Survival Masters of the Pacific Coast: The Tribes of the American Northwest

In 1774, a Spanish exploration vessel

arrived on the uncharted Pacific Coast of North America.

The next morning, dozens of war canoes approached the ship.

Aboard were strange figures wearing thick robes and animal masks,

the likes of which the Spanish had never seen.

RHYTHMIC CHANTING, DRUMS

These were the peoples of the Northwest Coast of America.

They had lived along these 1,400 miles of rugged,

rain-swept coastline for over 10,000 years.

And their future was about to be transformed.

Within 100 years of contact with Europeans,

they had suffered a near extinction-level catastrophe.

Their lands were occupied. Their population, decimated.

An entire culture faced extinction, and yet, the people left

standing didn't simply survive, they adapted, they endured.

They stand out as one of the most successful and resilient cultures

anywhere on Earth.

We've always been such a capable and hard-working people,

we've just had no other option than succeeding.

This is the story of how a culture adapted to

a clash with another,

of how it used its physical and spiritual

connection to the environment as a source of strength, and of

how a unique society and its people defied the odds and survived.

The Northwest Coast of North America.

1,400 miles of windswept rocks,

forests and archipelagos.

The first humans to colonise the Americas travelled down this coast,

and these islands have been permanently settled

for more than 10,000 years.

In summer, this is a spectacular landscape.

But for much of the year, it can be a cold, wet, harsh place.

Despite this tough environment,

the people here established enduring, complex communities.

And they broke conventional Western understanding of how a society

develops by doing so without using agriculture.

Instead, their populations grew

and a sophisticated culture developed,

because of a different kind of relationship with the environment

which underpinned their ability to harvest its resources

as well as providing the basis for their spiritual beliefs.

Our people had a great respect for everything - the land, the sky,

the ocean, everything around us.

I've inherited a responsibility to look after our lands and

waters and to be open to the supernatural and spiritual worlds.

It's an immense, beautiful and resource-rich environment,

and it's the key to understanding how Northwest Coast culture

has thrived here for thousands of years.

The territories we now know as the Alaskan Panhandle,

the Canadian coast of British Columbia

and Washington State in the US

have been home to hundreds of distinct nations and

communities with their own languages and traditions for more

than 10,000 years.

They've traded, fought and prospered here.

The vibrant culture and sophisticated art they created

ranks alongside any of the great civilisations around the world.

Our ancestors developed a wonderful culture and art form.

They would always come back to the nature and how to look after things.

These are the symbols that help tell the story,

that help retain the history.

When Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, 3,000 miles in

that direction, the peoples of the Northwest Coast were flourishing.

And they continued to do so for almost another 300 years,

uncontacted by Europeans.

Once the Americas had been discovered by Europeans,

they set about colonising this new world.

Native cultures were devastated by the arrival of the incomers.

Entire civilisations, like the Aztec and the Inca, were destroyed.

However, something very different happened here.

With a barrier of mountain ranges to the east

and the wild Pacific Ocean to the west,

the communities of this coast

were initially unknown to the outside world.

By the time the Spanish and British arrived in the 1770s,

the people here were among the last of the indigenous

American cultures they encountered.

When Europeans first made contact with indigenous peoples elsewhere

in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries,

the relationship was dominated by their motivation to seize land

and wealth, dominate local populations

and colonise new territories.

But when they arrived here in the late 18th century,

the situation was completely different.

For a start, the British and French were involved in costly wars

elsewhere, not least the American War of Independence.

And so the idea of getting involved in yet another war

with the powerful chiefdoms of the Northwest Coast

was extremely unappealing.

It was this that fundamentally changed the nature

of their relationship.

This was a time of burgeoning international commerce.

And when Europeans and Russians realised

a thriving and diverse trade network already existed here,

they saw the native population as potential partners.

Within a decade or so, native North Americans all along

this coastline were busily trading with the new European arrivals,

and this trade significantly altered the economies

of the communities here.

What surprised the local population about the European traders

was what they wanted to obtain.

Sea otter fur.

The animals were so abundant,

their fur had little value between the communities.

But with the arrival of foreign traders,

places like South Baranof Island in Alaska became

major international trade hubs.

This is traditional territory of one of the Northwest Coast's

biggest tribes, the Tlingit.

Their lands once stretched across 500 miles of the Alaskan Panhandle.

