple of days and played host to a couple thousand people in the beautiful Alert Bay Big House. At that event the abilities of the Alfreds and their community to portray a thriving culture will no doubt stand out as a living testament to the life and times of Pat Alfred.

Cedar Bark Weaving Comes From Deep Roots

Kerri-Lynne Emily Dick is a master weaver in the tradition of the Haida, Kwaguilth, Tlingit, and Kootenay peoples. She is the daughter of Beau Dick, Master Carver of the art of the carved and painted wood and stone of the Pacific Northwest.

As Dick describes it, to her cedar weaving, basket making, and other products of the northwest coast comes as naturally as breathing. Dick says basically her whole life has been immersed in the Haida and Kwaguilth culture. "I personally would never call it a cultural revival. It still existed because of strong families and strong lineages."

Cedar weaving was a part of Dick's life from the beginning. "My mother took me out to gather roots. We'd be on the beach and she showed me where to start and how to pull 'the root, and we'd end up with 40 or 60 feet of root."

Then there was cedar bark stripping. "It occurs in the late spring and summer seasons. You strip the bark when it's warm, because the sap is running. In winter it's solid and breaks. We did most of the weaving in the cold months. I remember in the winter that was the big thing. In the winter we potlatch and in the summer collect weaving material.

"The first time I learned to weave I was eight years old living in Prince Rupert." She was introduced to a Tsimshian woman who knew how to make cedar bark baskets. "My mother asked her to teach me." Dick trekked over after school. "I made one basket and she told me 'You have to go out and buy a bunch of cedar and do it yourself.' I thought to myself, 'Buy cedar?'"

Cedar is the Tree of Life. The majesty of Kwakwaka'wakw culture and the all of the rainforest nationalities in North America's Pacific region lives with the history of their incredible horticulture of cedar groves. It is proven they practiced advanced trans-generational management of cedar, creating surplus bark by harvesting the bark from living trees, according to anthropologists.

Dick was a young girl who, "thought it was bizarre that she suggested cedar bark was something you buy." The sacred cedar was something you gather. "When you strip bark from the living tree, you take a hand-width, only as much as your own hands can work with." Her mother moved back to the Queen Charlottes where Dick's learning continued at pace.

"I have to mention my teachers and mentors. Willy White, Primrose Adams, April Churchill, Evelyn Vanderhoof and Donna Cranmer were instrumental in encouraging me to develop the skill." Willy White "is a fast-black-weaver, a member of a society of weavers who have come back from the past," says Dick. "People are born into it. They get the weaver's bug and immerse themselves in it." They enter a supernatural world.

"It is important to be careful about spirit when you weave. I like to push it to a certain point and I know the energy is still in the cedar. I become yolakwamae' and that means entranced or hypnotized in Kwakwala." By the time she was 20 Dick taught cedar bark weaving in Kingcome Inlet. She showed pictures of weavers at work and one young student noticed how closely people worked together. The kids in her class wanted to take their knowledge to another level.

"The kids decided to utilize an old big house and they cleaned it up and cleared out a lot of debris." She had several serious students. "I've always been an immaculate weaver and some people wanted me to keep it a secret, but I wanted to hand it down to the generations. It's not about money, and it's not about popularity.. It's about how many generations this knowledge will extend into the future. To be remembered by my students and family is my payment."

For more information about Kerri-Lynne Emily Dick's cedar bark hat and Chikat blanket weaving at the www.umista.org in Alert Bay, B.C., in the heart of the Kwak'wala speaking nation.

Freelance Writing by Mack McColl 

Video photo collage, Hanson Island, Yukusem Canoe Carving Project by Beau Dick

Host of contrasts on the coast

The coast is a host of contrasts and a primary one is cultural. For example, First Nations are people of the Potlatch who express a lot of national heritage in artistic endeavours that are indelibly cultural. The First Nations identify a presence and their communities with iconic art found in dozens of locations up the coast. When you come to see major features in First Nation art you are likely in the midst of a First Nation community.

Tourism travel on the coast leads visitors into adventurous activities like tours of whale and bear-watching that take people to places like Bute Inlet, Toba Inlet, Desolation Sound. And when you go farther north, tours take visitors into the Broughton Archipelago, Knight’s Inlet or Kingcome Inlet, or around the top of Vancouver Island. As a cultural exploration, Vancouver Island is but one of a seemingly countless number of islands, many of which were inhabited, while others were cultivated, and others were used for communal harvest of vegetation or wildlife.

It is surprising how many people lived in places no longer considered for habitation. In some of these places there are communities holding extinction at bay with one or two Band members living in remote locations like Hopetown or Gilford Island. At Kingcome Inlet, very top of the world when you are there, 125 souls keep a solid First Nation footprint on the ground (even though the houses are on stilts).

