Raven Walks Around the World by Thom Henley

Author:Thom Henley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Voyages around the world, Raven, First Nations, Haida, Haida Gwaii, Activism, Memoir, Autobiography
ISBN: 9781550178081
Publisher: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
Published: 2017-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter VII

Islands at the Edge

By the late 1970s several Canadian luminaries and internationally renowned figures had begun lending their support to the Moresby cause. Among them were celebrated artists like Bill Reid, Robert Bateman and Toni Onley, national broadcaster and geneticist David Suzuki, internationally acclaimed undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, as well as royalty like Prince Philip and Prince Charles. As one might expect, Bill Reid, of Haida ancestry on his mother’s side, was one of the first ­celebrities to do so.

My first encounter with the master carver came in the summer of 1976 one morning at dawn after I’d spent a night curled up beneath the dogfish pole Bill had been commissioned to carve for the front of the Skidegate Band office. Ghindigin was assisting Bill with the carving, and he wanted me to meet Bill to help persuade him to support our cause. By the time I hitchhiked down from Masset to Skidegate Landing where the pole was being carved, Bill had already put down his tools and gone home for the day. Ghindigin suggested I sleep under the pole in a bed of cedar shavings to get a better feeling for their creation and to be in position to meet the esteemed artist first thing in the morning.

I have no idea what Bill thought of me as I emerged somewhat groggily from beneath the pole, my wool shirt covered in shavings, to greet him when he arrived at work that morning. He struck me as a man of few words as he went about his business, seemingly uninterested in what Ghin and I had to say. Supernatural beings were slowly being released from the fine-grained confinement of centuries-old cedar, and Bill seemed silent almost out of reverence as he chipped away at the great log. Ghin and I did our best to persuade him to back the Moresby cause, but at the end of the day he left us with a single thought: “The way I see it, boys, is you’re going to be living together on these islands with those you oppose for a long time to come.”

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