The ancients around Hanson Island 1,000 years ago have been found cultivating specific trees to furnish the carvers of today. Tradition was to use the forest as a garden, creating excess raw material for cedar products.
Cedar bark was harvested in a transgenerational' context as discovered by archaeologist David Garrick. He discovered how First Nations made cedar trees grow excess bark.
Garrick's work began in 1982, and it so happened that by 2004 a group of First Nations had recovered jurisdiction over most of Hanson Island, because of the anthropological riches found in Culturally Modified Trees.
During Garrick's tenure of study on the island it came to pass that CMTs provided scientific resources and proof of Aboriginal Rights and Title.
A hidden code of forest practices were uncovered in the study of transgenerational management, however, it is important to note that later management of forest resources co-existed.
Industrial foresters and Aboriginal practitioners had no barriers to sharing forest resources until about 1930, says Garrick.
An archaeological timeline shows that before the culture shock took form (residential schools, banning of potlatchs, et al), arrival of industrial foresters was not unwelcome to a degree.
The industrial foresters cooperated taking a few trees from Yukusem (Hanson Island) groves. Garrick's timeline reports they apparently left most of the CMT cedar untouched.
The cedar shapers continued working with their resources in specially managed (and closely regarded and cultivated) patterns.
If two management paradigms co-existed, soon an exercise of government policies alienated the First Nations from jurisdiction over cedar shaping activities in their culture.
From such time as government policies were introduced until Yukusem Heritage Society was formed in 2004, Yukusem cedar groves were facing dire consequences. Garrick's archaeological study was the only thing standing in their way.
"I am the land and resource officer of the Namgis First Nation," said Harry Alfred, one afternoon in a garden on Yukusem. Alfred described how the people have rebounded because of Garrick's work in these groves.
Cultural energy has burst from the CMT research, and in a way people have regained cultural balance. A new energy has been born from the old secrets.
Harry Alfred and Don Svanvik sit on the Yukusem board of directors on behalf of the Namgis First Nation. Two other Bands share jurisdiction over Hanson Island (Tlowitsis and Muntagila).
Alfred and Svanvik have become CMT experts within their communities. "The Namgis Nation," said Harry, "comprised about 4,000 km." With a sweep of his arm Alfred described a rectangular shaped territory with Yukusem sitting almost at the centre.
Under their guidance Beau Dick is building community facilities on the south west quadrant of Yukusem to teach people the meaning of the old ways.
Beau Dick described how one social organization took people into the 'silvan wilderness' and constructed hand-made canoes.
It is known that canoes were constructed in the available cedar groves. These were often the same areas containing other food or health or community-based resources.
A technically superior watercraft took people back and forth between communities and to fishing grounds throughout the nations.
Social units acting upon those trees 500 to 1000 years ago turned around to adorn their homes and lives with cedar products.
Today the communities of old exist in the forest floor, often in the
immediate surroundings of the 'etchings of harvest' found in ancient cedar trees.
The canoe project Beau Dick's and he is a Kwakwala carver of renowned ability raised in Kingcome Inlet, B.C. (an obscure postal code). Beau Dick grew up within a Big House society still standing in the splendour of its generations.
Kingcome Inlet represented a miraculous survival where traditionalists had dodged a lot of bullets, both literal and figurative, through many previous decades.
Beau Dick learned to carve from his grandfather and father and the teaching contained the hidden meanings of a unique form of artistic expression.
Life goes on, yes, and Beau Dick, who is a realist, knows this. He is restoring something historically significant to the nation about using the old secrets of cedar forest management under First Nation jurisdiction.
On the southwest quadrant of Yukusem he is staging a canoe carving project and building a cultural camp to teach people the old ways about sharing a forest in a transgenerational and environmentally sustainable way.
