Haida Gwaii

A web of songlines weaves its way across Australia. Their trails mark the paths the ancient ancestors walked during the Dreaming, that new-born time when the land was sung into existence. The ancestors sung the mountains, the rivers and the deserts, they sang the beaches and the forests and the caves, and their songs were not forgotten.  Even today Australian Aboriginals walk those ancient songlines, reconnecting with their land as a Muslim might sing the Koran. To hear the song of a place is to understand the emotion of its creation.

I’m not sure what has happened to the songs of the world where I grew up. Occasionally you can hear hints of what might have been, whispers in the winds or the colours of the sunsets; but for the most part I struggle to hear them, their melodies drowned, perhaps, in the constant clamour of industry and indulgence. But places exist, have no doubt, whose songs can still be heard by anyone who cares to stop and listen. On Haida Gwaii, those songs are carried on the wings of eagles.

It is a world that could have been. It lies somewhere off the coast of Alaska, but I am unsure how it came to be there; trapped, perhaps, by the beauty of its own possibilities. It is to this world that all the hope and suffering of an ancient people came to rest and heal.

Never have I come across a people so efficiently stripped of their soul as the First Nations people of Canada. You see them, sometimes, on the corner of Main and Hastings in downtown Vancouver, their eyes clouded with toxins, their bodies ravaged by despair. They are like ghosts, walking this earth half-blind, desperately searching for the humanity that was taken from them. The reservations where they are allowed to stay as a token of guilt are often haunted by dysfunction and sadness. Some have managed to escape the plunder of their homes, their health, their language, their culture, but most have not, and as the loggers and whalers and governments stole and destroyed their land, even their gods were forced to desert them, as homeless as the people who were bound to them.

They reside here now, in Haida Gwaii, beaten west until they could escape no further. It is their melodies, wild and fierce, that you hear when you pause and look up at the eagles. They are the haunting cries of defiance of spirits ancient and sad, guardians of the four hundred or so islands that make up this world – small domes and huge mountains, shooting sharply out of bluegreen waters. Their world is thickly carpeted in moss-coated rainforests – cedar, spruce and alders – racing each other to the sky. The skies here are grey and heavy, holding you close, and thick white mists travel the land, enveloping mountains as they go.

The people who live here are a quirky bunch, a people as connected to their land as any I have met anywhere. Fishermen and loggers, farmers and hippies. Twenty-somethings who hunt, skin and butcher their own meat, teenagers who bring home the daily catch of fish and crab. And, living among them as equals,  the Haida people – proud and determined, fierce warriors and talented artists, who have resisted and fought and struggled, and continue to reclaim their stolen identity. They are venerated as heroes amongst First Nations people, and the world they insist upon is nothing short of enchanting.

Eagles, bears and orca, time honoured royalty of the air, land and sea, are still granted the rule of their kingdoms, and under their watch a myriad richness flourishes. The air is thick with life on Haida Gwaii. Whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, sea lions and otters enjoy waters filled to bursting with fish, prawns, shrimp and crab. As seven meter tides sink down the beaches, they reveal sands cluttered with clams, mussels, oysters, sea stars and urchins ready for the taking. As the sea gives way to the land, the forests are coated in greens so rich and bright that they hurt your eyes. Trees the size of houses and as old as civilisations stand tall and proud. Eagles soar above, ten, twelve of them, cruising on thermals. Huge black ravens, brash and intelligent, look around for the next piece of mishcheif. Hummingbirds zip past before you realise they’re there. Deer play shyly amongst the trees, wary only  of the bears, dark and solitary, moving quietly through the ancient forests.

Aware of the frailty of its beauty, aware of the dangers of the culture bulging out of the coasts not ninety kilometres away, a pantheon of forces protect this world. Inaccessible in large part but over water, black hearted sea gods ensure that while the waters between the islands lie still and calm, a vast fury of waves, wind, tides and currents render the surrounding ocean often impenetrable and always formidable. For four months of the year these islands are shrouded in darkness and battered by storms that only the mad or the determined stay to endure. Watchmen stand guard over the remains of villages and totem poles, preserving knowledge in their conversations, and painstakingly holding back the encroachment of the forests. Rain drizzles down with such regularity that only those blinded by the enchantment of the land persist in living there. Even Time, usually so callous, plays its part – newspapers less than three days old rarely make it to the islands’ shores, and a general absence of tvs keep attentions focused on the here and the now and the local.

And across it all, the songs, those rich, wild melodies that fill the air and remind you, always, what it is that keeps these lands alive. It is a memory we would all do well to remember.