Gwaii Haanas

Posted by Carol Cedarholm June 11, 2019

Gwaii Haanas

We spent a week in Gwaii Haanas. These “islands of beauty” (the meaning Gwaii Haanas has in the Haida language) comprise the southern portion of Haida Gwaii and include 500 identified Haida heritage sites. All were abandoned, however, after smallpox virtually wiped out the Haida population by the beginning of the 20^thcentury.

It is one of the richest ecosystems in the world and remains a wilderness area with no road access, stores, cabins, cell phone coverage or internet. Our week there included kayaking among stellar sea lions, seals, sea urchins, and much other intertidal sea life; cruising in our 40-foot kayak mothership with 3 other travelers, among the Risso’s dolphins; catching and eating the abundance of sea life including lingcod, halibut, rock fish, prawns and crabs; hiking old growth forest (sitka spruce, cedar, hemlock) with moss underfoot; viewing the star-studded sky; watching tufted puffins, ancient murrelets, rhinoceros auklets, pelagic cormorants, sand hill cranes, bald eagles, guillemots, rufous hummingbirds, gulls; foraging for and preparing oyster mushrooms, sea kelp, asparagus grass; visiting historic Haida villages (including SGang Gwaay, a UNESCO world heritage site) and meeting Haida watchmen/women who share stories and protect the village remains including monumental cedar totem poles; and eating gourmet meals every night.

It is important to remember, as we cruise, kayak and hike through this beautiful area, that foreign loggers once threatened to destroy it all. Only organized resistance by indigenous people in the 1970s and 1980s saved it. This Haida-led effort to protect their homeland from industrial interests was more than a question of environmental protection. The campaign was an issue of native identity, and it has defined the modern Haida.

Already by the 1960s, logging activities in Gwaii Haanas had destroyed many salmon rivers, intertidal areas, harvesting areas and archaeological sites. Having witnessed the destruction caused by clear-cut logging, Haida were alarmed when, in 1975, a company called Rayonier began logging Tllga kun Gwaay.yaay (Lyell Island) contrary to previous government promises, and after it had already devastated other areas of British Columbia.

Haida responded by forming the Island Protection Committee and over the next ten years built support throughout Canada and the world. Three million people from around the world pledged their support to the campaign. But it was not enough as logging continued. In response, in October 1985, Haida set up camp in Hlk’yah GawGa (Windy Bay) and blocked access to the logging road. As a way of officially supporting their resistance, the Council of the Haida Nation also designated Gwaii Haanas land and marine areas as a Haida Heritage Site. Canada responded by posting 25 RCMP officers nearby, and in November over 70 Haida were arrested as they protested logging activity.

But the resistance continued and finally, in 1986, the national government promised that Gwaii Haanas would be designated a national park reserve and logging would stop. Over the next ten years, Canada and the Haida negotiated a series of agreements resulting in the establishment of a jointly managed Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, National Marine Conservation Area Reserve, and Haida Heritage Site, protecting it “from mountaintop to seafloor.”