In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,33

ask her if I can attend.

“Everyone’s invited,” she says, before giving me a penetrating look. “Maybe a chance for you to take a break from all your Sasquatch snooping and learn something different about us for a change.”

For three consecutive days, Bella Bella is taken over by the feast, which draws many spectators to the bleachers and floor of the town’s gymnasium. I arrive during a break on the first day, just moments before the organizers lock the doors for what they say will be a sacred observance.

Singers and musicians, sitting around a long, polished cedar log, begin to stir. An eerie whistling of reed instruments rises like the distant hooting of faraway steam locomotives. Shakers come alive, rattling along with the rumbling and prattling of drums that follow in their wake.

The murmuring audience goes silent.

Then heavy drums and wooden mallets on cedar explode in thunderous unison. The harmony of chanting male voices fills the gymnasium. A line of four men, Heiltsuk elders, dressed in black and wearing red cloaks with animal motifs etched in sequins, emerges from behind a large drapery with an illustration of a thunderbird grappling with a whale. The men’s cloaks jingle with copper as they march piously, methodically, and with heavy hearts toward a denouement, enrapturing the audience. A large, towering young man holding a rattle—the master of ceremonies—leads them.

A guest sitting beside me, a woman from Quadra Island, tells me that the audience is hugely important in a potlatch, as its members not only bear witness to the proceedings but also are an indication of the importance and influence of the family holding it. The larger the audience, the more powerful and prestigious the family.

Canada banned the ceremony in 1884 as part of its policy of assimilating indigenous people and alienating them from their cultures. Potlatch materials were confiscated from their owners and scattered among museums and private collections. Indigenous people caught with potlatch regalia, or practicing the tradition, were imprisoned. But the potlatch merely went underground, where it was practiced clandestinely for three generations before the law was struck quietly from the codes in 1951 (but not officially repealed). Because of this needless persecution, an air of secrecy and sensitivity pervades the tradition to this day.

Events in this potlatch run rapid-fire, back to back, each day between morning and midnight: Sacred mourning hymns for the deceased. The distribution of gifts. Origin stories. The bestowal of formal Heiltsuk names—once owned by others who had since died—upon new honorees. There is the “showing of the copper,” in which the potlatch host’s family members sing while parading a large shield of hammered copper as evidence of their rights and privileges.*

The centerpiece drama common to most Northwest potlatches is also one of the most sacred. The Hamatsa, also known as the redcedar-bark dance or the cannibal dance, takes numerous forms and reenacts the story of the meeting and spiritual combat between a Heiltsuk ancestor and the man-eating cannibal spirit of the north, the Baxbakwalanuksiwe, whose earthly representatives, four enormous birds, fight to take the soul of the ancestor.

But the most poignant and moving event at this potlatch, to me, is the masked dance of the deceased. Here the spirit of the woman who has died—for whom the potlatch is held—returns to the material world one last time to say good-bye to family and friends before taking her final place in the abode of the ancestors.

The four chiefs and the master of ceremonies cross the gymnasium floor, disappearing behind a door. The chanting stops, but the drums and shakers rattle on, getting louder and louder, stoking the attendants’ anticipation. After a long time, the door finally opens. The master of ceremonies is the first to step out, shaking his rattle. The drumming and singing again erupt. All eyes fall upon a masked woman who appears behind him: the spirit of the deceased. She is small and frail, wearing a black cape, moccasins, and a kerchief that covers her hair. Behind her is another young man rattling a shaker. Trailing them all are the four elders.

The audience falls into a reverie. The chief hosting the potlatch and his family standing on the sidelines are beside themselves with awe and grief. The spirit treads ever so slowly over the floor. The palms of her hands are held close to her chest. She is shaking to the sound of the rattles, taking tiny steps, while stopping to bend her knees every so often. As she moves, she is constantly looking at