It is a story too often told throughout history; the new culture, more powerful in numbers, in technology, in some form of power, moves in and attempts to subdue the older culture. Generally it does. But sometimes...
So it was here. For many years, the Canadian government, with the best of intentions, told the Kwakwaka'wakw people that they must give up their culture. Through schools, the government had tried to break the younger generation of using their own language, of learning the old ways, to become assimilated into the dominant culture. The potlatch, a core element of "the old ways", had been driven underground. Finally, seventy-odd years ago, the government put its foot down and arrested many potlatch participants. Those who turned in their regalia and promised not to do it again were given suspended sentences. Those who would not, went to prison. And all the regalia, in particular a large number of dance masks, were seized and either sold into private collections or donated to museums.
But the Kwakwaka'wakw did not assimilate. A generation passed and the people awoke from their slumber. Quietly, the young people began to learn their language again from the elders. Then a new Big House was built. The people negotiated for the return of their precious masks, ceremonial regalia and other seized pieces of their heritage from the Canadian government. It was promised to them once they had a proper museum to house it all. So the Kwakwaka'wakw built a museum. A special place to hold a special past that becomes part of their present and future. And they named it U'Mista, a word used in connotation of a person returned after being captured by a foreign raiding party and carried off into slavery.
Today we visited the museum and the Big House, heard the people speaking to one another in their native tongue and watched the children dance. The T'sasata Cultural Group of Alert Bay's Namgi's Tribe of the Kwakwaka'wakw includes a dance group, another way for the young people to grow into their culture without having to completely divorce themselves from the dominant culture of which they are also a part. "Out here," I once heard, "I'm both Indian and Canadian. But in there," he nodded toward the Big House, "I'm pure Kwakwaka'wakw."
Physicists speculate that there may be many parallel universes. Here, at Alert Bay, I find the concept easy to believe, even as I find it equally easy to believe that living in two universes requires additional energy and understanding.
