Short film celebrates return of totem pole raising in Haida Gwaii after a century of banishment
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2019 19:06:46 +0000
Burnaby filmmaker Christopher Auchter can now add the famed Sundance Film Festival to the list of events that have welcomed his short film Now is the Time this past year.
The 16-minute film tells the story of a totem pole raising in 1969 — the first one in a century — in Old Masset in Haida Gwaii.
Adding Sundance to a screening list that already includes TIFF, the Vancouver International Film Festival and a handful of other events was of course a cherry on the top of a great year for the Haida filmmaker. But what made the situation a little bit sweeter was the response Auchter got from a Sundance official when she told him Now is the Time is one of the 74 short films out of 10,000 plus submissions that made the cut for the prestigious Utah-based festival on Jan 23-Feb 2, 2020.
“The Sundance woman I talked to really liked the movie and she had never even heard of a totem pole or Haida Gwaii,” said Auchter. “The fact that the story still grabbed her is great. She said: ‘now I know quite a bit about totem poles.’ That was quite special to hear. That she found the story so compelling was amazing for me.”
Along with the contemporary images, animation and interviews that Auchter shot, the film incorporates really fantastic footage from Eugene Boyko’s 1970 NFB documentary This Was the Time that chronicled the carving and the raising of the pole. The new Auchter movie is the result of the NFB’s inactive to get Indigenous filmmakers to create works using the Board’s archives.
Front and centre in both the archival and modern footage is First Nations master carver and international art star Robert Davidson. It was he and his brother Reg, who at the time were 22 and 14 respectively, worked on the pole six days a week for three-and-half months. The pole, Davidson’s first ever, still stands in Masset these five decades later.
“It was really special to meet them and learn about their story and interpret it through this film,” said Auchter.
Twenty-two-year-old Robert Davidson and his grandfather, Tsinii, discuss the raising of the first totem pole on Haida Gwaii in over a hundred years.
That raising of the pole was considered a reawakening for the Haida people as many of the huge cedar poles that were all over Haida Gwaii a century and a half ago had been felled after missionaries deemed them sinful and tickets into hell. Government policies also allowed collectors and ethnologists to take poles away.
The pole raising attracted over 1,000 Haida people from the Raven and Eagle clans. Many of the elders that attended were wearing paper headpieces as their traditional wood-carved ceremonial masks, and most of their other artwork, had disappeared or was destroyed.
“There was really a void, but I didn’t know the scale of the void,” says Davidson in the film about the loss of art.
Haida elders gather to celebrate the raising of the first totem pole on Haida Gwaii in over a hundred years. The destruction of the community’s totem poles was part of the systemic obliteration of Haida songs, ceremonies, and culture that had occurred over the previous decades.
“I didn’t realize how much ceremony was connected to the art until that moment,” says Robert Davidson in the film.
For the Davidson’s the carving of the pole was very much a deliberate act that managed to draw out the community’s history.
“Their part was carving the pole and once they started doing that the elders in the community stepped in and started doing their part which was doing the potlatch and figuring out how to raise the pole,” said Auchter. “They were all trying to piece together pieces of knowledge that each other had from their grandparents or parents — the songs the dances.
“The pole was so important not just because it was a big pole but because of all the things it triggered in the songs, the dances and the potlatch (which was made illegal in 1884 and repealed in 1951 but still remained very rare). The protocols,” added Auchter. “It was like the keys to the ignition that started the engine again in terms of the Haida culture and the arts. It was so fascinating how everything was linked together.”
Filmmaker Christopher Auchter’s new short film Now is the Time has been accepted into the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Photo: Tracy Auchter
The 39-year-old Auchter — his Haida name is Waats’daa — grew up in Haida Gwaii but he didn’t grow up with this story.
“There’s this shock that I didn’t know about this story,” said Auchter whose Raven clan is called Yahgulanaas. “The bear mother pole, is always there but how come I didn’t know about this? It seemed like such a big moment for us. I just thought it would be a story that would be talked about more. Whether it is in our school or around our kitchen table.
“What was so fascinating was unearthing the story, all of the story, and being able to share,” added Auchter.
Festivals aside the film, that is also part of the NFB’s educational kit.
Now the film will get to touch a wider audience with its upcoming Sundance run on Jan. 26-28 and Jan. 31.
“For me personally it was such a gift to spend this time to learn this part of my history and then be able to share it,” said Auchter. “I also tried to do it in a way that brings not just the Haida community in, but do it in a way that it will bring in other people, other groups within Canada and now in the U.S. and hopefully beyond. So it’s not just an inside story. So it is a story of hope, resilience. A happy story.”
Auchter, who is a talented animator (The Mountain of SGaana is an award-winning film he wrote, directed and produced), is currently working on a graphic novel/Haida manga book called Noble One.
“It’s an old Haida story that explains why there are earthquakes on Haida Gwaii,” said Auchter, who is also planning more work in film.
“I am looking forward to directing a new film again shortly but exactly what is, is still being formed.”