The Galapagos of the North — 150 endemic species, ancient Haida totem poles in abandoned villages, and one of the most intact indigenous cultural landscapes remaining in the Americas
Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) is an archipelago of over 150 islands off the northern coast of British Columbia — the ancestral territory of the Haida Nation, one of the most architecturally and artistically sophisticated indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. The archipelago sits at the junction of the North Pacific and the Dixon Entrance, creating an isolated evolutionary laboratory: 150 endemic species are found nowhere else on earth (the Haida Gwaii black bear, the Haida Gwaii saw-whet owl, 5 endemic subspecies of sticklebacks, the endemic Haida Gwaii ermin…
The Haida Nation has occupied Haida Gwaii for at least 10,000-12,000 years (archaeological evidence from the K1 site on Kunghit Island dates to 9,400 BCE) — the population before European contact was estimated at 10,000-15,000, organized into two moieties (Raven and Eagle), each divided into hereditary clans. The 19th century smallpox epidemics (1862 in particular, when a deliberate decision by Victoria's colonial administration to refuse vaccination to indigenous people and turn smallpox-infected indigenous people away from Victoria resulted in the epidemic spreading north along the entire c…