On August 26, an historic, unprecedented Sała (mourning ceremony) was held in Kwagu’ł territory, on north Vancouver Island. This is the first time, ever, that a Sała has been held to mourn non-human kin – our forest and all the life that depends on it.
Normally held at the beginning of potlatch days, the ceremony serves to lift grief and remove negativity, in order to do community work in a good way.
Carefully considered and planned by a group of young Kwakwaka’wakw hereditary chiefs, this Sała was open to all peoples, including non-Indigenous.
Hereditary Chief Maswayalidzi David Mungo Knox (Kwagu’ł) hosted the gathering in a huge clearcut near his community, T’sakis (Fort Rupert).
His voice rings out across “the ugliness that the Ministry allows industry to do,” describes Knox. “It’s another cultural genocide – without our Cedar trees, we can’t be us.”
The Kwagu’ł ancestral lands are “being completely cleared, faster than anything else globally,” said Hereditary Chief Makwala, Rande Cook (Ma’amtagila). Only 19-20% of the original old-growth forest remains on Vancouver Island (including parks), according to data from Sierra Club BC.
“Every tree had a use, every tree had a spirit – that’s all gone now,” said Matt Ambers, designated chiefs’ speaker at the ceremony. “Every thing that we did came from the forest. Everything that we built, all our regalia, all of our ceremonial items came from the forest. It’s a really scary time.”
The Sała emerged as Knox and Cook worked with the Awin’akola charitable foundation, which uses a cross-disciplinary research approach to forest preservation. In their work, the team kept finding themselves in clear cuts. “One year we were in an old growth forest, the next year it was gone,” says Cook. “We were literally chasing our future possibilities, and all of the healing that comes from these forests and our culture.” They realized they weren’t taking time to grieve.
Jaskwaan Bedard (Haida) is a board member for Awi’nakola. The Haida word women use for cedar is “díi k’wáay, older sister,” she says. “Showing your heart by mourning is an important step for healing.”
The Sała was the culmination of a week of field visits with researchers, including ecologist Rachel Holt, and Suzanne Simard (author of Finding the Mother Tree). Awi’nakola’s interdisciplinary approach meant the gathering drew participants from all across the continent, from curators to. librettists to land stewards.
“Showing your heart by mourning is an important step for healing.”
Kelly Richardson uses art to communicate to hearts when science does not. “We do not need more data, honestly. We’re past that point. It’s a matter of inspiring action, even if it’s just reevaluating what you exist in this world for,” she says. Teaching at the University of Victoria, she hears “how scared people are and they don’t know what to do. Some of them feel like they don’t actually have a future, which is really hard to hear.”
Her response is that there are “really good people fighting for that future.” She pauses to ensure her young son is eating his dinner. His eyes twinkle over a second helping of cake instead, and they giggle. Her eyes fill with tears and she continues, “All I can really offer is that I will fight hard, but I need help – join me.”
The Chiefs Speak
As we enter a massive clear cut, the body of a black bear lies on the side of the road, “poached, but they left his paws,” explains biologist Helen Davis. The group clambers over logging debris – It’s difficult to find footing and Davis reminds us of baby bears leaving generational dens to follow their mom through crisscrossed layers of wasted logs and slash piles. We walk towards an island of trees left as a buffer for a protected bear den.
The logging company cut a wide road as close as it could to the den itself – on the outer edge of the “buffer” strip of trees.
The tilted tree is a “preserved” bear den | Photo by Odette Auger
The location was chosen to “show a really bad, under 10-metre buffer zone where the salmon is spawning,” says Knox.
One of his ancestral chiefs recommended the McKenna-McBride Commission of 1913-1916 leave a 500-metre buffer zone on each side of the rivers, for all five watersheds in Kwagu’ł territory. “That’s half a mile. Lucky if we get 5-10 meters right now.” Knox’s powerful voice rings out across the clear cut. He invites the gathering to imagine how different the north island would be now, had that recommendation been taken. “Shame on government for not listening to the people of the land,” says Knox.
The chiefs sit in regalia in front of a painted screen, gracing the grey expanse of gravel road and slash piles with colour.
