In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,32
speaks:
We live off of this land. We fish and harvest seaweed. This is all we have. It defines who we are. If there’s a spill, who will look after us? Who will help us? What … what will we do?
She breaks into tears, and sits down sobbing. People gather to console her. The panel members stare uncomfortably. Another man reaches for the mic:
You people have no idea! Even with five or six tugs, those tankers are going to be in a lot of trouble in a storm. One spill would probably devastate hundreds of miles of coast. If that happens we’ll never see anything for it. This whole community, which has fended for itself for thousands of years, will then be standing on its last legs. We’ll be living off wieners and beans!
An uncomfortable murmur rises from the audience. The distraught panel members, who have been listening in stunned silence, thank the community for its hospitality and feedback before abruptly ending the meeting and scattering.
The strong sense of kinship in Bella Bella, the level of cohesion in the community, is new and astonishing to me as a city person who has spent little time in a small town. Within weeks I notice that everyone I meet is related or somehow connected to at least one other person I’ve previously met. Bella Bella’s human landscape turns into a vast web of interconnectivity. This latticework of relations extends to other nearby communities, and it dawns on me that everyone living on this section of coast is part of one large family.
There’s also an unusual synchronicity, or serendipity, at play here. It’s as if a kind of force, or an undercurrent, is constantly orchestrating coincidences. Often, when the name of someone I should speak to comes up during the course of my research, that same individual suddenly appears unbidden, and turns out to be connected to some other obscure story I’m pursuing, mentioned earlier by someone else. Or if a location comes up in relation to a Sasquatch report, I will hear more about that same place again and again in the following days, entirely by chance.
At first I considered these incidents to be random, isolated events of chance made more likely by the small size of the community. But now I think otherwise. Their frequency is uncanny. The connections that recur are often too vague and obscure to be coincidence. Also, Bella Bella is not that small. Despite all the people milling about in town, I still see and meet, on a weekly basis, only a small fraction of the overall population. By the time I leave I still will not have met most of the town’s residents. I seldom experience this kind of profound connectivity back home in the grind of the city.
This is underscored when I order lunch at Alexa’s Diner—Bella Bella’s only eatery—from a young server who is one of Alvina’s granddaughters. As I wait, I look through the window and watch as a funeral procession moves slowly by, led by a man and woman holding a wooden cross. A pickup truck follows, carrying a coffin and pallbearers. Crowds of mourners trail behind, heading in the direction of the government dock.
I spot Alvina coming out of the variety store that shares space with the diner. I call her over, and she sits down beside me, taking a quick break from her errands.
“What’s happening outside?” I ask.
“A young woman from the community died during a heart operation the other day. She’s being taken to Pole Island, where we have our graveyard.”
“The town seemed more crowded today. It must be people here for the funeral.”
“Not all of them,” she says. “There’s also a big three-day potlatch being put on by one of our chiefs in a few days. So the guests are starting to arrive.”
“A potlatch?” I’d heard the word before.
“It’s a gift-giving feast, a celebration of culture,” she explains, “put on by families on the coast to mark births, deaths, adoptions, and weddings—that sort of thing. It’s also a kind of economic system, where wealth, actual material items, will be distributed to the community, and where family business gets done. Potlatches are a big deal around here. Originally, in our culture, prestige and status didn’t come from who accumulated the most wealth but came from who gave away the most. The potlatch host is the one doing the giving.”
Alvina tells me the potlatch is being held in honor of the chief’s mother, who had died a short time ago. I