The Haida Life: Learning from Alaska's Native People

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Outside Traveler 2004

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Family Vacations
The Haida Life (cont)

We went for a hike on a logging road, and, rounding a corner, we came upon a black bear, stone still, 50 yards away. The bear's eyes locked with mine. "Allie," I said, "sing the ‘Happy Birthday' song." We both did, with gusto, until the bear scampered away, back into the woods.

We met another nine-year-old, Anthony Edenshaw, and he sang a Haida spirit song for us—shirtless, in orange gym shorts—as he pounded a deerhide drum. Then he looked over at Allie, askance, and asked, "Why do you have polka dots all over your face?"

"I have freckles," Allie said, "because my ancestors were from Ireland."

She and Anthony played together happily for two hours after that, gathering shells on the beach, and then I took her to visit a shed where Claude Morrison's 23-year-old grandson, T. J. Young, was busy carving a 15-foot totem pole. The black painted fin of a humpback whale shimmered above a still-pungent pile of cedar shavings. Allie rubbed her hands over the wood, and then she began clacking two rocks together. "I'm trying," she explained, "to sharpen this rock, so I can use it to carve."

She got her chance, sort of, the next day, when along with our fishing guides, Tony and Terry, we crossed the island to Alaska's other Haida town, Kasaan, population 50, for the annual Prince of Wales culture camp. The two-day camp is jointly hosted by the island's native villages and is designed to teach native crafts to Indians and visitors. We arrived to find about 70 local kids, a stack of roughly hewn mini canoe paddles, and a carving class just starting up. Allie got a bit snitty when the teacher didn't let her loose with a Buck knife ("I've carved pumpkins before, Dad!"), but then she sanded her paddle with rapt devotion. She brought the cedar to a velvety sheen and then magic-markered it with a bold black- and-red design of an eagle. "I'm proud of my paddle," she told me.

All around her there were kids drawing and kids beading ravens and eagles onto squares of felt. Even I joined a class, in cedar-basket making. The teacher—Tony's mother, Chris Tolson—was a hard driver. "Everybody needs to finish their basket today," she declaimed through a rolled-up newspaper. "I said today." I finished, and I felt pretty buoyant.

When I saw Tony a few hours later in Kasaan's longhouse, he and Terry were singing raven and eagle songs. "You guys," Tony said between songs to the campers, "have taken your skills to another level, and you've helped to recapture the culture we're trying to save. That's why we do things like this: so that our kids can come together and continue their culture." He began pounding his drum and then his father danced, on a bad ankle. Terry spread his arms wide, emulating an eagle, and he crouched low and ranged about, mostly on his heels, pounding the floor as his arms whirled. Earlier, in the cafeteria of the Kasaan community center, he'd been almost despairing, asking me, "Why did the state of Alaska send me away to one of their boarding schools when I was 13? Why was I torn away from my village, my culture?" But now, as he swept past us, he seemed transfixed, squinting and grimacing as he gave himself to the dance.

Do such moments register on kids, I've always wondered, or do they just fly over their heads? If you take your six-month-old into the woods in a backpack, will her infant brain record the smell of the leaves? Did Allie get that this was more than a dance?

The answer is, of course, oblique. On the way home, savoring the airline peanuts, Allie told me, "My favorite part was when we were out on that fishing boat, and helping that guy take the shells off the shrimp. I liked how he was singing and how the sun was setting and how we had all those fish on the boat and we knew we were going back to the harbor. It was so peaceful."

I think she got it.

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