Kwakiutl protest outside the BC Legislature, Victoria, 12 February 2007. Photo: Ingmar Lee

www.firstnations.eu | Forestry | Kwakiutl Protest

Kwakiutl protest, 12 February 2007, Victoria, BC.
Photo: Ingmar Lee

The Kwakiutl (pronounced Kwa-gyu-thl) people demonstrated at the BC Legislature on 12 February 2007 to protest the government's secretive and illegal land deal with the logging company Western Forest Products. The Kwakiutl accuse the government of breaching their 1851 Douglas Treaty. Signed when Vancouver Island was a British colony under Queen Victoria, the treaty protects the collective Aboriginal Title and Rights of the Kwakiutl First Nation.

Elder Basil Ambers, Kwakiutl protest, Victoria, 2007.
Photo: William Edwards

Although unwell, Elder Basil Ambers (left) took part in the protest as spokesperson for the Kwakiutl. On 5 February 2007 the Kwakiutl sent a letter to the government, condemning its approval of the Western Forest Products land transfer: "We will do whatever is necessary to have our rights recognized by your government and by any industry that is given the authority and approval to do whatever is necessary to forward their agenda. Our first action is to legally and effectively hold your approval in abeyance. We will seek an injunction to have your government and Western Forest Products obey the protocol that is in place for meaningful consultation and accommodation" Letter to BC Minister of Forests.

During the 1990s, forest land in Kwakiutl Territory was under a logging moratorium imposed by the Kwakiutl First Nation which no company dared to challenge. Recently, however, the BC Forest Act was amended to give the forest industry a new and insidious way of gaining control over contested First Nations land. Under the false guise of consultation and accomodation, Western Forest Products has advanced its own self - serving agenda, culminating in the surprise announcement 31 January 2007 regarding 28,283 hectares on northern Vancouver Island and including some 14,000 hectares of Kwakiutl Territory. Self incriminating evidence is the government's own press release: Private Land Removed.

Kwakiutl rally, Thunderbird Park, Victoria.
Photo: William Edwards

Logging companies on the Northwest Coast of BC pay lucrative bribes to First Nations community members to become so called "co ordinators." In an underhanded maneuver, these individuals are appointed as negotiators to collaborate with the forest industry and government in side deals even though they do not speak for the community.

The Kwakiutl protest sign says: "Government ignored consultation & accomodation process" (right). The Kwakiutl lands and waters subject to Aboriginal Title under their Douglas Treaty were strengthened by the Supreme Court of Canada Delgamuukw ruling in 1997: "Delgamuukw paves the way for First Nations to have their title finally legitimized under the Canadian Constitution" Delgamuukw Decision.

On 12 February 2007 Elder Basil Ambers led the Kwakiutl procession to the BC Legislature (left). The people assembled at Wawaditla, the Kwakiutl bighouse that forms the nucleous of Victoria's much celebrated Thunderbird Park. Wawaditla, like the neighbouring BC Legislature, is built on the traditional territory of Songhees First Nation.

Kwakiutl drummer, 12 February 2007.
Photo: Don Knight

Kwakiutl protest, Victoria, 12 February 2007.
Photo: William Edwards

Albert Robinson, senior administrator of the Kwakiutl Band Council, addressed the protesters assembled in front of the BC Legislature about the failure of the government to deal respectfully with the Kwakiutl (right). "The refusal of your ministry and Western Forest Products to openly discuss the application throughout its process has left the Kwakiutl First Nation no time to act upon the implications of this approval" 5 February 2007: Letter to BC Minister of Forests.

Kwakwaka'wakw Kwakiutl is the anglicized word used to refer collectively to the four bands at Tsaxis (Fort Rupert) on northeastern Vancouver Island: Kwakiutl, Komkiutis, Kweeha and Walas Kwakiutl. The Kwakiutl belong to about 30 groups speaking Kwakwala and comprising the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation. Used historically, the name Kwakiutl often refers to the whole nation and has a larger geographical range.

Albert Robinson of the Kwakiutl Band Council.
Photo: Don Knight

Kwakiutl carvings. Fig. 2 (right) and Fig. 3 (left).
A. Bastian, "Amerika's Northwest Kueste," 1883

Modern western scholarship, especially ethnology, has for more than a century recognized, admired and displayed in European capitals the rich and intricate culture of the Kwakiutl. Now the very basis of that culture is being destroyed by the ever increasing greed of the forest, fishing and mining industries. This crushing of culture is perpetrated by the transnational companies that run these enterprises. It is unacceptable that the global wood products industry profits from the dispossession of the indigenous population with Canadian government complicity. The current case of Western Forest Products infringing on the Aboriginal Title and Rights of the Kwakiutl people is an instance of such "legalized" criminality.

