archaeology

UNESCO World Heritage Site: British Columbia
Anthony Island (SGang Gwaay)
Part of British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands offers a glimpse into the region’s indigenous past—and a window into its cultural resurgence.

By Andrea Sachs

Anthony Island (SGang Gwaay) at a Glance
Location: British Columbia
Date of Inscription: 1981
Why Go: The island is home to the world’s only ruins of a traditional Northwest Coast Indian village.

Before billboards, flags, and message-bearing T-shirts, the Haida figured out how to make a grand statement—with sky-high totem poles. Today, the carved columns are like giant arrows directing attention to the West Coast aboriginals’ life of yesteryear on Anthony Island, some 60 miles off the British Columbia coast. To be sure, these are not simply relics of the past. The totems are also a visual key to the tribe’s oral traditions, originating from the Haida language that only some 50 elders still speak. But audio recordings of these elders have recently been produced as a crucial piece of what many are calling a Haida cultural renaissance.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the indigenous Northwest people inhabited the remote Anthony Island as well as other spits of land that make up the Queen Charlotte Islands, sandwiched between the Hecate Strait and the Pacific. (In the Haida tongue, Anthony Island is known as SGang Gwaay and Queen Charlotte is Haida Gwaii.) The tribes’ people, whose population likely peaked at more than 7,000 archipelago-wide, were Neptunes of the sea. They existed on the salmon, halibut, and other marine life caught from their canoes, which were constructed out of the trunk of a single red cedar. These marvelous crafts could sleep 12 people and accommodate up to 60 paddlers. The Haida’s woodworking skills also extended to onshore structures, including cedar plank and long houses, and the iconic mortuary and memorial poles on par with Easter Island’s statues—minus the mystery.

For hundreds of years, a contingent of Haida lived simply and industriously on Anthony Island, until the Europeans dropped by. During the late 1700s, explorers from afar, such as James Cook and George Dixon, visited the islands. And though they did not stay long, they left behind a devastating parting gift. By the late 1800s, European-borne diseases such as small pox had decimated the Haida population to triple figures. In the Ninstints village on Anthony Island alone, their numbers dwindled from 300 to less than 30 before the village was abandoned around 1884.

Though the contagion forced the Haida off Anthony Island, it did not erase their intricate works of art and architecture. On the southern tip of the island, the protected Ninstints village has been transformed into an open-air museum of sorts, with ten cedar dwellings offering the last links to a former world. Of course, no Haida homestead is complete without totems, and 32 of the masterfully carved poles stand in defiance of the destructive forces of man and nature.

Over the years, a number of the totem poles have been removed and relocated to museums around the world (as well as transferred to Art History 101 slides). But the Ninstints examples that still stand in their original environment powerfully demonstrate their importance in Haida life. The totems had multiple usages and meanings: to honor the dead (human bones were often encased in the wood); to represent clans (eagles vs. ravens); and to show off might, status, or wealth (an early version of the Sports Car Ego-Challenge). With a cheat sheet, you could "read" the totems as easily as a kindergartener’s picture book (Look a bird! Ooh, a killer whale!), but also gain a solid understanding of their broader cultural significance and symbolism.

Even easier, you could ask the Haida Watchmen who oversee the site and shepherd visitors around. Visitation rights are as tight as a White House tour; only 12 people are allowed in-village at once (on average, 1,610 people view Ninstints annually), and boaters are banned from mooring in the island’s bay. To further reduce impact, tourists are restricted to a boardwalk and marked walking path that loops through the attraction. Solar composting toilets have replaced pit loos, invasive plants are regularly weeded, and Sitka black-tailed deer are deported. Also, six poles were straightened and fortified to lengthen their shelf life.

However, the TLC can help only so much. Haida believe that the totem poles, no matter how beautiful or sacred, should return to the earth organically. The decaying and eventual disappearance of the totems might seem tragic to preservationists, but for the Haida, it’s part of the natural cycle of life—a lesson you don’t need a totem pole to explain.

A globetrotter and travel writer, Andrea Sachs contributes frequently to the Washington Post.