Part 3: Monday at the Museum

There are moments in time when your mind is filled with such a sudden torrent of thoughts and emotions that it seems there can’t be words enough to express the magnificence of the experience. Later, in moments of quietude, when you reflect on these momentous occasions, you’re shocked to find the words have swept themselves away. You’re left with clear images, strong impressions, and little ability to articulate them and share them.

Today, I’m sorry to say, was one of those days. Rarely can I recall being so moved. Rarely can I recall such pride swimming in my veins and such total joy and wonder swelling up in me. I wish I could show it to you. I wish I could remember everything that was said in the exact words that were used, the same idiosyncratic language, the precise inflection and the correct posture and the way the light came in through the bare windows to illuminate people’s faces. I wish you could have been there.

This morning, we all woke up to the constant hum of New York City. We gathered ourselves up, and we gathered together. Mid-morning, we all walked through the unassuming doors of the Museum, and met each other beneath one of the fiercest and most beautiful emblems of Heiltsuk strength: the mammoth canoe suspended from the ceiling at the doors to the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians.

You can learn about the history of the canoe elsewhere; it is well-known, well-documented, and expressed elsewhere much better than I can express it here. At the same time, until you’re standing underneath it, looking up its sides and down its length and realize you’re holding your breath in sheer awe of it, no article or book or website will ever tell you what’s it’s like to hold it in your sight.

The canoe would be an extraordinary artifact in any culture, to my mind, but what makes it truly astonishing to me is its story. Everything has a story. The canoe has stories ingrained in its wood and tucked into its cracks; it has stories we’ll never know or dream. But it also has stories we know very well.

Carved by Captain Carpenter in Heiltsuk territory, it traveled north to our Haida brothers to begin the second part of its existence, and began yet a third when it was acquired by the Museum and made a long, slow, winding journey from the wild Pacific coast of its home to the spacious, looming halls of the famous New York institution.

Now, when I close my eyes and conjure up images of it dangling impossibly still above me, I can make myself believe it’s beginning a fourth phase of its existence. It’s inspiring a new generation of young Heiltsuk leaders. It’s tipping quietly, imperceptibly, and pouring its silent stories over the gunwale; it’s parceling out some of its incredible spirit for us to carry home to our people. It’s teaching us, wordlessly, to lean our hip against the solid wood and dig our paddles deep in the water. It’s teaching us to pull in unison.

Our first stop within the Museum was a meeting with Eleanor, the wonderful woman who did so much extraordinary work to bring us all to New York – and to bring us in the right way, with the physical and spiritual space to interact with our Heiltsuk pieces with both intimacy and authority. We thank Eleanor for her incredible generosity and hard work, and uplift her for all she’s done for us.

We couldn’t contain our energy very long, and fortunately, we were not made to wait. We were ushered to Anthropology to meet Laila, yet another wonderful (and patient) woman (who remained unsurprised through all our outbursts of emotion and song and holding the masks up to our faces to breathe in the impossibly still-sharp scent of cedar). Already, laid out on a long table that soaked up the natural light swimming through the windows, tray after tray teeming with cedar rings and small carvings waited patiently for us to hold them in our hands.

I will tell you some of the things we saw. We saw a model canoe, with fish hooks, paddles and sails. We saw a set of 70 wooden game sticks, and I’m bringing back photographs of each of the 70 unique designs painted on those sticks. The sticks came with an incredible leather pouch that fastened with a carved whale the length of my palm and outstretched fingers. I hope I can replicate that carving. We saw four old paddles, two of them blackened with handles made smooth and shiny by the palms of our ancestors, pulling in their canoes. Two were painted with beautiful designs, heavy with a green even richer and brighter than the newest shoot in a spring thicket.

We saw paraphernalia from different summer dances, elaborate spoons carved from mountain goat horn, and cedar dance regalia: bracelets, anklets, and a breathtaking neckring laden with carefully-carved wooden skulls, and links of wood carved to represent vertebrae. Peering close and lifting the edges with utmost care, you could see through the thinning cedar the strips of old canvas and Hudson’s Bay blankets that formed the firm base of the ring. Caught in the ribboned strips of immaculately-pounded and perfectly softened cedar, some traces of old eagle down still remained – caught in a dyed-cedar web.

We saw tray after tray of whistles and horns, and when Ian picked them up and fitted different pieces together, even the Museum staff were occasionally astonished by the mysteries that can be revealed, decades and centuries later, by someone with intimate and natural knowledge. Who knows when those whistles were blown last. Their haunting sound still chills me. It might be the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard: even buried deep in the heart of the Museum I felt, when I closed my eyes, like my feet were sunk in a heavy bed of sphagnum – like huge cedars were looming at my sides, and that wild, supernatural call was coming from a thicket nearby. Like the forest was dense but the noise was sharp. Like I should run, knowing the creatures whose coming the whistles signified, but I was rooted like a cedar tree - waiting for the inaudible approach of the supernatural.

