When brothers Jaalen and Gwaai Edenshaw were just young kids, their father Chief Gidansda Guujaaw was working on a rendition of an old pole that they found out later was carved by his namesake, a former Chief Gidansda, also a carver. When they were asked to carve a house pole for their father’s clan, they knew they were going to incorporate elements of that old pole, as well as take inspiration from other Haida treasures of the past.
On October 13, hundreds of people gathered just north of Skidegate at an old village site of G̱aa K’yaals, as a new Skedans clan house pole was raised up, by the hands of the community. The tree used for the pole was a 500-year-old cedar, cut down almost 15 years before it was stood back up again. The brothers had originally planned to use the tree for one they were commissioned to do in Jasper, Alberta, but it had bark seams that would have interfered with the carving cut in the lower right foot, and because the Jasper pole was on a hinge, they couldn’t work with it how they wanted to. Because this pole was in the ground, they were able to work with it.
The pole features some of the clan’s crests, Supernatural beings, designs and colours inspired by the distinct style of the earlier Gidansda, guided by the careful and expert eye of the present day Chief Gidansda.
“While following Gidansda’s style, Jaalen and Gwaai incorporated innovative techniques that made it stand out,” says Chief Gidansda. “The crests of any clan represent our relationships to the Earth, to the Supernatural beings that brought us here… they’re not just designs — it’s about those relationships.”
‘Back in the Old Old Days’
Jaalen and Gwaai carved together over the last year and a bit, doing extensive research to decide what crests to feature on the pole and how, and which colours would bring it to life. They also had help from their nephew Tyler York, cousin Cooper Wilson and friend Roger Smith. A handful of family and friends came in to help paint and put finishing touches on the pole.
The 36-foot Skedans pole features some of the clan’s crests, explains Jaalen, sipping a coffee the morning after the pole raising and potlatch that followed.
“When we raised uncle Percy’s memorial pole, we carved the grizzly bear and mountain goat crests, so we wanted to showcase others,” he says. The bottom crest is the sea grizzly, he explains. Above the sea grizzly they carved Supernatural Being Upon Whom it Thunders.
“His dressing up is the rainbow,” Jaalen says. “In the bottom of the rainbow, Gwaai did two faces on the side, the Sirius cloud and the Cumulus cloud, which are two more crests. We sorta just dressed them up like that. We face painted them with the clouds, to get those crests in there.”
There are a few rainbow poles from the old days, Jaalen says, and they all had faces on the bottom of the rainbow. They made a moon above the rainbow. Back in the day it used to be only the Chief who could use that crest. Above the moon is the raven, which he says isn’t a “crest proper” of the Skedans clan.
“Back in the old, old days, Raven wasn’t a crest to the Ravens, it was a crest of the Eagle side. In the last few hundred years, Ravens have used Raven,” he says. “And on the very top, we have the three Watchmen.”
Supernatural Beings
The Watchmen are Supernatural beings as well, seen on many Haida poles. In one old story, Jaalen shares, a guy goes down into an ocean village and the Watchmen climb down off a pole to warn their Chief that someone was coming. They’re protectors, he says. The brothers took their time deciding what colours to use on the pole.
“The three main Haida colours are the red ocher, the black and the blue. The blue comes from one spot in the river where we grew up food fishing,” Jaalen says. “That blue we used isn’t that pigment, but we would always go and gather pigment from there, Guuj really likes that colour, he’s used it on poles he’s done in the past, so we knew from the beginning he’d want it.”
The clan pole was inspired by Haida poles of the past. In their studies, they found a few model poles from the late 1800s that were “quite colourful.”
“They would definitely use the blue, red and black, the bodies more painted… where now we will leave more wood, often people like to see the wood,” Jaalen says. “A lot of people look at the old black and white photos and imagine poles with no paint, but you imagine coming into the village and seeing the poles from a distance, the paint helps to set off what’s going on… I think they were quite painted up back in the day.”
Studying the Old Ones
Jaalen has traveled near and far to museums, to visit Haida treasures, ancestors, including old poles. Many of them, he says, still have original paint.
“We’ve even seen some, and this would be post-contact, but where they’ve painted the beak yellow… they were using new colours, as they became available. Model poles were quite colourful… I was a bit against the yellow in the rainbow, thinking it might clash, but we mocked it up and it looked good.”
Because they decided to use the yellow, they wanted everything else to be colourful, he says, so the yellow wouldn’t stand starkly alone. Because of his father’s namesake and connection to the Chief Gidansda, also a carver, from the 1850s, Jaalen copied a moon he had done on a box that’s kept in a museum in New York. There are other elements they pulled in, like the hands on the sea grizzly bear and the wing, he says, that they borrowed from that pole stored in the boat shed they created some of their earliest memories.
“Whatever piece we’re doing, we’re studying the old ones,” he says.
Following the pole raising, Chief Gidansda and his clan hosted a potlatch at the Skidegate hall. He said part of the duty of a Chief is to keep the culture alive.
“We have to do these things once in a while so our culture thrives. When there’s a pole raising and a potlatch, everyone’s working together, the clan, other clans, dancers, the family — there’s a whole flurry of cultural activities before, during and afterwards. We’ve got to be doing something for our culture, always,” Gidansda says.
