[MUSIC PLAYING] I was so naïve on the idea. It was all new. I asked Nonnie, were there any totem poles raised in the village in her lifetime, and she said no, and she was born in 1895. [SAWING] Today, there are few carvers. This boy may be one of the last. I saw the old totem poles at the museums, and I saw them in photographs, and I’d come home and there was nothing. This village here, right from the way down this end of the town right through here, totem pole. Lot of it, in my time, and up in the other village, the same way. Ministry says, if they don’t get rid of these totem poles, you never go to heaven. That’s what the minister told the Indians. So they want all Indians get together, cut all the totem poles down, and burn them up. Cut them all down, cut them in, oh, about, oh, four-foot lengths, something you can lift. And cut them all up, and split them, and make big fire and burn them. I used to help too. I wanted to go to heaven. Our children heard the song before they were born, Haida singing. I didn’t hear any Haida songs until I was 16. I would go and visit the elders, and they seemed really kind of not connecting to anything. And I could feel the sadness, and I wanted to create an occasion for them to celebrate one more time. That was the moment I committed to carving the totem pole. After I made the commitment to carve the pole, I had no idea in what was involved, and I remember getting a phone call from my dad. He said, “I found a log for you.” I said, “Oh, yeah, right. I need the log.” And I remember not even wanting to look at the log. I was so terrified. And I said, “Holy shit” when I saw the log. I didn’t know how to work on that scale. I was only carving argillite totem poles then. Think of how bland it would be if we didn’t know how to dance, we didn’t know how to sing, we didn’t know how to carve poles. We need those kinds of things in our life, and they’re gifts to everybody. On one of my trips back home, I knocked on every door in the village in Masset to see if there was anything left from the classical period, see if anybody had anything. And that’s when I found one storage box. When I saw it, I was just blown away by it, and I took it home, and I — I put it beside my bed and slept with it. I was so taken by it, by having this one object that survived this whole dark period. There was really a void, but I didn’t realize the scale of that void. When I learned to carve, I just learned from Robert. He made it easier. He visited all the elders. They taught him the songs and dances. He taught us. He offered me $15 a day. [LAUGHING] I mean, I was 14 years old. That’s a lot of money, right? Working on the pole was a pretty amazing experience for me, just ’cause it’s all new to me. It’s grasping to learn of our culture. These are Raven rattles. I had a dream about Raven rattles. We use them in our Raven dance, and they just move. [CLACKING] Spirit of Gossip. Gaagiit is a supernatural being. Tsinii talked about Gaagiit as a person whose spirit is too strong to die. I like to equate our spirit as being too strong to die, and that’s — that’s why we’re still here. There was a couple of people that were saying, “Why do you want to bring those old things back?” That really just came from pain. The pain that they went through. I mean, I cried when I heard that. But it didn’t stop us. And those same people were there celebrating with us. Ho! Heave! The village is made up of two clans, Eagle and Raven. To do this traditionally, either an Eagle clan has the pole raising, or Raven clan. I wanted the whole village to get involved, and the only way to have that is to have both clans working together. Old Masset, it’s just like a beehive. Everybody from the different clans has their work to do, like the old days. I remember being one of the pullers on the rope, and Tsinii was there guiding us. He said, “Robert, that totem pole doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to them.” So I — I stepped back. There was a construction crew there, and they had a crane, and they offered to raise the pole with their crane. And I mentioned it in one of the meetings, and they said, “No, we’re going to do it the old way.” I didn’t realize how much ceremony was connected to the art until that moment. My grandparents and their generation coming together, and they all told stories, and from those stories, that became the recipe for the pole raising. [INDISTINCT ANNOUNCEMENT] Uncle Victor said, “Robert, Tsinii wants to talk with you.” So Tsinii said, “You have to get the tools now and start the ceremony.” [CHANTING] When I was chanting, I was in a different realm. And it also marked the completion of the pole. [INDISTINCT ANNOUNCEMENT] [CHATTER] Ho! Heave! I felt really good. I just thought, you know, every time they raise the pole, say about another six inches to a foot, and then they braced it, I thought it was just going to come back down and just fall. Ho! Heave! Pull, Eagles! Pull! Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho! Heave! [DRUMMING AND APPLAUSE] [DRUMMING] I think it was a good thing. I think it’s one of the highlights in my life. And yet the sorrow in knowing that, possibly, it’s gone for good. We’re trying to pick up something and hold on to it, but there’s maybe not enough to hold on to. You know, it was ground zero. Couldn’t have been timed any better. Some of the old people showed up — [CRYING] There was Tsinii. He had a toy drum. And some of the old people showed up with paper headpieces. When I talk about ground zero, it couldn’t go any lower because of the laws that governed us, the beauty, and our will to participate in ceremony, participate in our song and dance, the very thing that fills the spirit. [MUSIC PLAYING] Three generations, and they could work together and make it happen. We’re so lucky that they were there. [SINGING AND DRUMMING] The pole was important because it was a deliberate action. It was deliberate bringing back of those — that part of our life. The carvers at home sitting and carving the argillite — it was watching my great-grandmother put old blankets on the windows so that people couldn’t see in, and they’d sing the old songs and play the drum. All of that, not just the pole. I didn’t think of it as a start of something. I just saw it as a celebration for the old people. [APPLAUSE] You know, I was just a young smart aleck kid thinking I was going to teach elders something. [LAUGHING] But it turned around. It was the other way around. [SINGING AND DRUMMING] [MUSIC PLAYING]