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Dimlahamid revisited in Gitksan case

A DEATH FEAST AT DIMLAHAMID.
By Terry Glavin. New Star Books, Van-
couver. Hardcover, $24.95. 200 pages.
Available at People’s Co-op Bookstore.
The road blocks had been mounted for at
least three summers before the Natives at
Oka decided to take on the Quebec govern-
ment over land jurisdiction in 1990. But the
actions by the Gitksan Wet’suwet’en in
northwestem British Columbia concerned
more than the Quebec Mohawks’ grove of
trees slated for a municipal golf course, not-
withstanding the importance of that issue. At
stake here was 22,000 square miles of ter-
nitory, the future of a political entity called
British Columbia, and the reincarnation of a
city-state or concept, called Dimlahamid.
At the Tribune, we received the almost
daily faxes announcing the latest in develop-
ments Over roadblocks set up at places with
names like Kispiox. The strategy was at
times as puzzling as the names were un-
familiar. But one thing was clear: repre-

sentatives of the two thousands-year-old
cultures were.backing up their court action
with a new militancy to reinforce in the
public’s mind the concept that Native title
was alive, because it had never been extin-
guished.

Vancouver Sun reporter Terry Glavin
covered the story through the years 1987-90.
His reports filled the pages of his employer’s
newspaper, located in a city hundreds of
miles to the south, well away in distance as
well as concept. The reports provided some
idea of the issue, constrained as they were
by the dictates of daily news reporting, with
its emphasis on “he said, she said,” and the
requirements of something called “objec-
tivity.” :

Writing a book provides room to ex-
pound on the ideas behind the headlines, and
in A Death Feast In Dimlahamid, Glavin has
succeeded fairly well in doing that. He uses
good descriptive prose to blend first-hand
accounts of his experiences in covering

Wishing you peace,
_ progress and

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recent events surrounding Canada’s most
unique “land claim” with history and
legend. The synthesis is an account designed
to enable non-Native readers to abandon, to
some extent, Western-style linear thinking
and appreciate a highly different concept of
land tenure and use, time and title.

In doing so, Glavin takes us several
places. We’re at a death feast to com-
memorate Elsie Morrison, also known as
Waigyet. (Morrison died at 82, but Waigyet
lives on in Helena Joseph, who inherited the
title-name, along with ranks, territories and
privileges.) We’re sitting around the fire
under a tarpaulin to keep the rain off at a
roadblock. And we rejoice at a town-hall
meeting when, for the first time, Natives,
white loggers and even, tentatively, a log-
ging company called Westar find common
cause to unite against the forest policies of
the provincial government.

More fascinating is the journey through
legend, in which the author relates Gitksan
tales of the mythical Dimlahamid, a sup-
posed city-state encompassing a vast area
some 5,000 years ago. According to legend,
Dimlahamid (Dzilke in Wet’suwet’en lore)
rose and fell several times, due te the sinful
ways of its residents (fairly universal folk-
lore) before the final dispersal of the sup-
posed ancestors of the Gitksan and
Wet’suwet’en. Glavin is honest enough to
note that no anthropological expedition, and
there have been several, has found a trace of
the mythical place. One anthropologist cited
believes the ancient city may really have
been a collection of villages. But its impor-
tance lies in the legend itself, with the notion
of ancestry traced back millennia.

Glavin also recounts, in a chapter,
theories on the origin of the people in the
region and the complex trade and cultural
links connecting civilizations from Califor-
nia up through Alaska and Siberia to the
northern islands of Japan. These are backed
by archaeological finds and linguistic
studies which suggest that, contrary to the
long-held notion that all North America’s
Natives descended from palaeolithic hunt-
ers crossing the now sunken Bering land
bridge, the lineage of Gitksan and other B.C.
Natives lies elsewhere. But wherever their

place of origin, their relation to the territories
around the Skeena and Bulkley rivers is
ages-old.

The Gitksan Wet’suwet’en mounted their
roadblocks against logging trucks, and
forest company road-building and bridge-
making, while their three-year case, Delgam
Uukw versus The Queen, was being heard
in B.C. Supreme Court. The actions were
taken, Glavin relates, because the territory
in question was being stripped of its wood
resources at an ever-increasing rate. By the
time the case was settled — hopefully, and
probably, in the Natives’ favour — the land
might be stripped of its resources.

The blockades inevitably alienated some
non-Natives. But by the final pages of Death
Feast, Glavin is able to report a meeting in
Gitwangak last year attended by Natives,
non-Native members of the community, the
IWA-Canada and the representative of Wes-
tar. All agreed that Socred forest policies
such as the shipping of raw logs oversees
hurt them all, and explored forms of working
together. :

If there is an unanswered question, it is
the future of the territory under Native rule.
Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en are socially
divided into houses belonging to clans —for
example, the Wolf and the Frog — ruled by
hereditary chiefs along matrilineal lines. It
is thus a kind of class system, involving
inherited property, privileges that are some-
what mitigated by the potlatch (such as Elsie
Morrison’s death feast) in which goods are
distributed to all who attend.

If winning the claim leads to the restora-
tion of a system of haves and have-nots, so
be it; the problems arising will be Gitksan
Wet’suwet’en problems. If there is to be
justice, it will entail the handing of rightful
control of the land and resources over to
those who have lived there for centuries, and
who have never ceded authority to anyone,
including the entity known as British
Columbia.

—Dan Keeton

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Pacific Tribune, December 17, 1990 « 25