Teri Rofkar is a traditional Tlingit weaver who

has studied the role of sea otter fur in the history the coast.

My name is Chaas' Koowu.

In Tlingit, I am a Raven

of the T'ak dein taan.

I am the daughter of an Englishman

and the granddaughter

of Kaagwaantaan Wolf.

-These are the sea otter pelts over here?

-These are the sea otter pelts.

-So I am one of the hunters for the tribe.

-Wow.

And you can see that they're quite large.

When they're in the ocean, it doesn't always look that big.

-And it's just HUGE.

-Yeah.

You're going to want to check that out.

That's absolutely beautiful.

The Pacific sea otter is endemic to the icy water of the Siberian

and North American coast, for which it is perfectly suited.

Unlike most marine animals, it has no blubber to keep it warm,

but it's fur is the densest of any creature on Earth.

-That's incredibly thick.

-Yeah, really thick.

It's supposedly 300,000 hairs per one square inch.

And I just love the texture that it...

How do you process them? Do you clean them?

Yes, you've got to flesh off, fletch off all of this,

-the meat back here.

-Yeah.

Exotic fur had a huge global market in the 18th century,

and the Russians were particularly keen to exploit their

lucrative position as key suppliers to Imperial China.

And as a material, like, what,

they were one of the most valuable objects

-in those early contacts?

-They really were.

Some of them were fetching like 300, 500, 1,000 for one pelt.

So it was a tremendous amount of money.

And the Russians were primarily harvesting them.

And they were not taking them back to Russia,

they were selling them to the emperors in China.

And it was that window that the otters were really so,

so important.

Communities which had operated within the coastal trade network

adapted to this new and profitable international exchange.

They bartered furs for new goods arriving with European and

Russian merchants and found themselves in high demand.

Their knowledge of the lands and waters and their hunting

expertise were of immense value.

The peoples of the Northwest Coast were in a strong position,

and often Europeans had to trade with them on unfavourable terms.

Not only that, Europeans were acting as individuals rather than as

a state, and this gave the native populations the upper hand.

The sudden demand for sea otter fur had dramatic impact,

not just upon hunting patterns but on the economy of the coast

because new products, from firearms to wheelbarrows,

altered the system of value.

The influx of goods, however, tended to reinforce existing social

hierarchies rather than put power in new hands,

not least because of one item offered in exchange for furs

was the material societies here had always prized above all else.

Copper -

for thousands of years, one of the very few naturally occurring

and workable metals available to local crafts people.

Metalwork has an interesting history here on the Northwest Coast.

The earliest evidence of it comes from copper ornaments found

that date back about 3,000 years.

But it was the arrival of quality copper from Europe that led

to the transformation of techniques and styles.

Juneau, Alaska was once another Tlingit stronghold,

and it's where the art of copper making is being continued

by Tlingit craftsmen.

-Hey, how are you doing?

-Greetings. Welcome to Juneau, Alaska.

My Tlingit name is...

I'm a twin brother to the guy

sitting next to me,

and he is four hours older than I am.

My Tlingit name is...

Rick and Mick have been working with copper in the traditional

Tlingit way for 20 years.

They're well-versed in the history of local metalworking and how,

before European contact, tribes would seek out copper nuggets

along the banks of streams in winter.

They would look for the green spots where the oxidation has come

up through the snow, and then they plop a stick there,

and then they go back when it's melted,

and that's how they'd collect them.

It is a valuable commodity because they're quite rare things in

-the past?

-At the time.

-Yeah?

-At the time.

-It was like gold.

-Yeah.

-Like gold today.

It was a valuable resource, but it was the material,

they needed to get the material.

That was the hard part.

Europeans brought large quantities of high-quality sheet copper

to the Northwest Coast.

This fuelled a step up in the production

of these shield-like items that are known simply as coppers.

Coppers had no practical function

but were central to the coastal economy.

They would make these shields

and the shields represented money,

and you could buy canoes,

you could buy property, rights to streams.

-Yeah.

-It was an extremely valuable early trade item.

-And they used this shape up and down the whole coast.

-Yeah.

All the different tribes.

And they're all basically the same, and they all involve a raised T.

Yes. And so what do you do? What's the process?

You throw it on the fire.

-In one of these?

-Yeah. And you get it soft.

-Why don't you take the gloves?

-Thanks so much.

-And then you'll help Rick set that on there.

-Love it.

Great.

