Advocate Jan 2014

THE ADVOCATE VOL. 72 PART 1 JANUARY 2014
127
ago, on one of our several journeys to Haida Gwaii, I fell into conversation
with the watchman at Ninstints. I remarked on the fact that a number of the
poles were in poor shape and a few lay on the ground. I let drop the incautious
remark that the Haida really ought to take better care of such priceless
artifacts. Wonnegon, the watchman, gave me a disdainful look and
launched into a gentle lecture on the subject. The gist of his philosophy was
that man is born, grows up, matures, spends a lifetime working and living,
ages, falls into decay and at last dies. So it is, he said, with the poles. It is
their destiny, like all things. All things, he emphasized: they are doomed to
thin away into insignificance and oblivion. It all depends on your point of
view. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
The plot of the writing of the opera is developed with great sophistication.
Alicia’s journeys to interview all the people who had known the anthropologist
and all of whom had struggled to unearth the reason for his unpredicted
suicide is a tale of a psychological enigma. It remains unsolved, just as the
reason for Wilson Duff’s suicide remains unsolved today, for he left no death
note behind and his death by his own hand took all his acquaintances and
his family by surprise. There appeared to be no reason for it. A theory is
developed that Hart (or Duff) became increasingly eccentric if not actually
psychologically disturbed and that he killed himself in the hope of being
reincarnated as Shawcross, the carver. Hart’s journals, which Alicia manages
to unearth in the provincial archives, have reference to Shawcross’s own suicide.
In fact Edenshaw himself committed suicide in 1920.
There are two minor sub-plots. One, running through the narrative like a
graceful countermelody, is the tale of two stone masks used in ritual dancing.
One mask has eyes through which the dancer sees; the other is blind.
One fits over the other. The masks are part of the famous mythical Haida
story “Raven Steals the Light”. Oddly, neither mask is Haida. The blind mask
was collected from the Tsimpshian village of Kitkatla and the sighted mask
from Metlakatla. Austin Hart is obsessed with the task of bringing the masks
together, as one is in Paris, and although the French do lend it briefly, they
won’t give it up at any price. The other mask and a replica of its mate can be
seen now in the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. The other sub-plot has to
do with a Haida rattle that has gone missing. This rattle, carved in the form
of a raven, is in fact now to be found in the Museum of Anthropology at UBC.
Bring Me One of Everything gets its title from instructions given by missionaries
to the Haida in the 19th century. They were bent on collecting
artifacts, some for their own collections, others to sell. In itself this creates
a little window on the witless arrogance with which the white man has
treated the natives of this country. We are still at it.