Haida Gwaiis future, Haida Gwaiis past

Deep in the forest in northern Haida Gwaii, a half-carved canoe juts out of the earth overgrown with moss and dappled by the light creeping through the canopy above.

Its more than 100 years old, one of maybe a dozen left unfinished by skilled Indigenous carvers on the group of islands off B.C., abandoned among the towering red cedars.

[In the] 1860s, there was a huge smallpox epidemic that killed 95 per cent of the population. So you'll find canoes and stuff like that in the forest, sort of finished at different stages, said Jaalen Edenshaw, a carver and artist who took The Current into the forest last month. 

Either the carvers themselves are dying off, or if you lose your family the canoe is not the priority anymore.

Jaalen, 43, is a member of the Haida Nation, an Indigenous group who make up around half of the roughly 5,000 people living on Haida Gwaii. For centuries, the Haida were renowned for their craftsmanship in canoe building, trading them to communities all along the B.C. coast. But that knowledge and skill was almost lost in the smallpox outbreak until modern carvers like Jaalen ventured into the forest to reclaim it.

Examining these half-built canoes, the carvers were able to piece together the specifications of how they were built. Once long forgotten, they offered a blueprint from the past.

It's the ancestors teaching us, Jaalen said. Literally the ancestors reteaching how to do it.

The old canoes havent just been used to revive a fading craftsmanship. Since the 1970s, Haida activists have worked to protect parts of the old-growth forest from clear-cut logging using the canoes to secure injunctions.

We've had to use our culture and things like this old canoe to protect these areas, and the argument being that we need these things to exist as a people, Jaalen said.

And its true our culture, who we are, comes from Haida Gwaii, from the land.

In March, the B.C. government officially recognized the Haida Nation's Aboriginal title over Haida Gwaii with a historic land agreement. It outlines a plan for governing land on the islands, with the province saying it will work with the Council of the Haida Nation to align provincial and Haida Nation laws.

Called the Gaayhllxid/Gihlagalgang "Rising Tide" Haida Title Lands Agreement, the province billed it as a first-of-its-kind deal that was decades in the making. In April, Premier David Eby described it as so long overdue.

The federal government has not signed on to the agreement, but Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree offered his congratulations in April, and said federal officials would work with both the Haida Nation and B.C. government to advance this work at the reconciliation table.

Jaalens father, Guujaaw, is a long-time Haida activist. He was instrumental in securing the injunction against logging near that canoe and sees protecting the land as a key part of the fight to secure the title agreement.

The most valuable thing we have here is nature, said Guujaaw, 71, an elder and hereditary chief.

There's no sense having rights to fish if there's no fish, or right to a culture if there's no cedar and no land to relate to.

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That desire to protect his land and culture is something Guujaaw has passed on to his granddaughter: Jaalens daughter, Haana Edenshaw.

Every time I'm out there, I feel the responsibility to be out on the land and learn from it and have a relationship with it, because that's part of what being Haida is, said Haana, 20, a climate activist and student attending university in Vancouver.

Haana grew up around people dedicated to preserving the Haida culture, from her grandfathers activism and her fathers carving, to her mothers academic work studying the Haida language. The young activist sees that work not as an obligation, but a privilege.

This island doesn't belong to us we belong to this island, she said. 

The smallpox outbreak, coupled with the impacts of colonization, reduced the Indigenous population of Haida Gwaii from an estimated 20,000 in the 1700s to about 600 in the early 1900s. Thats when more Canadian settlers started arriving on what were then called the Queen Charlotte Islands until the name Haida Gwaii was officially adopted in 2009.

Guujaaw said the title agreement is not something granted by B.C.s provincial government, but a recognition of something the Haida never gave up.

The title doesn't come from them. It doesn't come from the Crown, doesn't come from the court. It comes from our ancestry, he said.

That view is shared by Gaagwiis, also called Jason Alsop, president of the Council of the Haida Nation.

He thinks the title agreement will allow the people on Haida Gwaii to move away from a colonial mindset that has centred around generating revenues and profits for companies and royalties for government [but] hasn't invested back into the islands, into the people.

