Editorial: A Hundred Centuries

COVER PHOTO:Clayoquot Sound by Jacqueline Windh

The Pacific Northwest is known for towering old growth forests, grizzlies, eagles, whales, and the grand 'salmon and cedar' cultures which developed here over 10,000 years since the last ice age.

Paddling was central to the indigenous cultures of this region, for transportation, fishing, ceremony, and warfare. From simple dugouts to enormous ocean-going cedar canoes, paddlers plied the entire coast of what's now British Columbia and Washington.

These peoples were unknown to Europeans until Spanish and British naval expeditions first visited Nootka Sound in the 1770s. Over the next hundred years, the native population was decimated by alcohol, guns, and disease. In the year 1862, smallpox struck down an estimated 20,000 aboriginal people in British Columbia alone, perhaps a third of the entire native population of the province.

In BC, although there was less military repression of native peoples than in the United States, survivors of the epidemics faced governmental neglect, loss of language and cultural identity in residential schools, sexual and physical abuse by authorities, suppression of tradition, relocations of villages...

It's the same sad story around this planet, wherever 'civilized' people have usurped lands of nature-based peoples. But the Pacific Northwest housed a rich blend of cultures on a resource-rich coast-a strong people, rooted deeply in millennia past. So now, despite the tribulations of the past 200 hundred years, First Nations are regenerating from these roots-with traditional art, dance, song, and ceremony, based on the bear, whale, eagle, salmon, cedar.

Many First Nations in BC are now engaged in government-to-government Treaty processes to settle claims for unceded lands, and the future is looking bright.

Much has been lost, but much fortunately remains as a legacy for all of us. In a world which is daily reducing its natural places to concrete and junkyards, the ancient cultures are a source of guidance. With life's diversity vanishing beneath our onrushing tide, nature-based ways of life and wild places are crucial to our survival and guides to sustainable living.

One of the best ways to learn this is by paddling in the same waters, subject to the same winds and waves, landing on the same beaches as the people before us, visting the ancient sites (always with permission of course), and meeting the people who follow their ancestors' ways. Paddling was a central part of the ancient world and our every stroke helps to reconnects us with that time.

We have much to learn from these people. We must start by listening to what they're urgently trying to tell us today. (click here for a related story)