Life on the Pacific Coast began
after six hours of travel from Vancouver on three different planes. The final
leg was aboard a harrowing and noisy 4-seat “Beaver” prop-plane built in the
60s which tilted with every gust but landed us safely on the choppy water of
the bay in Klemtu. As we approached the dock I was greeted by the magnificence
of the Big House jutting out on a small peninsula, the face of the wooden
building painted with enormous black and red animal-iconography and surrounded
by snow-topped trees and a dreamy mist. My wife Alexandra met me in a beat-up
white pickup truck and we brought my gear up to what would be our new home
right on the ocean. That night we were awoken abruptly by sirens and phone
calls informing us of a tsunami warning. There had been an earthquake close to
the more northerly islands of Haida Gwaii. We were evacuated to higher ground
and I unexpectedly had my first meeting with the community as we helped some of
the elderly walk the steps up to the community centre. A familiar routine,
people of all ages were friendly and energetic despite the late hour. It was
then that I met an adorable and deeply respected matriarch who was the oldest
Klemtu local, close to her 100th year. Seeing the heartwarming display of
mutual helpfulness and spontaneous storytelling of previous tsunami warnings, I immediately became enamoured with the people of Klemtu and their palpable sense of community.
Moving to a remote Native
reservation on the Pacific Coast came about by fortunate opportunity, and
living in Klemtu changed our lives forever. Through Health Canada, Alex had her
choice of working as a Community Health Nurse on a number of Canadian Native
reservations. She chose Klemtu based on its coastal location. Formerly called
“China Hat” because of the shape of a small parallel island nearby (now known
as Cone Island), Klemtu is only accessible by boat or float-plane. This meant
shipping our goods by barge and getting used to the realities of living
remotely such as having access to only one tiny Chinese food restaurant, and
the limited availability of fruit and vegetables at the single convenience
store and solitary grocery. The fishing village of around 400 community members
is located mid-coast on Swindle Island. Here, two Nations live together in
harmony, the Kitasoo of Tsimshian descent and the Xai’Xais who are Heiltsuk. A
testament to their co-operative relations, their shared ceremonial Long House
was built fairly recently and is truly remarkable inside and out. Made mostly
of cedar, the sights, smells and vibrations of the spacious and earthen-floored
building filled me with awe. Enormous Douglas Firs and celebrated carvers were
brought in for the main cross-beams and astounding floor-to-ceiling totems
representing the four main coastal clans: Blackfish, Eagle, Raven and
Wolf.
Being a coastal Native community,
fish are of course central to day-to-day life. Conversation revolves around the
seasonal appearances and catching success of spring herring, summer halibut and
fall salmon. Many work at the hatchery and the Marine Harvest fishery, and
families have shallow metal boats called ‘punts’ for private fishing. There
also is burgeoning eco-tourism through the Spirit Bear Lodge which provides
both employment for locals and boat-tours for international visitors looking to
experience the flora and fauna of the Great Bear Rainforest. As the lodge name
suggests, catching a glimpse of the elusive white bears that are held as sacred
by Coastal Natives is of particular interest. Last season there was an even
rarer sight of a Spirit Bear cub! Nominated by National Geographic as one of
the top locations for ecologically sensitive tourism, locals often joke that
unlike the tourists who often spend a great deal on their visits, they get to
see all of the what the area has to offer for free!
Living in one of the largest intact
temperate rainforests on the planet means milder temperatures, lush greenery
and an abundance of wildlife. It also ensures almost continuous precipitation.
On one rare sunny day, one fellow gave me a local opinion on Klemtu weather
when I asked how he was doing and he replied wistfully, “Terrible. It’s not
raining!” As with the seasonal monsoons in India, I got used to the rain and
its various forms. The wind through the channel that our housing backed onto,
separating Swindle and Cone Islands, made for exciting fog formations but also
rainfall in every possible direction, even horizontally! Quite untouched
despite an Indigenous presence for millenia, there are plentiful hiking opportunities.
Twenty minutes above the village and
surrounded by mountains is the pristine lake that provides the community with
their fresh water supply and offering a landscape which my mother-in-law
described as “the best church I have ever attended.” The lake feeds two
swimming-holes, one that is easy to reach and another that requires walking up
through a stream and climbing over fallen trees and huge boulders carpeted with
moss until one reaches a majestic forest nook seen by only a handful of humans.
