Remembering Alert Bay

Wednesday, June 25, 2008: Alert Bay to Port McNeil, across Queen Charlotte Straits to Fin Bay off Calvert Isle


Totems looking out from Alert Bay

"Russ I’ve always wanted to visit Alert bay. Wish we can."

I went down below for a short nap as he looked out toward the horizon. Time had hardly passed as I drank in the comfort of sleep, when I heard Russ in his nonchalant monotone voice: "We’re in Alert Bay."

"What?"

"We are in Alert Bay." He articulated in a more pronounced way.

Tie up at the municipal dock and see the skyline. What a sweet sight: small wooden buildings—some on stilts—pinks and grays and violets and greens against the green background of hills and blue skies. We walked up to the narrow one-lane tarred road and stood reverently at the First Nation’s burial ground. It was a powerful site. Weather-worn totems stood tall. One very long one had fallen over. Once the totems fall over they are not re-erected. Another is carved, the fallen one left to return to the earth through time: wind and rain and sun. A Philipino nurse Russ spoke to gave us a lift to U’mista cultural center. Small town, big heart.

I had read about the practice of slavery among the Northwest Coast Indians. Slaves were war captives and considered a form of wealth for chiefs. Tlingit chiefs crushed slaves to death under large house posts during ceremonies. Kwakiutl would sometimes kill them on the beach and use the bodies as rollers to beach a visiting chief’s canoe.

Some slaves somehow did manage to return home. That is where the word U’Mista comes in. The Kwakwaka’wakw of Alert Bay named their cultural center U’Mista, because it means coming home. Half of their lost potlatch treasures taken from them in the 1920s were at last returned in 1980 on condition a museum was constructed. It was built next to what was the residential school of long ago, now in disrepair—where some priests and teachers played upon innocent Indian children in devious ways as they tried to reeducate them into the western way. Totem poles now look out onto the bay—guardians of a culture that did not go away—in a telling way.

The Potlatch collection in the Big House is a permanent collection: Coppers—T’takwa, killer whales—Max’inux, birds of the cannibal spirit—Hamsamt to name a few.

The missionaries had persuaded the government to proclaim potlatches illegal and First Nation people served prison sentences for participating, while their paraphernalia and ceremonial regalia were inventoried, and crated up for Ottawa museums. Some objects were given to Duncan Campbell Scott, then superintendent of Indian Affairs, and some were given to George Heye, a New York collector. So much said for the law of suppression. They could not hold this culture down. Potlatches were held on stormy days, marking important occasions in their lives. Guests were given gifts, gifts were distributed by the host chief as status symbols.

"When one’s heart is glad, he gives away gifts. It was given to us by our Creator to be our way of doing things, to be our way of rejoicing, we who are Indian. The Potlatch was given to us to be our way of expressing joy." Agnes Alfred, Alert Bay, 1980.