Tlingit metal smiths would heat the copper,

then drop it in water to tighten the metal before working on it.

-You're trying to find a solid spot.

-Yeah.

-Where you can hit it.

-Yeah.

And you're actually thinning the metal.

And what I'm trying to do is, more or less, create a tunnel here,

-a rounded tunnel.

-Yeah.

Once the sheet is hammered into the iconic T-shape that adorned

all coppers, the metal is returned to the fire and coated with

a resin from spruce trees.

-That's good. Wow.

-That's pure pitch there.

-So you tapped into the tree and got some of that sap out?

-Yeah.

And once that patina's on there,

-then that sort of gives it a glowing shine.

-Yeah.

And does it protect the metal against corrosion or is it...?

-It would.

-Yeah?

-Yeah, it would.

-Yeah.

-We just want to melt it on there.

-Yeah.

-And not sizzling.

-Smell it?

-Yeah, beautiful smell.

That's great.

-It's good there's two of you, it's a two-man job.

-Oh, yeah.

Two bodies, one mind.

-We'll just let that cool off.

-Yep.

The modest size of most coppers belies their value in

Northwest Coast society.

What could one of these be worth?

I mean, if we started to think about...

-Well, supposedly, they were worth, you know, a couple canoes.

-Wow.

A long time ago.

-So that would be like a couple cars.

-Yeah.

So, sort of, yeah, they're a symbol of power,

-they are a symbol of control...

-Yes.

..that really sort of projects out

-and that other people in the community respect.

-Yes.

-Congratulations, it's a beautiful, beautiful object.

-Thank you.

The huge increase in the production of coppers,

enabled by European sheet metal,

vastly enriched the tribes that traded with the outsiders...

..and in turn, led to a flourishing of what

has become known as perhaps the most iconic element of Northwest Coast

culture - a ceremony unique to the people here, known as a potlatch...

..something that played a key role in the story of European contact.

To understand what potlatches were and how the influx of foreign copper

affected their role in society,

I'm flying to the remote archipelago of Haida Gwaii.

These islands are to this day the homeland of the Haida people,

one of the most powerful of the Northwest Coast nations.

We are just flying down to Haida Gwaii.

Coming out of Alaska, down the coast,

the landscape for hundreds and hundreds of miles is covered

in this thick, impenetrable forest.

It gives you the sense of what it means to live in a wilderness.

Potlatches have been at the heart of communities here

for at least 1,000 years.

On one level, the potlatch is simply a great feast and gathering

of the clans.

Yet, among scholars, it has been the subject of perhaps more

debate than any other aspect of Northwest Coast culture.

From a European point of view, power and wealth is about

accumulation, acquiring more money or commodities than your rival.

But in the Northwest Coast, it's completely different -

power and wealth are gained by literally giving it away.

When Europeans first observed potlatches,

they couldn't understand

that powerful chiefs would willingly hand out huge swathes of

their wealth to their rivals,

which seemed to be a complete inversion of European notions

of paying tribute.

Old Massett, on Haida Gwaii,

is home to Haida chief Jim Hart, who has held potlatches of his own.

My Haida name is...

And my clan name is...

And I'm the chief of our clan.

And what does the potlatch ceremony mean within the Haida community?

Potlatch is a Chinook name.

Chinook is a language that was invented

with all the coastal tribes'

languages, and they figured out all these different types of words

so that a trader or... We could talk to each other.

So we use that word, that common language called Chinook.

This footage shows a potlatch held by the Kwakwaka'wakw in the 1950s.

The dances and ceremonies differed along the coast,

but the core aspects were shared.

Potlatches often marked an important occasion - a birth,

marriage or naming of a new chief.

The ceremonies could last for days or even weeks.

Chiefs could be invited from hundreds of miles away.

These events were the foundation of the tribe's economic,

political, spiritual and legal systems.

Potlatches were a place to validate your laws, you know,

and who you were, where you stood in this world.

You talk about your history and all your achievements with your family,

your clan. And it was about laws too.

So you would reinforce your laws there.

NATIVE SINGING

Among the people here,

the opportunity to host a potlatch was the highest goal in life,

but it was the practice of bestowing gifts of great value

onto the invited guests that baffled outsiders.

European society, often like chiefs or people who have power,

accumulate wealth, they bring wealth to themselves and they hoard it,

-and that's, like, how you become powerful.

-Yeah.

