After waiting out stormwinds for a day, all went smoothly on Sunday, Oct. 13 when a Skedans pole was raised at the Haida village site of G̱aa Kyaals, near Dead Tree Point.
Chief Gidansda, Guujaaw, had the pole carved by his sons Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw to mark a potlatch he hosted later that day in Skidegate, and to display the crests of the G̱aa K’yaals Ḵiig̱awaay people.
Over a year in the making, the pole was carved by Gwaai and Jaalen, who were helped by Tyler York, Richard Smith, and Cooper Wilson.
The bottom figure is a sea grizzly, one of the Skedans crest, with a seal in its mouth. Above the sea grizzly is Supernatural Being Upon Whom It Thunders wearing a rainbow — another Skedans crest. On either side of the rainbow are Cumulus and Cirrus Cloud, the cotton-ball and wispy-strand clouds that are also Skedans crests.
Above the rainbow is the moon, a crest typically reserved for a chief, then Raven, and at top are three Haida watchmen, with the front-facing one wearing a symbol that signifies a final Skedans crest: landslide.
Several people at the pole raising remarked on the pole’s beautiful colours.
Jaalen Edenshaw said he was a bit hesitant at first to use yellow in the rainbow, but saw in the mock-up that it would work so long as other colours had a bit more vibrance to balance it. He and Gwaai chose a blue that is a favourite of their father’s, and one that Guujaaw has painted on several of his own carvings.
The pole also echoes several elements of a replica pole that Guujaaw carved and the brothers grew up admiring in the family boat shed. As it turns out, it was made by the late Haida carver and sculptor Henry Moody, who also carried the name Gidansda.
A Haida totem pole has several layers of meaning, said Edenshaw, and an important one is to help people remember what happened at the potlatch that follows.
“If you’re a ten-year-old kid, as you go to a potlatch, your job is to remember the business that goes on,” Edenshaw said. “Fifty years later, you’ve got to remember what happened. It could be tough.”
But if a child helps raise a pole, he said every time they see it again they have a chance to remember what happens.
The Skedans pole should have plenty of eyes on it. As some of the off-island visitors who helped raise it went home, they took photos of the newly raised pole from the deck of the BC Ferries boat taking them along the east shore of Haida Gwaii and back across the Hecate Strait.
