Page 91 - The Secret Museum

by and learned from a pole they saw standing out in the ocean. The monumental poles

are carved from red cedarwood, and it takes a year to create each one. The totem
poles were used to tell stories, to mark important events, to show status and to mock
people. This still goes on. In 2007, a shaming totem pole was put up in Alaska
featuring the upside-down head of the ex-CEO of the oil company Exxon. The totem
pole was made to express anger over the unpaid debt the company owes for the
Exxon Valdez oil spillage of 1989. In England, in Windsor Great Park, near Windsor

Castle, there is a 30-metre-high totem pole made in 1958 from a 600-year-old tree
felled on Haida Gwaii. It was given to the Queen to commemorate the centenary of
the founding of British Columbia.

The ancient Haida lived in houses made of cedar which slept 30 or more people.
They ate mussels, oysters, oolichans (a fish) and oolichan grease (fish oil). High-
ranking men and women tattooed their clan crests (depicting animals, the supernatural
or clan histories) on to their skin. All the Haida had a deep respect for the
environment. They travelled in cedarwood canoes. If you look on the back of a

Canadian $20 note, you will see an artwork called Spirit of Haida Gwaii, by Haida
artist Bill Reid, which depicts a Haida chief in a canoe with many other creatures of
Haida Gwaii, including the raven, the frog, the eagle and the bear.

The Haida language has no relationship to other languages – rather like Basque
and the Ainu language once spoken on the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan.
There are fewer than 40 remaining speakers of the language, most of them over 70
years old.

I’d like to imagine the Haida rattle finding its way back to Haida Gwaii so its
people can remember the days of the sGaagas. When it is returned, I am sure the
Haida will say ‘Háw’aa’ –‘thank you’.