But the potlatch is a very different perspective on wealth because

you seem to give away wealth.

Yeah, so I invite you all to come to meet

or to witness the event.

And so what I do as the host is pay you for that,

and I start giving you gifts for being there to witness that.

Different types of gifts for if you are

a chief or if you really respect somebody, so it reinforces bonds.

What is traditionally the most valuable item that could be

-given away at a potlatch?

-I think the copper.

Coppers were, in my mind,

probably the biggest thing you could give away at a potlatch.

This apparent generosity came with a significant catch.

Whatever the host gave to his guests,

whether coppers or other valuables,

the gifts could not be declined.

The recipient would then be personally indebted to the host,

increasing the host's power and standing.

Only when the recipient held a potlatch of their own and

bestowed gifts of greater value on their previous host would

they be released from their bond.

This could be a way of humiliating a rival, who might spend years,

even decades, saving enough to repay in kind.

Europeans were astonished that chiefs would even deliberately

ruin objects, forcing a rival to publicly sacrifice an equal

amount or lose face.

And that included the most valuable items of all.

I heard that sometimes people destroyed coppers...

-Yep.

-..as sort of like a public ritual.

-What's the story behind that?

-Well...

War-manship, I'm having a war with you in a sense. I'm showing you

that I've got more wealth than you, I can destroy my wealth like that.

There was a lot of trickery to all that stuff too, though.

There was a guy in a canoe out there in the water throwing coppers

over, trying to show off to these people on shore,

showing his wealth.

But what was going on at that moment,

this guy was pulling up coppers with rope, like a line. Right?

So he's throwing them over,

but he also had them attached to this line and he made it

look like he had all these coppers, and he was busted.

You know what I mean? His whole show was busted then.

Early interaction with Europeans resulted not in a dilution

of coastal culture but an efflorescence.

After European contact, potlatches gained an even greater significance

because they were essential for

maintaining social hierarchies and keeping the links between

different communities alive.

This was so important during a time of such great transformation.

The sense of identity, so vital to coastal culture, was strengthened

in the decades following European contact in other ways too.

Before the arrival of the Europeans,

only a handful of tribes carved the iconic totem pole.

But as more chiefs grew wealthy in the transformed economy,

more carvers were commissioned and totem poles were raised all

along the coast.

This wasn't a reaction to the presence of the Europeans.

Greater wealth had made rivalries fiercer amongst the communities.

Totem poles were statements of strength, and more clans and

tribes now had the means to assert their status and display

their power to others.

Artistic expression was used by the peoples of the Northwest Coast

to encode that precious cultural knowledge,

hidden in plain sight.

Being able to maintain their cultural traditions while

trading peacefully with Europeans was an illustration of the

strength of Northwest Coast society and its ability to adapt.

These peoples, after all, had learned how to understand

their environment and make the most out of it for thousands of years.

And the presence of outsiders merely altered that environment.

It wasn't a threat to their way of life...

until one group of newcomers tried to change the game.

Russian fur traders first arrived in the Americans along the

Aleutian Islands in the mid-18th century.

They established trading posts along the island chain,

and in 1799, built a permanent settlement on Baranof Island,

territory controlled by the powerful Tlingit.

The Russians brought with them Aleutian slaves to hunt otters.

This cut the Tlingit out of the trade.

In retaliation,

Tlingit clans attacked the Russian settlement at Sitka.

It was the first war between the peoples of the Northwest Coast

and the newcomers.

This conflict forced the Tlingit to adapt to this new threat, and an

example of how they did it is found in the workshop of a Tlingit chief.

My name is Tommy Joseph.

I'm Kaagwaantaan.

Kaagwaantaan is the name of my clan, which means I'm of the Eagle Moiety.

My clan crest is a wolf.

Tommy is a wood carver and armourer who has painstakingly recreated

sets of traditional Tlingit battle gear.

So this is some of the armour that would've been used to fight

-the Russians, then?

-Absolutely, yeah.

Over here, we have the wood-slat armour

which went over the hide armour.

Tommy has studied how Tlingit armour changed during conflict with Russia.

The Tlingits were able to trade with merchants,

and they obtained the Chinese coins here.

Beautiful. And so these were, like, being traded into the area anyway,

and they were sort of then taking these and using them?

Yeah, they were used in different art works, but also for the armour,

to replace the slat armour, because it was very time-consuming

working the sinew and they were sewing them to a bit of hides.

