Ranged in a gentle arc some 150km off the Prince Rupert coast, the Haida Gwaii, until recently better known as the Queen Charlotte Islands.
The Haida are widely considered to have the most highly developed culture and sophisticated art tradition of British Columbia’s aboriginal peoples. Extending from the Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) to south Alaska, their lands included major stands of red cedar, the raw material for their huge dugout canoes, intricate carvings and refined architecture. Haida trade links were built on the reputation of their skill – other BC people considering the ownership of a Haida canoe, for example, as a major status symbol.
Ancestral home of the Haida Nation, Haida Gwaii offers 10,000 years of aboriginal history hidden in it's coastal temperate rain forests and hundreds of kilometres of shoreline. Home of giant trees, abundant wildlife, the islands offer a wide variety of activities for nature lovers.
Haida Gwaii villages were an impressive sight, their vast cedar-plank houses dominated by fifteen-meter totem poles displaying the kin group’s unique animal crest or other mythical creatures, all carved in elegantly fluid lines.
The Haida Gwaii were one of only two areas in western Canada to escape the last Ice Age, which elsewhere altered the evolutionary progress, and which has resulted in the survival of many so-called relic species. Species unique to Queen Charlotte Islands include a fine yellow daisy, the world’s largest black bears, and subspecies of pine marten, deer mouse, hairy woodpecker, saw-whet owl and Stellar’s jay. |