Even After All That We Survived

As our guests, it is important that you know the realities of colonization and the history of genocide and forced assimilation that occurred here and throughout Canada. Anyone you speak with on Haida Gwaii could be directly impacted by these historical traumas, and we ask that you be sensitive to these matters when listening and learning. The following timeline speaks of a very dark period, and it’s necessary in order to learn the true history of Canada.

Fur Trade

As Europeans began to explore, more trade relationships formed. Focus was gradually taken away from harvest cycles and trade relationships with the other coastal nations. Because of the fur trade, our kuu sea otters left Haida waters, and only recently they have started to return, though not in their original numbers. b.

Disease and Decimation

Before disease broke out on Haida Gwaii, we had hundreds of clans and villages populating the Islands in the tens of thousands. Several diseases, such as smallpox and measles, began to impact Haida numbers in the early 1800s. A wave of smallpox in 1862 decimated our people to near extinction taking over 95% of our population. Our oral records of the intentional introduction of smallpox have been reaffirmed in Tom Swankey’s recent publications, including work that has been vetted by the Haida Nation. Through evidence found in captains' logs and journals of government officials such as Francis Poole and James Douglas, this disease outbreak has been confirmed as an act of biological warfare.

Indian Act

The Indian Act was created in 1876, approximately ten years after smallpox was introduced. This Act segregated our people (and all other Indigenous peoples within so-called Canada) onto what were called “reserves,” which still exist today. The reserves on Haida Gwaii were placed on top of the existing villages of HlGaagilda Skidegate and Gaw Tlagée Old Massett. Amendments to the Act, including the Potlatch Ban, the Residential School System, and the Sixties Scoop continued to force assimilation by outlawing cultural practices and taking children away from their homelands and families. Because a Residential School was not built on Haida Gwaii, our children were taken as far as Vancouver Island and Alberta, some of whom never returned home.