They would sew on several hundred of them on some of the pieces.

-That's great.

-They were quite heavy.

I have one piece in another museum here in Sitka that's got

a few hundred coins, and it's got some weight to it.

-Yeah.

-This is really thick hide.

-I've seen them where they overlapped, like that.

-Mm-hm.

Just row after row, overlapping.

Muskets have been fired at these guys

and have bounced off of them.

As well as metal-reinforced armour,

the Tlingit had muskets and cannons

obtained from British and American traders.

Using these, they attacked and destroyed the Russian trading post

at Sitka.

Two years later, in 1804, Russian ships returned with several hundred

militia and bombarded the Tlingit fort, which stood in this clearing.

When it's low tide, the boats had to stay way out there,

there was no way for them to come in.

So it was a strategic point here that kept the boats at bay.

And then the wall,

the fortress wall, was young trees that were kind of slanted so that

the cannonballs would deflect off and land beyond the river here.

GUNSHOTS

The Russian siege was effective, however.

With there ammunition supplies exhausted after another battle,

the Tlingit abandoned their positions.

But they weren't gone forever.

They were gone for about 16 years before they came back.

And when they came, the Russians by that time had totally built

their town right at the same spot where the village was.

They put up a big wall.

The Russians tried to assert their authority by naming the town

New Archangel and making it the capital of Russian America.

Yet they failed to displace the Tlingit as the area's main

traders, who remained a prominent force.

Native North American communities can often be perceived as

victims in the face of colonial force,

so it's so great to chat to Tommy and hear the pride with which

he talks about how the Tlingit warriors fought on this peninsula.

The Tlingit tenacity in battle was matched by their tenacity in

refusing to be displaced by the Russians.

This was a sign of the resilience they would need to see them

through what was to come.

The return of an uneasy peace allowed the Russians to

enforce a trade monopoly,

extending the length of the Alaskan Panhandle.

By the 1820s, British traders similarly controlled the

fur trade to the south in what is now British Columbia.

But decades of intensive otter hunting took its toll.

Gathering resources sustainably had been the hallmark of

a society that had existed for 10,000 years,

but along the coast, otter populations collapsed.

And when European interests turned to other natural resources,

the consequences were catastrophic.

In 1850, a group of Haida, from Haida Gwaii,

arrived in Fort Victoria, on Vancouver Island.

The British traders were astonished to find they had in their

position large gold nuggets.

Little did the islanders know that they had set in motion

a chain of events that would devastate their people.

Because when news of what they had found spread,

gold fever came to the Northwest Coast.

Through the 1850s, several gold strikes were made along the coast.

Within years, as many as 30,000 Europeans had flocked to the region,

marking the beginning of mass European settlement.

But the promise of gold didn't just bring foreign settlers,

it also brought foreign diseases.

The greatest danger the peoples of the Northwest Coast ever faced

was a threat they couldn't even see.

It wiped out entire communities and even the surviving tribes

were transformed beyond recognition.

Smallpox was a virulent disease,

particularly devastating on populations that had never

encountered it before and therefore had no immunity.

In 1862, it swept up the Northwest Coast

with Europeans chasing the gold rush.

The Haida bore the brunt and were very nearly extinguished altogether.

On the tip of the Haida Gwaii archipelago

is the island of Kunghit,

where the thriving village of Sgan Gwaii once stood.

So we're just coming into the village. It's incredibly remote.

It's right on the south of the peninsula of Gwaii Haanas.

Tucked away.

So this is where the village would have been, lined up round the cove.

Here, you can see one of the old long houses here.

Those were the big structures

which would've gone all the way down both sides.

And the door would have faced out to sea.

Sgan Gwaii was abandoned in the mid-1880s.

Captain Gold is a Haida chief,

who, over 40 years ago, was entrusted with safeguarding

the remains of this village as a living memorial.

My name is Captain Gold and my Haida name is...

Being Haida and being able

to honour the ancestors,

to me, that is the greatest story of it all.

Do we know what the people experienced then,

when smallpox arrived here in 1862?

It's like, say a family of 12,

almost overnight, there was only three left.

If you can picture that inside each house,

and there's, like, 22 homes here.

Overnight, almost 3/4 of the population,

80% of the population, would be gone.

Just overnight. Just like that.

So I imagine the sadness in this place here was pretty terrible.

And so this line here is all memorial poles representing

-chiefs, so high-ranking individuals.

