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Vanishing Cedar = Vanishing Totems
The whirring of chainsaws in the coastal forests of British Columbia is putting this rich tradition at great risk. In, A Vanishing Heritage: The Loss of Ancient Red Cedar from Canada’s Rainforests (PDF, 2MB), the David Suzuki Foundation and the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee documents how old-growth cedar trees are being cut at unsustainable rates to bolster revenues in the BC coastal logging industry. We talked with renowned Haida artist Jim Hart, whose poles and carvings tower in the Grand Hall of Canada’s Museum of Civilization. He told us that cedar is essential to First Nation’s culture along the coast. "The cedar tree has kept us alive for many thousands of years. We use it for clothing, canoes, housing. In return, the Native peoples of the North West Coast have always treated the cedar tree with the greatest of respect." First Nations artists are having increasing difficulty locating high-quality cedar for their imposing totems and other artwork. "At this rate, old-growth cedar will logged to extinction in the near future. This is wrong," says Hart. Mr. Hart has carved nearly 20 poles, the tallest of which has over 55 feet of carved surface. In 1982, he completed and raised the first traditionally erected pole at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, and in 1988 supervised the construction of the Haida House in Canada’s Museum of Civilization. To carve his totem poles, Mr. Hart needs tall, straight, densely-grained, old-growth cedar. "I want my children, and their children’s children and down the line to keep on with our deep connection to the cedar tree, which is so important to all of us, our lands, Native and non-Native alike. We can’t let the cedar disappear from our forests." Removing large quantities ancient cedar also has an adverse effect on the entire forest ecology and on species - like grizzly bears and salmon - that need old-growth rainforests to survive. A Vanishing Heritage concludes that cedar trees are falling at a rate 50-200 per cent higher than the natural species mix in most of the forest districts studied. The logging of cedar is especially disproportionate on the mid-coast, where over the past two years 40 per cent of logging sites have been located in old-growth cedar areas, although cedar represents only 13 per cent of the forest cover. To avert the loss of old-growth cedar, A Vanishing Heritage recommends:
Click here to read this report.
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Can you think of a symbol of Pacific Northwest First Nations that is more immediately recognizable than the totem pole? These monumental carvings are known worldwide for their beauty, sophistication, and their representation of the relationship between traditional culture and the surrounding rainforest.