A long, painted T´amidzu (drum log) lies in front of them to share. The site is cleansed with eagle down, sprinkled by each of the hereditary chiefs in turn, and women dance among the eagle down – creating a sacred space for this important work.
Amid time-honoured mourning songs, the chiefs speak.
Nothing left to give
“Hereditary chiefs hold a big responsibility to the land, and it is their right to ensure it is used in a good way,” says Speaker Matt Ambers.
Decision-making about their forests is happening “far from here with people who do not know the traditional people of these lands. Who have never stepped on these grounds, have never breathed this air, who have never just respectfully asked how to build a relationship,” explains Cook.
“Many millions of dollars have been taken,” out of this area, Cook says.
He explains how potlatches involve lengthy preparations, gathering, harvesting, and preparing goods from their territories to distribute wealth. He gestures to the logging debris, saying, “We have no more wealth. We have nothing else to give.”
Photo by Odette Auger
Women mourners wearing black cloaks come out from behind the screen, heads encircled with hemlock boughs, leading two young children wearing carved mourning masks by the hand. The masks are beautifully painted, but with a downcast mouth, and tears spilling from the eyes. The women sit on a plank bench in a row in front of the singing chiefs, and the children sit on the ground in front. A mourning song of many generations and deep loss rises up from the chiefs, and the women weep. It’s a powerful invitation to allow for grief and let it wash over us.
Land and reconciliation
Hereditary Chief Kwakwabalas Ernest Alfred says, “Today is about unifying. Even though we carry heaviness in our hearts for what’s happening to our lands and our waters and our people, we need to find the strength to carry on.”
They’ve witnessed the power of resistance in removing fish farms.
“Mother Nature knows how to heal,” Alfred says. The chiefs have seen what hard work, determination and resilience can do, and they take strength, he says, from knowing “We are part of a global movement.”
“Until land is actually given back, when we can begin to heal and actually do the work, there is no reconciliation.”
The Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw Hereditary Chiefs Confederation, with 24 chiefs joined so far, are a unified working group. “They want us to be individualistic, but we’re not going to give them the satisfaction,” says Knox. “We’re all dealing with the effects of resource extraction and all the territories together.”
Chief Maswayalidzi David Mungo Knox (Kwagu’ł) with Fireweed | Photo: Agathe Bernard Photography.
The chiefs spoke on the embedded disconnect between levels of government, and the value of an Indigenous lens of interconnection as opposed to separate ministries. For example, logging too close to streams is not just a forestry matter, as it impacts salmon also.
Cook pinpoints a glaring gap in the Truth and Reconciliation Act – that there is “nothing is in regard to land. The government doesn’t want to give up the land. It’s all just compensation for the amount of harm,” he explains. “But until land is actually given back, when we can begin to heal and actually do the work, there is no reconciliation.”
Active reconciliation to Cook looks like opening doors to non-Indigenous collaborators, working “together for the sole purpose of healing the land – because the land is everything,” he says. “Then we can start to identify what it means to be Canadian under Indigenous values. If we can share our value system now and invite people into our governance and why these things have mattered and why protecting the land is so important, then those values will sustain and we’ll build stronger communities – and we can move from there.”
Leaving the door open
A grieving ceremony normally closes with a cleansing, for example a cedar brushing to take care of people’s spirits. The chiefs decided to leave this gathering open, for people to carry this experience as motivation to activate and make change. The women who sat as mourners during the ceremony had hemlock encircling their heads for protection. The sorrow is absorbed by the bough tips, and will later be burned.
Sała is also about having faith, as an act of releasing spirits from our grief, so they can move on to the other side. “The trees have spirits,” reminds Cook. “The ceremony is really about calling those spirits back.”
“It’s going to take 500-1000 years to get a healthy forest back again,” Cook says. “We are not just out fighting for just the trees and our kin. It’s really our way of life.”
Standing among the fireweed, Chief David Knox offers a message of hope, “We’ve always had the solutions. It just fell on deaf ears.”
Photo: Agathe Bernard Photography.
Odette Auger (Sagamok Anishnawbek) is an award-winning independent journalist and storyteller living on Klahoose territory in the Salish Sea. Follow her work at www.authory.com/OdetteAuger.
Special thanks to Agathe Bernard for her photography in this piece. www.agathebernardstudio.com