Victoria is a picturesque city full of art shops and museums often honed in on the First Nation culture of the Pacific Coast, but Victoria is a city. On the opposite side of the prominent Malahat from Victoria and still southerly on Vancouver Island is the city of Duncan, halfway point between Victoria and Nanaimo. Duncan is a great place to see the cultural contrast in full bloom. They call Duncan the City of Totems and there are totem poles set around the city but the main attraction is the Quw'utsun' Cultural and Conference Centre. It’s a re-created Salishan village nestled beside the Cowichan River and a beautiful representation of past and present Cowichan Tribes community.

The north end of Vancouver contains more rugged beauty enhanced by temperate weather, and the rainforest is more readily available to visit. Hiking, touring, fishing, and outdoor life continues on a year-round basis, top to bottom, on both sides of the big island, but when you arrive at the community of Alert Bay on Cormorant Island you could ask about visiting Yukusem where you will learn about the study of Culturally Modified Trees (CMT). This is the study of human beings working to organize around rainforest resources. What David Garrick, anthropologist, uncovered on Hanson Island is the 'transgenerational' management of vegetation by First Nations at the north end of the Inside Passage, and it is amazing.

This careful study of transgenerational management provides evidence that First Nations used forest resources in coastal rainforests in complex arrangements. Special preserves of rainforest under carefully defined jurisdictions were ‘managed’ to create and provide essential resources. Social groups conducted large scale horticulture within particular groves of cedar trees on Yukusem’s 16 square kilometres, doing so on a truly grand scale. Together they made cedar trees do the most incredible things horticultural.

David Garrick uncovered cedar-shaping in CMTs during his long and fruitful tenure of archaeology on-site at Yukusem. This amazing process involves planning that spans centuries. This cultivation was done in a manner that shaped trees and modified them to produce a surplus of bark while maintaining the integrity of a living cedar tree. First Nations maximized cedar bark production by modifying the tree, doing this in a way that left the cedar tree to heal, thrive, and produce more surplus bark. It was a strategy of development that occurred because cedar bark was a staple product in the social and economic development of coastal life. This cultural product was used in an apparently endless array of purposes. The practice to cultivate giant cedars was millennial to make trees produce a surplus cedar bark into a raw material for production of manufactured goods.

Nothing was left to chance or waste. The term old-growth forest was meaningless within a culture that practised continuous and specialized cultivation in the growth of the forests over several centuries. Even a burnt forest was an opportunity to harvest a different list of highly-prized resources. Meanwhile, everything on Yukusem was planned around the need to produce cedar bark for future generations. A prime example of the transgenerational planning policy occurs on a site called Bear Grove on Yukusem. Garrick’s mapping points out the existence of at least 55 shaped cedars per hectare in the Bear Grove sector of the island. This is an intense concentration of evidence indicative of creating surplus bark. It becomes obvious from concentrations of CMTs of this magnitude that an organized effort was made to cultivate and exploit cedar bark in patterns showing sustainable, long-term, transgenerational planning processes.

The people of Yukusem living 1,350 years ago cultivated a specific tree to furnish Namgis carver Beau Dick with raw material for his canoe project in the modern age. Also in this transgenerational context, ancient people provided a modern chain of evidence to Harry Alfred and Don Svanvik, CMT researchers from Alert Bay who are able to exert First Nation jurisdiction over Yukusem cedar groves in the present. The vital (and heretofore missing) evidence was produced from messages in trees hundreds of years old. The fingerprints of this interaction with forests have been uncovered in many of the forests of B.C., even so, it was a long and arduous 20th century for the folks around Yukusem. Only in 2004 did the First Nations recover jurisdiction over Yukusem.

CMTs studied in this way by Garrick provided scientific resources and evidence to give First Nations proof of former jurisdiction. It is interesting to note, however, there was no apparent conflict in the management of Yukusem resources until about 1930, Garrick explains. His archaeological time-line shows that before the cataclysmic culture shock treatments took form (residential schools, banning of potlatchs, et al), the arrival of industrial foresters was a not-unwelcome event to a degree. The industrial foresters were cooperative by taking only a few trees from Yukusem’s treasured groves, and Garrick reports they apparently left cedar trees untouched, cedar was for the cedar shapers those who used it as a specially-managed and treasured resource. Thus Garrick has proven how two management paradigms co-existed!

It required an exercise of federal government policy to alienate First Nations from their management and jurisdiction over cedar shaping activities. From the time such government policies were introduced until Yukusem Heritage Society was formed in 2004 the cedar groves on Hanson Island faced dire circumstances. Garrick’s archaeological study was the one thing standing in their way, and in a pleasant turn since his study began a series of scientific facts have freed people to exert their sovereignty.

