The land in Hydaburg, Alaska, on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, looks very much like the terrain around Vancouver. Lots of bays, islands, rocky coastline, heavily timbered… a temperate rainforest. It rains more than Vancouver.

The man I interviewed is the lively storyteller and lawyer Woodrow Morrison Jr,  (Haida names also – Kaawan Sangaa) known to most as “Woody”. He is of the two-headed eagle clan (Ts’etl ‘alaanaas). When he was growing up there were twelve women of his mother’s generation in her clan. To him, they were all called dii awaa (my mother). Their children were all his brothers and sisters. The brothers of the elder women were his uncles, while Woody’s father (Glaadaay) was a two-finned killer whale, and a Raven (Yawk ‘alaanaa. The people of the clan used to stick together – helped one another whenever they needed it.

“I know where our territories are. Our salmon streams, our berry picking areas,” he tells me. “We all knew where our territories were”. He describes to me how he ran into a lot of resistance upon trying to teach people about it. A clan, he reaffirms with me, gives a person a sense of belonging.  You know where you fit.

To him, the concept of personal property, money and individualism threaten pre-contact clan orientated ownership of the land and finding our individual tribal identities.

Yet, Woody has faith that anything lost can be reclaimed. “I think there is hunger in people to know some of these things, but they are afraid of it. Assimilation happens when people believe the power is somewhere else other than inside themselves;  that it rests with some other group. My uncle said, :all you have to say is, I’m Haida.”and feel the strength of that inside yourself.”