The small but deep water-hole has been enjoyed by local children for
generations and is surrounded by ferns, huge trees and rock formations that beg
one to leap off! Some nature experiences of the region were a first for me,
such as spotting Orcas from one of the B.C. ferries, regular Bald Eagle
sightings and hearing the otherworldly guttural call of an Elephant Seal.
However, it was the proximity to whales that really took the cake. One day
while biking to the ferry-dock I spotted something dark breaching the ocean
surface about a half click away. For the next hour I had the privilege of
observing a Humpback regularly coming up for air and then diving to reveal both
pectoral fins and the tail fluke. The water from its blow-hole often sprayed
onto nearby trees, showing the steep drop of the rocky shoreline. Nary another
human in sight, this surreal event gave me a sense as to why these beings are
held in such esteem. This was reinforced on another occasion when I was taking
in the stars one night amidst a sky amazingly dark due to low light pollution.
I heard waves breaking on the shore of the channel. No boats had passed
recently and then, in the pitch darkness, I heard bursts of breathing from
multiple locations and realized that a pod of whales was swimming through the
channel. For hours they swam and breathed nearby, and my experience during that
time was indescribable save to say that it prompted something akin to a
meditative state.
Although the experience of nature in
Klemtu made for unforgettable memories, it is the people of Klemtu that changed
us forever. On my first visit to the hatchery, a worker launched into a series
of spine-chilling Sasquatch stories. A popular topic in Klemtu, to be sure,
local sightings have led many Bigfoot researchers to come to the area in search
of the creature over the years. One of the most enjoyable ways to regularly
socialize was the weekly indoor volleyball games, evenings full of laughter,
blaring dance and rock music and happy children. Thanks to our neighbours and friends we also partook of many
local foods, each with unique methods of preparation, such as seaweed, herring
eggs, clams, crabs, sea urchin, ooligan grease and of course: fish! The salmon
run is central to the Klemtu annual cycle and is marked by several stages.
First, the fish steadily head into the bay towards the rivers. Soon the fish
are jumping right out of the water, some suggest to stir their eggs, which
makes for a furious cacophony of leaping fish that I would watch for hours.
Next is the catching of fish in huge, but controlled, amounts and fish storage
preparation by filleting, jarring and smoking for winter. Lastly, there is the
extracting of eggs and sperm for hatching next season. We were taught by many
how to fillet, and a Grand Chief allowed us to observe the smoking of salmon on
planks around a fire. He joked that the spread-open salmon looked like small
pants, but then told us that it is important to not joke about fish because
such disrespect could cause them to not return. I grew up in a Jewish household
that adored smoked salmon (lox), but as an indispensable traditional food
source on the coast, salmon is taken to amazingly creative levels. My favourite
salmon dish, dried and salted strips called Gravlox and served with a dill-based
dip, was given to us by a friend and I was hooked. At home, I enjoyed outdoor
salmon grilling on cedar planks (that I chopped myself!) to get a smoky
flavour. As Alex was the primary caregiver for the entire community, and
gift-giving a way of life, she was often rewarded with seafood. I started
baking bread to reciprocate. Every couple of weeks I also had the opportunity
to cook lunch for the health centre staff, and several times I had the pleasure
of cooking with an enthusiastic young local. When a Cree motivational hip-hop
artist was to visit for the purpose of both performing and facilitating
self-empowerment sharing-circles with locals, I was asked to bring sound,
lights and smoke up from Vancouver. This was much to the delight of the
community, especially the children who zoomed around with zest. Many people had
neither gone very far out of the area nor seen live music of this sort, and
seeing the silhouette of a traditional community line-dance on the backdrop of
coloured smoke and lights pulsing to dance-music showed a breathtaking
incorporation of the modern with the traditional. These small gestures were
meant to thank the people for allowing me to live in their midst and have the
chance get to know them.
In Klemtu traditional spirituality
and organized religion run in parallel but not without mutual influence. We
received several invitations to participate in both ceremony and services. The
school is a hub of community activity and host to many events such as
Aboriginal Day and the Terry Fox fundraiser, but far and above the most
touching for me was a mini-potlach that was organized by the Klemtu
school-children. The giving feast was peppered with sacred dance and song by
the children in their clan-based regalia, as well as heartwarming speeches of
thanksgiving, and culminated in everyone creating a circular friendship dance.
