Field Notes
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G'psgolox Pole Returns Home to Kitimaat Village After 80 Years
(KITIMAAT VILLAGE, BRITISH COLUMBIA) - Warm, sunny weather, a large contingent of out-of-town guests, and the July 1 Canada Day holiday converged at Kitimaat Village, British Columbia, about 400 miles north-by-northwest of Vancouver. People gathered in Haisla territory to celebrate the return of the G'psgolox totem pole from Sweden, having been absent from North America for nearly 80 years.
The pole was believed to have been carved in the 1870s by G'psgolox, a mortuary pole carved to honor the death of his wife and children. In 1929, his Haisla descendants returned from a fishing trip to discover the pole was mysteriously gone. It had been “sold” by an unauthorized person outside the Haisla Nation to Olof Hansson, a representative of the Swedish government. Hansson, in turn, donated the totem to Sweden's National Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm where it remained on display until earlier this year.
When the descendants of G'psgolox discovered the location of the totem pole in 1990, preparations and negotiations began in earnest, with the Haisla determined to repatriate the pole to Haisla territory. Between that time and Canada Day (July 1) 2006: several trips to Sweden were made; G'psgolox descendants/carvers carved a replica pole to replace the pole in Sweden; the G'psgolox pole was packed and shipped to Vancouver, by way of the Panama Canal, where it lay in state at the UBC Museum of Anthropology for several weeks; and, finally, the pole was driven by flat-bed truck donated by a Kitimaat grocery store to Kitimaat Village.
Formal ceremony, songs and regalia attended each movement of the pole once it arrived in the Village. Procession songs accompanied the pole as it was lifted from the truck and pushed into the Haisla community building/gymnasium on June 30th. That night, a salmon feast went late into the night along with more songs and performance offered by the Haisla and neighboring First Nations.
On July 1, the day-long celebration began with a benefit pancake breakfast, followed by a grand entry of elders, honored guests, and First Nations dancers and performers. Louisa Smith (great-great-granddaughter of G'psgolox) and Gerald Amos (former Haisla Councilor and founding Ecotrust and Ecotrust Canada Board member) helped emcee the events leading up to the unveiling of the pole at 7 pm. All of the descendants of G'psgolox stood before the pole, lying in its shipping crates, backs turned to the pole facing a crowd of over 1500 people. Slowly, they turned, then walked away from their positions, revealing the uncovered pole for the first time in Haisla Territory since it was taken long ago.
Speeches honoring G'psgolox and the Haisla people followed, and special thanks were given to all those who helped in the process of repatriating the pole, including Ecotrust and Ecotrust Canada. A significant contingent from both organizations took part in the G'psgolox Pole Celebration, arriving by boat, plane, and road-trip camper van. The repatriation of the G'psgolox Pole is one of the amazing stories of Salmon Nation.
