Home on the beach

'I find that people who come to visit just want to go down to the beach,' said Dolores.

And down to the beach I go. It is sandy, and I take my time. I understand why the two clans are the ravens and the eagles - this is their playground. Severn, D Suzuki's daughter, has a Haida husband and two kids, with whom she has been heard by Dolores to speak Haida at the Co-op. They have a new house just a few houses away from Dolores' under construction. The bulldozer, doing rough grading, and the rock music that accompanies cut into the early morning air, otherwise full of eagle and raven sounds.

B, who I met from the festival at a table, has now moved into the other room here at Dolores' house. He has added another dimension to this week, and while Dolores and I cannot entirely sort out what to do with him, he seems ok, has done no harm, and seems to need a place to stay. He has been here in Haida Gwaii since June living chez a variety of people in return for help around the house, and here he is sifting Dolores' four garden boxes to rid them of stones.

B and I were at the library yesterday when he started chatting with A, who he met at a potluck. A invited us for tea this morning. He lives by the water in a house he built 8-ish years ago, one that I would consider beyond impossible, being free of a humming fridge and bathroom. He is also under the constant pressure of eviction. The light in the winter, he says, with the high water and low rays, bathes the deepest recesses of his one-room house with the dancing light of reflected waves. His first house of some 10 years, near the same site, was swept away by storm, and all but very little was saved. He tells me, as I roam through his space, he likes how I connect the dots of the things I see. We spend 3 hours chatting over tea from mint he gathered in the forest, as if we were the best of kindred spirits catching up from a long absence.

In the evening, Dolores, B, and I watch a remarkable and truly moving documentary about the repatriation in 2003 of about 150-160 Haida human remains from the Chicago Field Museum to Haida Gwaii. It is called Stolen Spirits. As we watched, Dolores kept saying that such-and-such in the film was her brother, her cousin, her niece, etc. To convey the depth of community effort and emotion in this process was a task that I am glad was well done. Everyone seemed to do the right thing. They learned how to make traditional bentwood boxes and how to design and paint Haida art on them. Elementary school kids sewed buttons onto the blankets that the remains would be nestled in. There were calls made to Air Canada, a full delegation sent to Field Museum, much dancing and chanting throughout, including at the O'Hare gate as they saw the remains enter the plane. And the anthropologists who hosted them at Field came and were welcomed to Haida Gwaii, and held a box, as part of the re-burial procession to the cemetary. A full circle complete.