I was also invited to a Christian service which was full of hymn-singing to
guitar accompaniment, fellowship, and deeply moving testimony. Many of those in
Klemtu identify as Christian and as such, multi-denominational missionary
visits are frequent and welcomed by the community. Fundraising for a new church
building is currently underway. As we became more integrated into this small
community, we were also advised to have an elder smoke our house for
purification purposes. The elder who kindly agreed had us procure Poison Root
and she smoked the space while asking in her mother-tongue for the spirits to
not disturb us, and reassured them that Alex was in Klemtu to care for the
community. Poison Root is used both ritually and as an analgesic, so to replace
that used for the house-smoking some friends took us out to the forest to dig
up more. We found more than enough to reimburse and also leave some at
entrances, which is meant to provide ongoing protection from spirit
interference.
The timing of this adventure was
perfect for me as my PhD classes were completed and preparing for my exams
off-site entirely possible. The hardest part of leaving Toronto was extracting
myself from the music scene, both with playing and running concerts, with which
I had been deeply invested in for 7 years. Ultimately, I wanted to support
Alex’s dream of remote nursing and I did my best to help her stay healthy in a
job that takes tremendous amounts of energy. Nurses came and went but being the
only full-time nurse with only biweekly physician support meant that Alex was
the primary caregiver for the entire community. Nursing was thus not
constrained to the weekly 9-5 but included being on-call nightly. In some
extremely moving gestures at a memorial before we left, Alex received many
gifts and accolades for her service to the community. A Chief gave me a hat
because, as he explained, “he takes care of Alex so that she can take care of
us.” In addition to studying and being “the nurse’s husband”, through my daily
informal interactions with the people of this small community, including Band
Council members, Chiefs and Grand Chiefs, I increasingly saw the
anthropological potential of my being in Klemtu. I started to develop an
ethnomedical research project aiming to investigate the influence of organized
religion and traditional spirituality on health care decision-making among the
locals. While considering the potential project, I was acutely aware of the
historical harms and the continued systematic violence to Canadian Aboriginals.
The Tri-Council research policies in relation to Aboriginal Studies involving
human subjects are understandably rigorous and include such requirements as
ensuring the input and direction of Knowledge Holders, as well as leaving data
ownership and publishing decisions entirely in Native hands. As such, it was
only after months of discussions with key local leaders, proposal writing, and
U of T ethics approval that I approached the Klemtu Research Stewardship Board
to broach the subject of a research collaboration. There was enthusiasm for the
project and permission was granted with great anticipation particularly for
archival data of the unique perspectives of elders. There was also the
suggestion that food be included as an added topic of importance given the
intimate relationship in Klemtu between health and traditional food sources.
Klemtu spearheads a tremendous amount of research on resources in their
territory, research indispensable to such concerns as bear conservancy,
fish-stock maintenance and protection against industrial interference such as
with the Enbridge pipeline project. A grave concern that pervades daily
discussions, the Pacific Coastal Nations are vocally against the pipeline
proposal. It would result in tankers navigating difficult waters and the
statistical inevitability of a disaster that would devastate the ecosystem of
the entire coast.
During our stay, a monumental
provincial shift was taking place with the delivery of Aboriginal Health Care
moving from federal to Native control. This has been long in the making,
perhaps even since the initial colonial interference in Native health and
healing. For us the shift meant an end to the Health Canada contract and,
unfortunately, caused our relocation to come to a rather abrupt end. We
immediately started planning our return for shorter stays in the future. I am
deeply grateful to the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais peoples for so warmly embracing us and
allowing us to live together on their land and waters, and inviting us into
their lives for the year Alex was there and the half-year I was able to be
there. We miss the people of Klemtu terribly and often are asked by our dear
friends when we will be “coming home.” Our plan is to coordinate our return
with the naming ceremony of one of our close friends who will be inheriting his
late father’s title as Chief. We’ll stay for some time while Alex nurses and I
continue the research project where we left off. We may be Ontarians, but our
hearts belong to B.C. and the people of Klemtu.
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