SG̱ang Gwaay Llnagaay looked devastated five years ago after a hurricane-strength storm uprooted more than 100 trees there.
The Haida village site on SG̱ang Gwaay, or Wailing Island, had not seen such a storm in ages, even though the remote island on the exposed west coast is named for the sound a strong wind makes when it rushes through a hole in the rocks.
Devastating as it was, the 2018 storm turned up a unique chance to learn more about Haida history on the island.
Camille Collinson is a conservation and restoration project manager at Gwaii Haanas and the manager of Living Landscapes — a Haida-led archaeology project that has recovered thousands of cultural artifacts from SG̱ang Gwaay in the wake of the storm.
Before the storm hit, large spruce and hemlock trees were growing in and around the village site. Collinson said that is not how it looked historically, before Haida people were forced to leave the island for Skidegate in the 1880s after waves of epidemic disease.
Archival photos show shrubs and bushes growing in the village, but no trees.
Today, after five seasons of clean-up work, the village is once again alive with elderberry, twinberry and other culturally significant Haida plants that haven’t grown there for a century thanks to the introduced, seedling-munching Sitka black-tailed deer.
“When the storm blew through SG̱ang Gwaay and lifted up all these rootballs, it uncovered all sorts of different seeds that have been dormant in the soil for as long as those trees have been alive, anywhere from 75 to 100 years,” said Collinson. Suddenly, she said, all those seeds were lifted higher than deer can reach.
“And so all of these plants that we never really see at SG̱ang Gwaay started growing on the blowdown.”
Besides dormant seeds, the uprooted trees also revealed soil rich in Haida cultural belongings.
Two of the tree-throws actually peeled up the cedar floorboards of Naa G̱a Agang is Guuda, or People Wish to Be There House — a chief’s longhouse that stood near the middle of the village by a small creek. The storm also exposed soil under Naa Gud Hiilangs, Thunder Rolls Upon It House, the longhouse of Chief Nunstins.
Working in the summers of 2021, 2022, and 2023, a project team made up of Parks Canada archaeologists, Gwaii Haanas staff, and staff from the Haida Gwaii Museum found several artifacts below both longhouses that likely date from the fur-trade era. The findings include buttons, trade beads, eroded bits of copper, an argillite carving, a musket plate, and Chinese coins.
The team also found red ochre pigment, a grinding stone used to grind ochre to powder, and a horse clam shell that a Haida ancestor had once used to hold the pigment, perhaps as they painted a pole, a bentwood box, their body or their face.
Among the most striking finds from below the longhouse floors is a large st’iitga, or labret, that a Haida woman of high esteem would have worn in a piercing below her lower lip.
Made of bone, it measures roughly three inches long and an inch high.
Collinson said it would have taken a woman a long time to wear such a large labret.
Typically, a woman born to high status would have received her first labret piercing between 11 and 13 years old. Starting with a small labrets, she would adorn her lip with larger and larger ones as she grew older and the piercing stretched.
“It’s really fascinating to think about the woman who wore that adornment throughout her life,” Collinson said.
Besides the work at the longhouses, the Living Landscapes team did some work beyond the village.
They found small quartz quarries and hammer stones that Haida people once used to quickly make cutting tools.
The team also dug shovel tests at some areas of higher ground that today are stranded beaches. Millenia ago, when the sea was as much as 17 metres higher than now, these other settlement sites on SG̱ang Gwaay were places where people could land canoes.
Some of the shovel tests revealed middens full of fire-cracked rocks and discarded shells, seeds, as well as the bones of herring, halibut, ratfish and salmon.
Collinson said it’s tedious work, but analyzing the midden remains can tell a detailed story of how the Haida ancestors ate and fished the surrounding waters over thousands of years.
“It gives us a sense of climate-change adaptability, too,” she said. “The Haida oral traditions speak of events where there were great floods and ice ages.”
To see archaeological science align with Haida oral traditions is very validating, she said — for a long time, many people dismissed the oral stories as mere myths.
So far, the newly identified artifacts seem to come from five distinct eras of Haida history on the island — from about 10,700; 7,500; 5,000; and 2,000 years ago, as well as from the fur-trade era that continued until the late 1800s. There is ongoing work to provide radiocarbon dates.
“It really pays testament to the long memory that the Haida people have on Haida Gwaii,” said Collinson.
This will be the final summer of field work for the Living Landscapes project, which will focus on removing the last of the blow-down trees and spiral-topping the crowns of any standing trees that could be dangerous if they fall in the next big storm. Some of the invasive deer will also be culled, with the venison going to local people.
Off-site, work on the project will continue into 2025. Much of it will be done in the Haida Gwaii Museum, where staff are caring for all the cultural belongings recovered in the project. There is also ongoing lab work to provide radiocarbon dates.
Collinson said once all the cataloging and analysis is done, all the findings will be gathered into an easily readable community report that local people will be first to see. Then it will be up to staff at the Haida Gwaii Museum to decide whether and how to put some recovered items on display.
Already, people can learn a lot more about the Living Landscapes project and see video of the team at work in a series of three short films by Gwaii Haanas and Silent Rapid Productions.
The latest of the three films, Ḵ’uljaad, focuses on the discovery of the bone labret in 2023, and was first screened on island in June. Featuring interviews with several people involved, beautiful video and archival photos of SG̱ang Gwaay, and a recreation of how a Haida pole at the village may have been painted, all three films are now available to watch for free on YouTube.
Collinson said the project had help from several groups along the way — Taan Forest donated arborist work and planning, the Laskeek Bay Conservation Society mapped the island’s ancient murrelet colony and suggested ways for the team to avoid disturbing it, and researchers at Memorial University studied soil samples from to understand ancient flora at the site.
Above all, Collinson said the Haida Gwaii Watchmen were a huge help. They let the team camp by the Watchmen cabin on SG̱ang Gwaay, helped during filming, and made sure everyone got fed and well looked after over three seasons of fieldwork.
“They were just an amazing, and very hospitable partner.”