Haida Gwaii Revisited

Meghann O’Brien, featured in the Haida Gwaii story in issue #7.2, recently returned to the islands to pursue her artistic career for several months. Here is her take on The Land of the People in the summer:

“I left Whistler around the beginning of May to go back to Masset in Haida Gwaii. It's a three day trip by ferry from the north end of Vancouver Island, and the morning we arrived there was a totem pole raising by Christian White and his apprentices. I never realized they still raise them by hand and it was quite the thing to witness. I came up here to weave a Ravenstail robe with my friend Kerry Lynn, her mother, and teacher William White. So we have been here weaving in a long house, and living out in the spruce forest at a beach house, swimming later in the day in the ocean, and having sweat lodges in the backyard. I've been harvesting cedar bark, eating row on kelp, razor clams, fresh sockeye, halibut, seaweed, and now salmon berries are arriving—it’s a real good quality of life. There’s even surf in the winter, and a few people from Skidegate who tour up the mountains in the winter which I suspect would be quite a fun time.”

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