During a collecting trip to the US in 1880, the German director of the Ethnology Museum in Berlin noted that the Indians along the Columbia River had all but vanished. He knew that some northern tribes had not been annihilated but that the "civilizing" process would soon result in the loss of their material culture, so he sent off a Norwegian collector to salvage what he could from his base at Tsaxis (Fort Rupert). Large quantities of artifacts were shipped back to Berlin including two Kwakiutl figures carved in cedar; a rival chief and a chief selling a copper. Both were reproduced in a folio publication by the Berlin museum (left). Read the original descriptions of these striking figures: Amerika's Northwest-Kueste (1883).

When the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin opened the doors of its new building in 1886, it was the world's most spectacular institution of its kind. The Kwakiutl objects were among its most prized and set off an international scramble for artifacts from the Northwest Coast by museum collectors.

The Northwest Coast collection in Berlin inspired the German anthropologist Franz Boas to embark on his life long passion for the Kwakwala language and cultures. Indeed in 1930, at the end of his life, Boas returned to Tsaxis to check and revise his earlier work - a magnum opus that forms the foundation of the modern scientific study of ethnology.

Hundreds of the Kwakiutl objects in Berlin were the subject of exquisite wood engravings such as a double potlatch mask that is opened and closed by strings. The closed mask represents an ancestor in an angry state of mind, vanquishing his rivals. The mask when opened represents the ancestor "in a pleasant state of mind, distributing property" (right). From Franz Boas, "Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians" (1897). Boas repeatedly used these engravings in his publications, along with specially commissioned photos and paintings. One of the most prominent German artists of his day, Wilhelm Kuhnert, was commissioned to provide four paintings of the Kwakiutl at Tsaxis, although he had never even been to Canada.

Engraving of a potlatch mask.
F. Boas, "The Kwakiutl Indians," 1897

"Chief Delivering Speech at Festival." Painting of a potlatch at Tsaxis by Wilhelm Kuhnert.
Franz Boas, "The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians," 1897

"Kwakiutl Chief Harry Mountain's Bighouse," c. 1920.
Painting: Joanna S. Wilson (Archives Canada)

Kuhnert represented the Kwakiutl taking part in a potlatch (above), described as a "festival" to circumvent the punitive anti-potlatch law (in effect from 1884 to 1951). For visual references, Kuhnert used photos taken to document a feast held by Boas at Tsaxis 28 November 1894 as part of the Winter Ceremonials. Kuhnert's painting is a composite of several photos and shows the multi family bighouses made of huge cedar planks and towering figures carved from gigantic cedar trees.

A painting depicts the interior of a Kwakiutl bighouse c. 1920 (left). Its grand scale can be seen in relation to the tiny figures: enormous cedar trees form the interior beams. The Kwakiutl used cedar trees for canoes, baskets, ceremonial objects, clothing, boxes, mats, fishing lines, weirs and so on. These traditional objects are proof of sustainable forest management long before Europeans arrived with their sawmills.

The Kwakiutl people are among the most widely known representatives of Northwest Coast culture. Prestigious international institutions in Berlin, Vienna, London, New York and Washington all have Kwakiutl objects on display. The astonishing richness of this exceptional culture has provided the discipline of ethnology with much of its material.

The raven mask and dress collected by Boas was made of red and yellow cedar (right). Such Kwakwaka'wakw masks forced ethnologists to change the western mentality of what constituted "primitive" art. Today Northwest Coast carving has become one of the most vital forms of contemporary art, with an international market that will disappear if present clearcut logging practices continue. Old growth yellow cedar, for example, has been virtually exterminated.

Kwakiutl raven mask.
F. Boas, The Kwakiutl Indians, 1897

Dave Jacobson working on a raven mask, 2005.
Photo: John Morris

Totem poles are one of the most ancient and monumental forms of world art. The revival of this indigenous and environmental artform began with Mungo Martin, a Kwakiutl carver and chief from Tsaxis who recreated his ancestral bighouse Wawaditla in Victoria in 1953. It would be difficult today to locate the huge cedar trees needed for such a building. Old growth cedars are vanishing due to their unrelenting commercial exploitation for pulp, lumber and other such wood products. Kwakiutl forest management would ensure that ancient cedars remain protected as aboriginal heritage trees, harvested only for traditional uses. Left: Kwakiutl artist Dave Jacobson is seen working on a large raven mask carved from red cedar. He is related to the Martin family of Tsaxis through his grandmother Lucy Martin Nelson.

Chief Rupert Wilson, Wawaditla, 12 February 2007.
Photo: William Edwards

Chief Wilson comes from a large and distinquished family in Tsaxis. He is married to Hazel (nee Wathams) whose mother belonged to the prominent Ed Whonnock family, also of Tsaxis. They have been married for 41 years and have five grown children and many grandchildren. Both are fluent Kwakwala speakers but because their mothers were Christian, they did not learn traditional cultural practices. Chief Wilson's grandfather's brother was the highly regarded "Ten Times Over" Chief Spruce Martin, elder brother to Mungo Martin. For countless generations the Wilson family has fished for a living and Chief Wilson has inherited a valuable traditional knowledge of Kwakiutl fisheries. Chief Wilson has seen how his people have been excluded from one industry after another in a series of measures that began with the repressive Fisheries Act of 1878 and continuing today with the fish farm industry which is degrading Kwakwaka'wakw waters and wrecking the wild salmon market. The Kwakiutl Band Council is suing the transnational company Pan Fish for breaching its contract and for failing to clean up its pollution of Hardy Bay.

