Raising Heritage: The Totem Pole Ceremony

In this narrated essay, writer Robert Moor journeys to Haida Gwaii, an island chain in British Columbia, for the anniversary of a historic agreement between the Haida Nation and the Canadian government that protects the landscape’s last remaining old-growth forests after decades of logging. As he walks through forest stewarded for generations by Haida, Robert begins to see the tangle of Sitka spruces and cedars, mosses and lichens, not as a site of slow decay, but of ongoing growth. How can being in the presence of ancient trees, he asks, help us feel, rather than intellectualize, not only the deep past, but also our responsibility to the future? 

Read the essay.

Discover more stories from our latest print edition, Volume 5: Time.

Artwork by Maurits Wouters.

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