-Burial poles.

-Burial poles.

That tall one there is a memorial, but all these others here,

they're all burials.

And do you think that what we're looking at today

is simply how the village was abandoned

-back in the 19th century?

-Yeah.

This whole place here is a living graveyard,

the way we look at it.

So we're allowing everything to go back with dignity.

All of these trees have re-grown since the smallpox epidemic and

it really gives the sense that the forest is reclaiming the village.

More than 80% of the entire Haida Nation was wiped out by

the 1862 smallpox outbreak.

If you imagine the population which must've been here then

in sort of the early 19th century and, you know,

the whole island must've been alive with villages and communities,

people moving through the sound,

and it would have been alive with people.

You look at this little stretch right here, there'd be 50,

30 canoes moving around, people gathering.

And there's a village over there. And a village here.

And just on the point over here, on that island.

The memory of the epidemic is still raw for Haida like Captain Gold.

He believes the disease was intentionally spread by Europeans.

He believes a British explorer called Francis Poole was paid

by the colonial government of Canada to take

a volunteer infected with smallpox around the Haida villages.

He got hired by the mining interest to come along,

in the Fort Victoria,

-and move along the coast to Chilcotin country...

-Yeah.

-with a volunteer and a doctor.

-Right.

And before they get to the Chilcotin area,

they inoculate the volunteer with smallpox and

he breathes on every person in the village.

And then he goes on to the next village.

If one person caught that smallpox in the village,

it takes a long time to spread,

but if they breathe on every person, overnight, everybody was gone.

That's interesting. So you feel that, you know,

he may have been intentionally doing it?

It's clear their intention

and with the approval of the governor of BC at the time.

Historians have debated the accuracy of the Poole story for decades.

But what is certain is that the colonial authorities did little

to prevent the spread of smallpox amongst the native population.

They expelled sufferers from European settlements,

knowing that they would return to their villages and infect others.

And it wasn't just the Haida who were hit by smallpox,

but all the tribes.

When the Europeans had arrived on the Northwest Coast in the 1770s,

the total native population ran into the hundreds of thousands.

Around 130 years later, after several disease epidemics,

the population dwindled to around 35,000,

a fraction of the original figure.

I think of the Black Death as being a terrible plague in Europe,

but in terms of numbers,

the smallpox epidemic here on the Northwest Coast

was even more deadly.

Families, villages, entire communities were wiped out.

And the viability of a culture that relied on those relationships

across the landscape was called into question.

The land itself, tribal territory for thousands of years,

was being annexed.

By the 1860s, Britain and the United States had divided up the

southern territories, creating British Columbia in Canada

and the territory that would become Washington State.

Further north, the collapse in the fur trade meant

Russian America was now seen by the Kremlin

as an unprofitable liability.

In 1867, the United States purchased Russia's American territories

and renamed them Alaska.

The price paid was 7.2 million.

No native communities were consulted and the lands they had settled

for more than 10,000 years were sold at less than two cents an acre.

The survivors of the epidemics became citizens of foreign

governments and faced a bleak new world.

But the threat of extinction and the unsettling changes to their

territory and their independence revitalised

a defining aspect of their culture.

After the 1862 smallpox epidemic,

there was a resurgence of European interest in Northwest Coast

art and objects, and this was a catalyst for sharing new materials

and the cross-fertilisation of new ideas.

Among the collection at the Museum of Anthropology

in Vancouver is evidence of how material culture thrived

despite the desperate circumstances.

Nika Collison is of the Haida Nation.

My name is...

I belong to the Ts'aahl clan of the Haida Nation.

My English name is Nika Collison.

So, do you see an explosion in material expression after the

sort of smallpox epidemics of the 19th century?

Sure, in a different form.

After contact, there was a plethora of iron, so to speak.

So much so that the European traders were dubbed

Yets-Haida, or iron men, right?

So that changed a lot of our art.

It enabled our art to become finer through the access to more

iron and iron tools that were actually adapted for Haida carving.

Then what happened is the epidemics hit.

As Europeans prospectors and settlers poured into what is

now Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle,

the surviving tribes found a new market for their crafts.

This new economy opened up,

and you will find pieces like this,

which are capturing

a much more European way of life.

This would be a Haida woman dressed in European clothing.

This figure is carved from black slate,

a form of the sedimentary rock argillite,

only found on Haida Gwaii.