Kwakiutl Band Councillor and Chief Rupert Wilson spoke to the Kwakiutl people gathered in their traditional bighouse, many of them children (left). Since 1850 the Kwakiutl have witnessed how the Douglas Treaties fail to protect their forests from being converted into industrial "Tree Farm Licences" and clearcut logged. Now is the time, says Chief Wilson, to resolve the legal issue of Aboriginal Title — before any new resource deals are made — in areas where First Nations territories are overlapping and in dispute.

Kwakiutl protest gathering, Wawaditla.
Photo: William Edwards

The dismal failure of the governments of Canada and BC to protect the aquatic resources of First Nations coastal communities is clear to Chief Wilson who travelled to Nanaimo in January 2007 to tell fisheries officials at a meeting of the Pacific Scientific Advice Review Committee: "you have it all wrong." The fishery industry, like forestry, gives only "window dressing" overtures to First Nations. A blatant example is the 2007 International Fisheries Observer Conference in Victoria which has no First Nations person on its program yet ends with a social event in Wawaditla.

Many of the Kwakiutl who gathered in Wawaditla to protest in 2007 had travelled seven hours from Tsaxis. The situation is urgent: "Once the land is private, this part of our traditional territory is no longer within Treaty consideration - as private land it is not on the table. We lose this part of our traditional territory forever" Kwakiutl Band Council, 5 Februrary 2007: Letter to BC Minister of Forests.

Kwakiutl protest gathering, Wawaditla.
Photo: Ingmar Lee

Kwakiutl children around a traditional fire, Wawaditla.
Photo: William Edwards

Attending the Kwakiutl protest gathering in Wawaditla was Rose Henry, a member of Snuneymuxw First Nation (right). Like the Kwakiutl, the Snuneymuxw have a never honoured Douglas Treaty. Rose Henry is a social activist on the behalf of aboriginal women. The poverty of First Nations peoples results in part from their not being able to profit from the resources in their territories. In the case of the Kwakiutl, contested indigenous forest land is being "stripped and flipped" as unethical corporations sell it off for real estate.

According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the BC government should split forest revenues with First Nations equally. Read Ben Parfitt on charting a new deal for BC, First Nations, and the forests they share: True Partners.

"You must notify the Kwakiutl First Nation and discuss openly — details that should have taken place prior to the recommendation stage on how this approval will affect our Treaties and our Aboriginal Rights and Title. We can only surmise that the Kwakiutl First Nation's Rights and Title have effectively been removed from the tracts of land that are now Western Forest Products' private lands" Kwakiutl Band Council, 5 Februrary 2007: Letter to BC Minister of Forests.

Rose Henry, Wawaditla
Photo: Ingmar Lee

Kwakiutl protest signs, Wawaditla.
Photo: William Edwards

Kwakiutl protest, Victoria, 12 February 2007.
Photo: William Edwards

The Kwakiutl procession passing the domineering statue of Queen Victoria is a powerful reminder of how Canada's aboriginal peoples continue to be treated (left). The Kwakiutl have two treaties signed 8 February 1851 by the Queen's representative at Fort Rupert. Both treaties have been continually breached by Canada and BC. The giveaway of large sections of treaty land has enriched resource industries and left the Kwakiutl with no economic means to sustain themselves.

In an age of climate change, when the failures of western civilization have become terrifyingly clear, the Kwakiutl provide us with an inspiring model of a people who lived in harmony with nature, unlike settler society with its polluting industries and habitat wrecking self destruction. It is time to do justice to the Kwakiutl and return their forests and fisheries and acknowledge their land title.

Kwakiutl Band Councillor and Chief Rupert Wilson filmed the Kwakiutl protest on 12 February 2007 in Victoria (right). He states precisely and unequivocally what his people want for their lands and waters: "self government and exclusive rights." The Kwakiutl have a history of resistance beginning in 1836 when they forced the Hudson's Bay Company to accept their trading terms. After Fort Rupert was founded in 1849, they forced the Scottish coal miners to leave. When the Royal Navy destroyed Tsaxis in 1865, the Kwakiutl rebounded and rebuilt their village. They ousted the Catholic mission in 1868, followed by the Anglican mission in 1878.

Kwakiutl More recently, when a sub contractor of Macmillan Bloedel tried to log Wazilus (Deer Island) in 1987, the Kwakiutl stopped them, reclaimed the island and forced a logging moratorium. Chief Rupert Wilson vows to stop the current government condoned attack on Kwakiutl Territory either by the court or by direct action.

Chief Rupert Wilson, 12 February 2007.
Photo: William Edwards