CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: Haida Gwaii Islands And Culture

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Lying roughly 100 kilometres off the northern coast of British Columbia, Haida Gwaii is an archipelago of some 150 islands, the two largest being Graham Island in the north and Moresby Island in the south. The islands are separated from the mainland by Hecate Strait, one of the shallowest and stormiest stretches of water on the Pacific coast. Because of this isolation, and because some scientists believe parts of the archipelago escaped the glaciers of the last ice age, Haida Gwaii is home to plants and animals found nowhere else, including a subspecies of black bear and a now-extinct caribou. This has earned it the nickname “the Galápagos of the North.” Today, most of the roughly 4,500 residents live on Graham Island, which is connected to Prince Rupert by a ferry crossing of about seven hours.

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The Haida have lived on these islands for at least 12,500 years. Traditionally, Haida society was divided into two main groups, the Raven and the Eagle, and children belonged to the group of their mother. Skilled seafarers, the Haida travelled in large canoes carved from single cedar logs and traded along the coast for hundreds of kilometres. The arrival of European fur traders in the late 1700s brought new wealth, but also disaster. Smallpox and other diseases reduced the population from tens of thousands to fewer than 600 by the early twentieth century, and the survivors gathered in two villages, Skidegate and Old Massett, which remain the main Haida communities today. In 2010, the islands’ colonial name, the Queen Charlotte Islands, was officially replaced with Haida Gwaii, meaning “islands of the people.”

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The Haida are known around the world for their monumental poles, carved from western red cedar. Contrary to popular belief, these poles were never objects of worship. Instead, they displayed a family’s crests, told its history, honoured the dead, or marked important events. Some mortuary poles even held the remains of high-ranking individuals in a box near the top. As villages emptied in the late 1800s, many poles were taken by collectors and museums around the world. The tradition was revived in the 1960s, and in 1969 the artist Robert Davidson raised a pole in Old Massett, the first in the village in nearly a century. Today, pole raisings are once again celebrated with feasts, songs, and dancing.

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The southern part of the archipelago is protected as Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site. Its creation followed a 1985 protest in which Haida members blocked logging roads on Lyell Island and dozens were arrested. In 1993, an agreement made Gwaii Haanas one of the first protected areas in the world to be managed jointly by a national government and an Indigenous nation, through a board with an equal number of members from each. The area includes SGang Gwaay, an abandoned village where weathered poles still stand, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With no roads, Gwaii Haanas can be reached only by boat or floatplane, and every visitor must attend an orientation session before entering.