All of this, incredibly, was a prelude. One of the fantastically gracious things our colleagues at the Museum provided to us was a private room in which to view the collection of Heiltsuk masks that currently reside at the institution. In this room, we had (and have) a deep freedom. Laila, our patient and enriching guide through the labyrinth of Anthropology, showed us to the intimate, well-lit space in which we were to introduce ourselves to the faces – human and supernatural – carved by our ancestors.

I won’t belabour you with a description of how we all wandered, nervous, into the room. How we held ourselves back when all we wanted to do was run. How we pulled on our gloves and reached out tenderly when all we wanted was to pick those masks up, clutch them to our breast, bury our faces in them to gaze through the eyes of our ancestors, turn them to face us, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, to look our ancestors lovingly in the eyes. Okay, maybe I just went ahead and belaboured you with a description anyway. If you’d been there, you’d spend the rest of your life trying to find or invent a vocabulary and a language to express to complex emotions in that room at that moment. Unutterable joy. A reflexive hesitation. An inexplicable, improbable symmetry between our faces (full of wonder and fear and loss and beauty and the pure happiness of reunion), and the faces of the masks (still, natural, supernatural, till-then unseen but totally familiar). It’s not a symmetry that you could draw. It’s a symmetry of spirit.

Those of you who have attended potlatches will remember the vivid red paint on the cheeks of the dancers. That paint tells a story. It’s a powerful mark. When I wash it off after the ceremony ends, I can still feel that mark burning on my cheeks. Sometimes, when I’m miles from home and anything that’s familiar to me, a moment of mental or spiritual reunion with my traditional upbringing will make my cheekbones burn anew. When you embrace someone with paint on their cheeks, especially when they’re sweating after a dance, it will often rub off on your skin, on your clothing. If you’re a dancer and you don a mask, sometimes the mark from your face will be mirrored inside the unfinished, unpainted cedar of the mask when you remove the rigging and take the mask away.

We held those old masks in our hands. We examined every inch of them lovingly, tenderly, in total awe. We took in every detail of every design. Then we turned them over.

The red stain of a dancer’s face paint is still visible inside those masks.

These pieces are not lifeless artifacts. These pieces have been brought to life in a potlatch. They know the scent of woodsmoke in a bighouse. They’ve seen great feasts, great celebrations, and great mourning. They’ve heard the beat of a deerskin drum or a heavy log. They’ve heard the sound of a rattle. They’ve been addressed in our language before. They’ve seen it all.

They’ve slept for a long time. We woke them up. They remember us now. And something of that long, collective history of our people has been reawakened in us as well. It is reawakening in you.

We introduced ourselves, greeted the masks like long-lost family. Then the boys stood in a line against the row of masks, rapped their knuckles on the table, and they sang. There was grief and celebration. There was loss and renewal. There was the moving reminder of an unfading strength that’s passed through the webs of our family trees and the generations of our people. The power in the room was palpable. The masks remained still, patient. But the spirits were dancing with us.

I can’t express to you what it felt like to be in that small room at that moment. We all fit in comfortably, but once the boys started to sing, you could feel the physical crush of our ancestors crowding around us. You could hear voices that weren’t just our six boys. You could hear feat hitting the floor to the beat, the low sound of rattle that wasn’t there. You could feel the little breath of wind that hits you when someone whirls by.

Today was just the beginning. Tomorrow we’ll be back, and we’ll sing to them again. We’ll sing to them every time we walk through that door, and when we’re home, we’ll keep singing to them across all this distance. To wake those spirits was a great honour. But today, we sang new life into our own selves as well.

People have been asking me hard questions about repatriation. These are not questions that Qqs, as an organization, can answer. It is a long argument with strong points on both sides, with the knowledge that nothing can truly undo the actions of the past. But one thing is clear to me today. These pieces have been held safe here for a very long time. The people at this Museum have great respect for the life our pieces hold within them. We didn’t come here to take the pieces away – we came here to build a relationship – between us and this institution- between us, and these pieces that have been lost to us for so long. We’re not bringing the masks and whistles and ancient cedar rings back with us. But we’re bringing back something far more important than any physical object.

The story and the life those pieces represent has lit a fire in our hearts. We’ll carry it carefully back home. We’ll burn a fire in the singers’ house, in the Koeye bighouse, on the beach, in front of our homes. We’ll watch that fire flare up skyward until it’s so hot and bright we almost want to turn away. And we’ll know that the whole community will have its warmth and light. It’s a fire that will never burn out. It’s been burning, somewhere, since time before memory – since the world was created – since our first mother came into this world. It’s been burning, quietly, in the drawers and cabinets of the Museum. It’s ready to blaze.

We’re bringing back everything these pieces represent. We’re bringing it home. We’re bringing it home to you.

More, soon. In the sweep of emotion that’s carried us through this day, the love and support we’ve felt from all of you has been phenomenal. It’s carried us, too. Thank you for witnessing what we are doing. Thank you for supporting us. Thank you for reading this today, and please – journey with us til we circle back home.