On Small Islands Off Canada’s Coast, a Big Shift in Power

The Raven, the story goes, alighted on the beach and heard sounds coming from a giant clamshell. He found creatures cowering inside but, ever the trickster, he cajoled them out into the world. Liberated, they became the first people of the islands of Haida Gwaii.

The Haida people have lived for thousands of years on Haida Gwaii, a remote archipelago in the Pacific Ocean off Canada’s western coast, just south of Alaska.

Nearly wiped out by smallpox after the arrival of Europeans, the Haida clung to their land — so rich in wildlife it is sometimes called Canada’s Galápagos, coveted by loggers for its old-growth forests of giant cedars and spruce.

For decades, despite their geographic isolation, the Haida’s unwavering fight to regain control over their land drew outsize attention in Canada, raising questions about the country’s long unacknowledged, brutal colonial history.

The Haida opposed clear-cut logging, building ties with environmentalists. They forged alliances with non-Haida communities at home and found common cause with other Indigenous groups across the world.

The raven is central to the foundation myth of the Haida people.