Carvers used it for new imagery as well as traditional forms.

This is a depiction of a European ship,

and they've got the European men on it and a dog.

It is representing the cabin of the ship.

You can see some of the influence of different, you know,

European style of decoration.

This carving is a stylised representation of

a particular kind of vessel.

A paddle steamer.

These ships began running tourists up the newly colonised

Northwest Coast from the United States

in the late 19th century.

Their passengers saw indigenous artwork as exotic curios.

But continuing traditional techniques and designs

provided employment

and helps the Haida and others preserve skills and knowledge.

The art was a way to survive in a new world,

not only to carry our knowledge and culture forward, but

in a cash economy, it was embraced

by European people and by settlers.

It's also a miraculous example

of resilience and defiance and

the need to maintain identity and heritage.

So these works capture moments in time of great, you know,

extreme change in our society.

The explosion in material culture and artistic expression was

a reaction to population collapse and cultural suffering.

It was the way the peoples of the Northwest Coast could

maintain their culture in the face of adversity.

Northwest Coast art and material culture became

a rallying call for the survivors of the epidemics.

Their own values and identities could endure despite,

in one sense, having been reduced to trinkets for tourists.

But the colonial authorities were determined to westernise

their new subjects and they put an attack on culture at the

heart of their mission.

They generally saw Northwest Coast society as an

affront to European values, challenging their belief

systems and undermining their ability to colonise and control.

And so, it should be stamped out.

By the turn-of-the-century,

laws were passed allowing settlers

to easily claim lands along the coast.

So-called Indian agents were pointed to enforce colonial authority

on the communities.

Christian missionaries arrived en masse to discourage the pagan ways.

But perhaps the most insidious aspect of colonial policy was that

it targeted the custom that underpinned

the hierarchical structures of coastal society -

potlatches were banned in Canada and the United States.

The traditional ceremonies were deemed unlawful because they

promoted old traditions, wasted resources,

but really because they challenged local and federal law.

Potlatches continued in open defiance of the ban until 1921,

when after a ceremony in the homelands of the Kwakwaka'wakw,

the suppression reached a new level.

Objects of great cultural value were confiscated,

destroying a vital institution.

The effects are still being felt.

RHYTHMIC CHANTING

Today, a ceremony on Quadra Island is marking the return of two

house poles seized in the 1920s which the Museum of Canada

has loaned back to be exhibited in one of the cultural centres

that collects treasures confiscated during the potlatch ban.

It's a special day for the Kwakwaka'wakw.

There's a lot of people here despite the weather.

Thank you all for attending on such a miserable West Coast day.

HEAVY RAINFALL, APPLAUSE

Among the guests is Chief Bill Cranmer.

So, I'm here speaking on behalf of the U'mista Cultural Centre

in Alert Bay,

sister museum to the Nuyumbalees Cultural Centre.

It houses the treasures that were taken away from our people.

Bill's father, Dan Cranmer, was at the centre of

a key moment in the suppression of cultural traditions here.

Thank you, Bill.

In 1921, he held a large potlatch 100 miles northwest

on Cormorant Island.

It became a turning point in Northwest Coast history.

At the time of your father's potlatch in 1921,

he knew it was outlawed,

so what do you think was behind his thinking about having it?

Well, there was a purpose for his potlatch.

It was kind of like a divorce.

In our language, we say gwast.

That means you quit.

It is a quit potlatch, where he divorced his wife,

gave all the dowry back to the family,

and that was the reason for his potlatch.

Shortly after, the Indian agent and the police knew that there was

a potlatch that happened, but they didn't have any details.

There was an informant that spoke to the police and the Indian agent

naming those people that were at the potlatch and even went

as far as telling the police what they did at the potlatch,

whether they distributed gifts or took part in the dances,

and that's how they were able to charge people and arrest them.

26 people were sentenced to go to Oakalla prison farm in Vancouver.

And in order for more people not to be sent to prison, they

agreed to give up their masks and everything else to the Indian agent,

what we call the treasures which you see here.

Did your find out who the informant was?

Yep. Yep. One of our relatives.

THEY LAUGH

Sending people to prison for a potlatch was an unprecedented

escalation in colonial oppression.

Do you think they understood the impact that such a ban would have?

I think so. I think it was...

The purpose was to get rid of

our...our history,

get rid of our language.

And our first prime minister actually made a statement that,

you know, "You can teach these savages how to read and write,

"but they are still savages."

