This 1994 reprint of a limited edition art book has such stunning photography one wants to reach out and touch these beautiful sculptures. It's incredible that these photos (selected from several thousands still existent) were taken a century ago. While the book may have been intended for art connoisseurs and academics, the $39.95 price tag means anyone interested in this Haida Renaissance can have a copy. Be warned though that this book is a tool. A window onto a vanished world. A window that in certain lights becomes a mirror reflecting back late 20th century preoccupations.
We are led to each of 17 villages existent in 1880s. There is a map; each house is numbered from the 30 odd at Skidegate to the four houses of Tian. Our guide looks at every house facade; and notes its accompanying poles be they frontal, memorial or mortuary. The crest animals are named; and anecdotes about its owner are recounted. Then we move on to the next exhibit; like a guided museum tour. We are not invited inside the houses. Seldom are any humans pictured. There is the eerie feeling that we have happened upon an abandoned world. We are so amazed at the technical virtuosity of the woodworking technology; we see only the ephemeral flowering, but not the spirit, the Haida world view , that nurtured this flowering.
Take Prince Rupert as a more common flower. Individual dwellings tied by asphalt strings to a city center housing stores and government. Individuals motivated by self interest who interact competitively either in "free markets" or majority rule. Society is something exterior to self; based upon contracts. Marriage begins in love and ends in divorce court.
Whatever the truth of that cartoon it is obvious that these Haida villages were the expression of some very different world view. MacDonald gives us some hints: The house was a container; like our bodies and the cosmos. The strand between sea and mountain was the human world with the underworld/ sea at its front and the sky world/ mountains at the back.
If European cultures' beliefs in death and rebirth were rooted in agriculture (burying the dead like seeds in the earth), then I think the Haida view could be seen in the returning salmon cycle. They came from the sea and journeyed upward into the mountains; The flesh was transient; the bones remained like eternal stones to be swept seaward. The next year a small creature hatched from the buried egg/ container and returned to the sea; a clan soul returning to it's people to be reborn again.
Perhaps I am being too whimsical, but if you look closely at these villages I think you will see
the salmon cycling. Yes the poles' sculptures are beautiful, but don't miss the spirit that created
them and continues to create in other guises.