Pacific North West Coast Artist Beau Dick working at studio on Coastal Pacific Island near top of North Vancouver Island PHOTO CREDIT Mack McColl
Eventually a time comes when the level of frustration cannot be contained and sometimes it happens at momentous occasions. Frustration mounted with the march of time in the Pacific north west of the American continent when finally the tribes imploded once it was impossible to find anything left of the old ways .
Beau Dick of the Kwak'Awak'Awak has a personal account of one flashpoint in the displacement that cleaved into First Nations. His encounter with extinction had the stamp of finality and Beau tells how it happened late in the 1950s or early 1960s.
Beau had been immersed in the ancient ways of the KwakAwak'Awak during the formative years of his life when a tiny remnant of coastal culture had survived. He was infused with archetypes of an ancient reality by sitting at the feet of his father, grandfather, and uncles all who carved and shared the meaning of the images, the clan messages and maxims.
Potlatch gatherings which had survived in secret far outside the law were still being restricted by authorities at this time. Beau was a toddler in a tribal refuge at the beginning of a culture's first steps out of darkness after its near extinction.
The potlatch oral Talmudic-style government over jurisdictional affairs had governed the American quarter of the Pacific Rim. By the time Beau was born the Indian Act sections about Potlatch had been rescinded but the authorities were smugly content. The mighty industrial economy had completely displaced the rainforest chiefs and shaman and their support system in secret societies.
Once the Indian Act loosened the chains the potlatch began to experience a low-key public revival that was seen at the sublime level of a child according to a distinct memory held by Beau Dick. In fact the Kwak'Awak'Awak was a coastal nation of tribes and people who lived within culturally entrenched communities.
They were sometimes far-flung and always closely attached to mountains and cedar (which they called the tree of life) groves and oceans, streams, and valleys full of resources. So it comes as no surprise these people never left the culture completely behind.
But the people of clans say the unshackled potlatch of today had changed, and rank was diffuse, and activities took an abbreviated form that lacked meaning or continuity, but continued to inform the world about stories of origin and a certain amount about status.
The families from these long-standing national entities held sacred names that were preserved in Treasure Boxes and expressed through crests contained in the boxes. Names songs and positions, These boxes were full of items like masks, spoons, bowls, blankets, aprons, hats, daggers, fishing hooks; each item contained intricate statements of the family's origins.
The existence of these treasures informs people of the hereditary rights passed along by ancestors, including foremost the names that went with rights, titles, treasures, and territory. A lot of these Treasure Boxes were plundered or sold off during the disintegration of jurisdiction, and this did a lot of damage to the knowledge stream about coastal tribal authority.
The knowledge stream is coming back. In days of old the potlatches were attended by witnesses who left the ceremony greatly enriched by the host, and the witness obligation in return was to remember what took place in proceedings. These multitudes composed a tradition that preserved a stream of knowledge; again, eyewitness accounts recorded changes in social order.
Pictorial history in books, museum repatriations, and occasional surprise finds permits the actual history to come to life. "The books are invaluable to us," said Beau Dick. Others who caught the end of something majestic can assist in duplicating the artistry and the concomitant mythology.
"I was raised in Kingcome Inlet and went to Vancouver at age 6 to go to school," said Beau. During special occasions he came back to the region although by then the family had departed distant Kingcome Inlet.
He recalls one such return to Alert Bay and a boat ride from there to a potlatch of extended family on another Pacific Isle (which shall remain nameless); and they arrived at the bighouse on (unnamed) Island. Beau remembers when he arrived in tow with his parents they entered the Bighouse.
The bighouse stood in the traditional manner on the shore near the river with totem poles and double-headed serpent (sisuitl) cross beams and fire burning at the centre of the sandy floor. They walked during the climax of a drunken tirade, "You people are stupid!" Beau heard, "This Indian BullShit doesn't count for anything! You're wasting your time because it doesn't mean a gawd-damned thing anymore."
The man stared drunkenly at the entrance where an astonished Beau Dick was watching, "And this boy needs a new pair of shoes!" he yelled and stormed out of the building. Beau recalls looking around the Bighouse at some of whom were weeping. Beau stood with a single realization that he was witnessing the dying gasps of an ancient tribal authority.
It had put up a long and valiant fight, and perhaps a spark or two has remained. It is a miraculous fact that prior to leaving for school Beau had been nurtured amid the myth-driven carving tradition of the coast. He had been raised to stand in the circle of a secret society that protected treasures and sacred stories preserved in the telling curves cut into the cedar to make supernatural creatures.
