| STORY FROM THE YAKOUN No.4 ISLANDS SPIRIT RISING GWAII SGAANAWAAY SIIGAA IJAA It has been nearly two weeks since I last visited Yakoun Camp and I don’t really know what to expect. Two weeks ago, the checkpoints were still up. People were pulling long shifts and showing signing of fatigue. Storms had rendered the campsite wet and mucky. Moral was still high, but time was taking its toll. Now, a fortnight later, a deal was in the works, the checkpoints were letting everyone through. I expect camp to be quiet with a skeleton crew of two or three holding the fort, passing time best they can. Sleeping, playing cards, doing chores, waiting for the deal to be done. Boy, was I wrong. First of all, the crew isn’t in camp. They are still on the line, which has become something of a second home over the last six weeks. And there isn’t just a skeleton crew, the line is fully staffed. True, the checkpoint has gone soft, as the boys have brought in a nice green pleather couch, which sits at the edge of the road and is currently home to a sleeping puppy. The crew doesn’t have much time to sit on the couch, for far from sleeping or playing cards, they are as busy as the mosquitoes surrounding us. A gorgeous cedar hat sits on a table, just completed and more cedar bark strips are prepared, ready to be woven. Cedar masks and argillite carvings are in various stages. The crew is also building an honest to goodness forge, so they can make their own atzes. But what really catches your eye, the objects you can’t miss when you drive up, are two cedar canoes, eighteen footers or so, being carved right there. But that’s not all. There’s more. We make our way a few miles up the road, walk through a clearcut, always a nice experience, till we get to the edge of the forest. Here the crew has started and is well towards completion of a 36 foot canoe. The lines are already gorgeous. It’s a big job, with a crew of four hard at work. It’s a hot day, there’s not much of a breeze and the canoe needs to be covered with wet cloth to keep it from cracking. It is an amazing sight to see the emergence of this canoe from what was once a tree. All three canoes are built from blowdown, victims of the industrial logging process |
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