You know, that was the thinking of those days. And so, you know,

they outlawed the potlatch.

So it was a design to take away our history.

For me, it is quite a turning point because actually sending

people to prison, you know, is really, like, it's drawing a line

in the sand and saying, you know, "We are going to enforce this ban."

That's right.

At the time of the arrests,

the head of the Department of Indian Affairs

in Canada wrote...

The banning of potlatches and the confiscation of cultural

heirlooms was just one part of what a report

by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

likened to cultural genocide.

The most distressing aspect of this colonial programme were

residential schools.

These were mandatory boarding schools for native children

funded by the government and run by the churches.

They were an attempt to culturally reprogram

an entire generation, to make them learn English,

convert to Christianity and forget their traditional ways.

Taking children away from families rips the heart out of a

community, and it is a fast way to destroy a culture.

At residential schools, native languages and customs were

forbidden, enforced through corporal punishment.

Haida chief Jim Hart who talked me through the customs of the

potlatch earlier is recognised as a Master Carver.

His latest work offers a window into not only the impact of

residential schools but an understanding of how the

culture here has survived in spite of them.

His project is that most iconic of Northwest Coast carvings,

a totem pole.

-Hiya, Jim.

-Good morning.

-Wow. Quite the crew working out here.

Yeah, we've got a whole gang here.

-Good to see you. How are you doing?

-Yeah.

This work in progress draws upon Haida tradition to

confront the legacy of the residential schools.

So the story on here is to do with reconciliation.

Reconciliation is our old residential school system

that they imposed on our people across Canada.

A lot of abuse happened at these schools.

In fact, they just uncovered some documentation recently about

how they used to starve the kids on purpose.

They were just torture chambers, these schools.

So that's what this pole is about.

Entire communities of children were forced into the residential system.

Conditions were terrible. Disease, rife.

Mortality reached nearly 50% at some schools.

Many children suffered sexual abuse.

And so in terms of the pole then, there is a top -

-that's the top - and then there is a bottom.

-Yep.

How does the story, how does the narrative unfold on the pole?

So there's the bottom design, which is a bear mother and their cubs.

And then we've got the residential school plumped on us,

you know, poom.

And this whole other system of taking kids away from those

families, they're all struggling with that.

And then above that, I'm going to have the kids and that in there,

and they're all going to be dressed up.

So it's about our family unit getting back together.

We're figuring it all out now, we're analysing the whole darn show.

And then above that, we're going to have the boats, like a canoe and

a rowboat, representing us working together and going forward.

We all have to figure this out and move forward,

and that's what this is all about.

The residential schools, potlatch ban and other colonial policies

saw Northwest culture driven underground in the 1930s and '40s.

But the indefatigable nature of the people and culture here

ensured this didn't last.

The suppression of an indigenous culture by those seeking

political, economic and cultural control is nothing new.

But I think the story here on the Northwest Coast is.

Here, resilience is a state of mind passed down through the

generations over thousands of years, and no law can stop that.

Resilience isn't just about surviving.

It's about adapting to change and transforming when

circumstances demand it.

That's what the peoples of the Northwest Coast managed to do to

ensure European contact didn't mean annihilation.

Decolonisation in the 1950s saw a resurgence in coastal culture.

The potlatch ban was overturned.

The influence of the civil rights movement in the US during

the 1960s began to resonate.

And native artists and carvers such as Bill Reid gained world renown.

Communities came together to sue for their rights to territories

and resources.

And in 1998, the Canadian government made

a formal declaration of regret for past treatment

of the indigenous population.

When any population is put under pressure and their way

of life is under threat, it forces them to distil the essence of

their identity as individuals, of their values as a society.

The peoples of the Northwest Coast know their identity and they

have the strongest of values.

And it's these values that have allowed them to thrive

in these beautiful territories for thousands of years.

People have been here for more than 10,000 years.

It's the sustainable, respectful relationships that really are

the strength of who we are.

You look at our history for the past 200, 300 years,

the change that's taken from there to here.

You think of smallpox and watching nine-tenths of your family

die in front of you and then you're not allowed to be who you are.

It's a miraculous example of resilience and defiance and

the need to maintain identity.

I see our future is hanging on to the old, and in that way too,

keeping that alive.

And really, we're getting stronger as a people all the time.

Do we think that we will survive for another 10,000 years? Of course.