Alert Bay

This excerpt is taken from my new e-book

On Foot : Islands of British Columbia and the Sunshine Coast

Alert Bay is a 40-minute ferry journey from Port McNeill across a very flat part of the Pacific Ocean although this benign water is due to the protecting influence of the much larger Malcolm Island which lies opposite Port McNeill. 

When the ferry arrived in Alert Bay I turned right and walked about six hundred metres to the Namgis Original Burial Grounds, where over a dozen totem poles are found on a mound overlooking the road and the seashore. The poles are plain with a few painted brightly. Visitors should under no circumstances go into the grounds themselves but view them from the roadside.

I returned to the Ferry Terminal and headed straight past towards the U’mista Cultural Centre, a distance of about 1.5 kilometres. First though I went to see the world’s tallest totem pole close to the Big House, just up the hill from the centre. A big house is where entertainment took place. The totem pole has no information and no indication as to its height. It is impressively slender and is well supported by three guy ropes and metal base supports. I went back to the cultural centre which has a long story to tell.

In 1922, some of the most treasured masks and ceremonial objects of the Kwakwaka’wakw were placed in the hands of museums in Canada, England, and the United States, taken away at a time of great sorrow when a law deemed the potlatch to be illegal. After years of effort, many of the confiscated treasures were successfully repatriated to their rightful owners, the Kwakwaka’wakw, and are now housed in the U’mista Cultural Centre. This is called’ The Potlatch Collection’.

A potlatch is a dance ceremony to tell stories and to show social changes such as birth, marriage, name giving, the election of a new chief and death. Potlatch means ‘to give’ in the Chinook language. In 1921, potlatches were illegal so when an Indian agent named Halliday and a police Sergeant Angerman caught a potlatch taking place, a large number of people were arrested, and the paraphernalia associated with the potlatch was confiscated. Halliday arranged to store the confiscated goods in the Anglican Parish Hall at Alert Bay. The goods were put on display there, and an admission fee charged. However, the collection soon began to be broken up. Halliday sold thirty-three pieces to a collector, Mr. George Heye, of New York. 

The greater part of the collection was divided between the Victoria Memorial Museum, later the National Museum of Man and now the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, selected some of the pieces for his private collection. A few of the pieces ended up in the private collection of Sergeant Angerman, and these items were later donated in 1926 to the National Museum of the American Indian in the USA.

The first real efforts to repatriate these objects were started in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when Chief Jimmy Sewid and others began to work towards the return of the treasures. The Board of Trustees of the National Museums Corporation agreed to return that part of the Potlatch Collection held by the National Museum of Man. In 1974 the U’mista Cultural Society was incorporated and the question of the location of the building was resolved by having museums built in Cape Mudge on Quadra Island and Alert Bay. By 1975, funding from the National Museums Assistance Program had been secured to assist with the construction of the U’mista Cultural Society’s facility. During this time, the ʼNa̱mǥis Band and the Cape Mudge Band were continuing to work out the details of the division of the collection. Eventually the negotiations led to the decision that the oldest living descendants of the original owners to the artifacts were to decide where they wanted their treasures held.