He hopes that colonial period will be a blip in Haida Gwaiis history, and that the agreement is the beginning of centring our Haida history, our culture, our values for the good of the entire archipelago.

It moves us from an adversarial position to actually [being] able to properly collaborate and co-operate with the people of the islands who've come to settle and live here, he said.

The agreement lays out a process for the Haida Nation to take over land management on the archipelagos more than 150 islands. Portfolios like health, education, transportation and emergency services will remain the responsibility of the province and municipalities. 

Dale Lore, a former mayor of Port Clements in north Haida Gwaii, said there is some uncertainty and concern among the non-Indigenous community on the islands, particularly around logging. But Lore, who is not Indigenous, thinks it is not near as much as you would expect.

It's more like everybody just took it in stride, knowing that this was eventually going to happen. The surprise was it happened before all the resources were taken.

Lore welcomes the title agreement, but said the devil's in the details when it comes to the issues still to be resolved. 

Can it still get screwed up? We're humans, of course. But more and more, it's looking like we'll have the decision-making with local people, he said.

The nice part of it is we won't have anybody else to blame. Whatever happens, it'll be us.

The province has said the deal will not affect private property, such as land held by non-Indigenous residents.

We believe that private property is 100 per cent protected and will always be, going forward, protected," Murray Rankin, B.C.'s minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation, said in March.

But Vancouver-based lawyer Thomas Isaac said he believes the language of the agreement could lead to two sets of rights coming into conflict.

He explained that the province has acknowledged Aboriginal title a constitutionally protected right to land over all of Haida Gwaii, including private property. But private property rights, known as fee simple rights, are also a right to that same land.

The agreement contains language stipulating that the Haida Nation will honour the rights of those private landowners, but Isaac worries that language is too vague.

My critique is not directed towards the Haida Nation. I don't think it's their job to be looking out for third-party interests, said Isaac, a partner specializing in Indigenous and Aboriginal law at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP.

This was the job of the province and remains the obligation of the province.

Issac said the province has handled the agreement in a haphazard way that could create uncertainty in the future. He said the province could have excluded private property from the agreement, or added additional language to clarify exactly how fee simple rights are protected. 

Responding to criticism of the title agreement in April, Nathan Cullen, B.C.s minister of water, land and resource stewardship, posted on X that private landowners are protected. In writing. In the agreement. Period.

In an Angus Reid Institute online survey conducted among 1,250 adults in B.C. in May, 55 per cent of respondents believed the Haida Gwaii title agreement was the right decision, but only 30 per cent believed it should be a precedent for more land transfers.

Gaagwiis said he understands that there is uncertainty in both Haida and non-Indigenous communities, but insisted that existing property ownership would be not affected by the agreement. He said the next steps would require communication, inclusion and co-operation.

I do believe that as things unfold, everybody will have their voice and opportunity to be part of it, and it's going to take all of us working together to actually make it happen, he said.

Haana was away at school in Vancouver when the Haida Nation voted on the agreement in April, but she got together with Haida friends and cousins to watch the live stream.

We had a big feast of all of this Haida food that we had in our freezers as gifts from our families we had kaaw, we had halibut, we had seaweed, she said. Kaaw is a traditional Haida dish of dried herring roe on kelp.

I'm just really excited to see how things change moving forward. I'm not really sure what it's going to look like, but I want to be around.

Haanas dad Jaalen also feels lucky to be part of this historic moment.

The energy that has been going to fighting a lot of these things over the last 50 years, 100 years can turn to creating and building on our people's strength, he said.

That's what my parents generation will leave to their grandchildren a time where they can put that same energy into strengthening our culture.

For Guujaaw, the threat of climate change means nothing is certain for his granddaughters generation, but hes happy to enjoy this moment and think about what it means for the battles to come.

In my lifetime, [we come from] having no influence to having almost full responsibility for what's going to occur next, said Guujaaw.

That is, you know, a tough position, but a good position to be in.

Documentary produced by: Elizabeth Hoath, Ines Colabrese, Joana Draghici | Videographer: Maggie MacPherson | Copy editor: Hanna Lee | Digital producer: Padraig Moran, Althea Manasan | Senior digital producer: Jason Vermes