school and canoe trips

my classroom and the Haida Heritage museum view from the canoe

The first day of school started yesterday and am very pleased with it so far. There is nine of us in the program with three locals which really adds the local knowledge and spice to the conversation. We kicked off the program with a guest speaker: Diane Brown who is a matriarch of the Haida Nation and although a grandmother she is the youngest fluent speaker of the Haida language. She told her first hand account of the important resistance and protest that resulted years later in the creation of Gwaii Haanas National Marine Park and Haida Heritage Site. In 1985 for about three months that Haida Nation banded together and set up a camp on Lyell Island in Gwaii Haanas where they woke up every day early to stop the logging trucks from logging the area. Diane spoke of four elders from Skidegate joining the resistance on the front lines, despite their old age and poor health they woke up early in the morning and walked the steep and muddy logging road to make it to the front lines. It was decided that the elders would be the first to be arrested and along with these elders there were escorts and the Chief arrested- Diane herself was arrested and brought to Vancouver to stand trial. The Haida eventually won the struggle and all logging was stopped and the area eventually turned into a protected area reserve. It was an amazing first hand account that could never be recreated in any book or second hand perspective.

recently carved paddles

Today after class we were invited to go out on the Dragon boats that are at the Haida Heritage museum where we go to school. We first went to the carving shed where we saw many completed Haida cedar canoes and different paddles lined up against the wall.

We went out with some other students currently studying at the center and canoed past the village of Skidegate where there were two eagles watching us from Bill Reid's symbolic pole raised quite a few years ago now, but it was the first pole raised in many many years. Within that building some local elders were watching and waved as we saluted them with our paddles.

dragonboat canoes around the bay