“I am the land and resource officer of the Namgis First Nation,” said Harry Alfred, one afternoon in a communal garden on Yukusem. Alfred described how people have rebounded because of Garrick’s work in these groves. Cultural energy burst from the CMT research and in a way people have regained a sense of cultural balance. New community energy has been born from the old secrets. Alfred and Don Svanvik sit on the Yukusem board of directors on behalf of the Namgis First Nation. Two other Bands share jurisdiction over Hanson Island (Tlowitsis and Muntagila). Alfred and Svanvik have become CMT experts within their communities. “The Namgis Nation,” said Alfred, “comprised about 4,000 km.” With a sweep of his arm he described a rectangular shaped territory with Yukusem sitting almost at the centre.

Furthermore, under the guidance of Namgis artist and lay-historian Beau Dick a group of volunteers has built a few community facilities on the south-west quadrant of Yukusem to teach people the meaning of the old ways. Dick described how one social organization took people into the silvan wilderness and constructed dugout canoes. It is known that canoes were constructed in the cultivated cedar groves in areas adjoining other food or health or community-based cultivated resources. The canoes were dugouts, designed in a technically superior manner to take people back and forth between communities and fishing grounds or ther harvest areas throughout the Broughton Archipelago.

The communities of old are buried today in the forest floor in the surroundings of etchings of harvest found in ancient cedar trees. A volunteer canoe project amounts to a defacto form of reclamation of Yukusem and was the idea of Dick who grew up in a Big House society that remained standing in the splendour of Kingcome Inlet, representing a miraculous survival where traditionalists dodged bullets (literal and figurative) through many previous decades.

Dick learned to carve from his grandfather and father and obtained teaching about hidden meanings in a unique form of artistic expression. Life goes on, yes, and Beau Dick, despite being a realist, believes he is restoring historical significance to the nation by uncovering the old secrets of cedar forest management. On the southwest quadrant of Yukusem he is staging a come-back by building a cultural camp to teach people the old ways -- sharing a forest in a transgenerational and environmentally sustainable way.

Beau Dick canoe carving project on Yukusem, aka Hanson Island, B.C.

Hawk Hawkins and Beau Dick, circa 2008, Yukusem Culture Bivouac on Hanson Island, B.C..

Beau Dick is a machine when it comes to working with wood. He is a Kwakwala carver of renowned ability whose life includes meeting the British Royal Family, and includes possession of the highest ranking bloodline.

Beau Dick was raised in Kingcome Inlet, B.C. (an obscure postal code), and grew up within a Big House society still standing in the splendour of its generations.

Kingcome Inlet represented a miraculous survival where traditionalists had dodged a lot of bullets, both literal and figurative, through many previous decades.

Beau Dick learned to carve from his grandfather and father and the teaching contained the deeper meaning of this unique form of artistic expression. He learned these important lessons at the archetype level, from which level was born a life-force.

With this knowledge and energy Beau Dick has launched himself into the community to show people the deeper meaning of their old ways.

The timing is right for Beau Dick. He found it easier to create a significant cultural revival since the return of Hanson Island to First Nation custody. It is an opportunity to break out of systematic oppression.

Proof of Aboriginal stewardship of this island has been uncovered in rich Hanson Island Old Growth cedar groves, because the Cultural Modified Trees are filled with archaeological evidence of Aboriginal Rights and Title.

Hanson Island has been returned to the custody of the First Nations. CMTs have restored once-hidden knowledge about shore-based societies constructed around rainforest cedar groves.

David Garrick, anthropologist, coined the term “transgenerational” management of forest resources to explain a social arrangement in forests. Rainforests were ‘managed’ under carefully defined  jurisdiction.

Social groups practiced grand scale horticulture on stands of cedar on Yukusem’s (Hanson Island) 16 square kilometres. They made cedar trees do the most amazing things. Excess bark was produced for harvest,  which might take a couple hundred years to get to.

Harry Alfred (et al) has taken scientific evidence to carve a role in management. He is one of the board of directors of Yukusem Heritage Society, which has custody of most of Hanson Island.

He is also, “land and resource officer of the Namgis First Nation,” he explained, one afternoon in a Garrick-constructed garden in Yukusem heights.

“The Namgis traditional territory,” said Alfred, comprised, “about 4,000 sq km.” Extending an arm to four corners he described a rectangular shaped territory with Yukusem almost centre.

Harry Alfred said the community rebounded due to David Garrick’s work in cedar groves on Yukusem (over 20 years of hands-on research). The First Nations managers have devoted nation-building energy to CMT research.

A hundred people been trained by Garrick and these are people who have regained cultural balance from the experience.

Life goes on, yes, and Beau Dick, a realist, knows this. He is adding something to a historically significant nation using the old secrets of majestic Indian Nation jurisdiction.

On the southwest quadrant of Yukusem he is staging a canoe carving project and building a cultural camp to teach people the old ways about sharing a forest in a transgenerational and environmentally sustainable way.