Great Bear Rainforest awaits the lucky
HAIDA GWAII: Explore lush forests, islands and ancient totems
What’s the connection between German novelist Karl May and the village of Bridge River, B. C.? Chances are you have never heard of either, but the future of aboriginal tourism in B.C. looks great thanks to the long deceased (1842-1912) German writer. May set many of his novels in the old American wild west. As it turned out, May never set foot in North America but his books have sold over 200 million copies in Europe and still sell. Every German schoolchild has read May’s books and dreamed of cowboys and Indians. Millions of his fans are still crazy about this fantasy, and apparently many of them have recently discovered that British Columbia has its own wild west, especially in the Cariboo and Chilcotin.
Over the past few years many aboriginal leaders and entrepreneurs have discovered that German tourists (and French, Swiss, British and Australian) to B.C. love cowboys and Indians too. Dozens of aboriginal tourist operations have opened in the Interior, coastal and northern regions and Vancouver Island and are starting to gain global recognition, if not local. In Bridge River, just north of Lillooet, visitors to Xwisten Tours will discover that Indians lived in warm and cosy pit houses known as kekulis. In season, visitors can watch salmon netted in the mighty Fraser River and dried on shore as it has been for millennia.
At Hat Creek Ranch near Clinton on the Old Gold Rush trail, visitors can sleep in the obligatory teepee, although in fact only the Plains Indians slept in teepees. Coastal Indians slept in Long Houses, and Big Houses can be found and visited in many coastal communities from Alert Bay to Klemtu where dances and other native ceremonies can be witnessed and feasts enjoyed.
Cowboys in the fictional wild west may have come face-to-face with a grizzly, but chances are they never saw any 40-tonne humpback whales flying through the air or Orcas chasing marine mammals, or thousands of eagles gathered high in 100-metre trees waiting for the salmon run. The Great Bear Rainforest in particular has suddenly become something of a Garden of Eden attraction for those tourists lucky to make it there and perhaps search for the almost mythical Kermode or Spirit Bear, the rarest forest creature in the world. Lucky are those folks able to explore the lush forests and islands of remote Haida Gwaii, where today Watch Men stand guard over ancient totems.
The phenomenal art of the Pacific Northwest can be found in villages like Haida Gwaii’s Old Massett, where millions of dollars of worldclass sculptures shaped by master carvers are on the shelves, or the unique collection of masks at U’Mista at Alert Bay. Tourists who venture no further north than Whistler can treasure the Squamish/Lillooet Cultural Centre and its vast collection of artifacts.
Even closer to home, explorers can paddle a canoe with the Tsleil Waututh guides in North Vancouver’s Cates Park and in 10 minutes find themselves in the wilderness of Indian Arm. Not far from the bright lights of the big city there are 20 kilometres of isolated inland waters that few urban dwellers even know exist.
Estimates show that First Nations people have lived in British Columbia’s forests and along its shores for over 10,000 years. Their dwellings of wood have disappeared, their storytelling was told over the fire and not stored on computers or printed in books, but gradually the ancient culture of aboriginal tribes living in harmony with the land is being brought back through the interests and curiosity of foreign visitors. No doubt Karl May, who probably never heard of British Columbia in his lifetime, is smiling at the real success of what his fictions have created.