A New Gaagiixiid Story: Gwaai Edenshaw on Indigenous Language and Making the First Film in Haida

If there’s one thing that human beings enjoy more than storytelling, it’s being told stories. I’m Anishinaabe, and our stories are one of our most valued cultural assets—complex literary bodies laced with values and encoded with scientific and historical knowledge. As the stories were held in high esteem, so was the language used to transmit them, and when you add colors and light to those words, something wonderful happens.

Gwaai Edenshaw is a carver, jeweler, animator, storyteller, and filmmaker. He also serves as co-director (with Helen Haig-Brown) of Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife), which is shot entirely in Haida, a language that fewer than 20 people speak fluently. In advance of the film’s February 23 INDIgenesis screening, Edenshaw and I recently had a conversation about Indigenous language, its role in art, the process of creating modern Indigenous works rooted in tradition, and how it sometimes takes the efforts and talents of an entire community to make it happen.

Michael Wilson (MW)

What was your experience with language before this film?

Gwaai Edenshaw (GE)

I started in kindergarten at the time they started doing language at school, and they added a grade each year, so I was privileged enough to have Haida classes through my entire time in elementary school, but I never became a speaker myself. You know, I’d say that’s true for most of my generation, and the generations before and after me. That said, for everybody on the island [of Haida Gwaai, about 35 miles off the coast of British Columbia, Canada]—Haida and even non-Haida as well—part of our everyday speech includes some Haida. As part of a colloquial English, Haida has seeped in, in all kinds of places. It’s all around us, but still there’s not an easy option for an immersive experience.

Gwaai Edenshaw

MW

How do you think having Haida in this film might affect film’s place in your community as an art form?

GE

On the economic end of things, it’s a business that can help enrich our culture. We had all those weavers working, we had as many of the linguists as we could lift, we were hiring them to help do translations and coaching actors and all that kind of stuff. So, it’s an economic venture but one that doesn’t involve some kind of exploitation of our material resources. It’s not logging or fishing or anything like that.

And then there’s the social level. My brother and I, before this, we had been making small animations—little three-minute clips in stop-motion—all in Haida. And our idea there is that these things could even be playing in the background or broadcast on our community TV channel, so if there isn’t somebody speaking Haida inside of the house you could run these things as the white noise in your house and hear the Haida language being spoken all the time—a big aspect of learning is that immersive element, being able to hear language all the time.

MW

Edge of the Knife is a remarkable story, about how grief and madness turn a human being into Gaagiixiid, a wild man, and about the possibility of redemption. How was it created?

GE

We called upon all the stories that we knew collectively about Gaagiixiid and kind of shaped a universe. So it was me, my brother (Jaalen Edenshaw), Graham Richard, and Leonie Sandercock who came together to write this story, and we have these rules that we stand by. For instance, if we are telling a so-called “traditional” story, then we have to be faithful to it to the best of our abilities and the best of our knowledge. That’s because when people in the old days who were trained as storytellers, they would be told a story, and they would be sent back to the drawing board when they would retell it if they couldn’t retell it word for word. That just goes toward to the integrity of our oral history.

So we did that. We made a new Gaagiixiid story. But, in the process, my brother and I went through as many old texts as we could dig up that spoke about Gaagiixiid, going into the archives in museums and looking at what the masks might tell us. We also went to our dad and Diane Brown, who plays the Naanay in the film, and we were constantly bouncing the story off of her and other community members, as well. There was definitely a collective aspect to how that story came together.

Adeana Young as Hlaaya in Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown’s film Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife). Photo: Niijang Xyaalas Productions, © Isuma Distribution International

One of the things we held high when we were making the movie was the question: who are we making the movie for? We decided that the movie we were making was for Haida people. And we thought if we take a concept that’s common knowledge to Haida, but maybe not so common among other people, and kind of spell it out, to Haidas, it would come across as patronizing and kind of weird. So there are probably a lot of things that live inside the walls of the film that will remain mysterious to an audience. In retrospect, I think maybe that’s part of what people have liked about it, not just having every last little bit of it over-explained and having a little bit of mystery remain inside the story.

MW

Is there anything you’d like to share in parting?

GE

Today, there are more proficient Haida speakers than ever. We haven’t really, for years, developed new speakers in the school programs due to a lack of immersion programs. But one of our cast members was Ben Young, and he took it upon himself to go and live with his grandfather, and he’s probably the youngest fluent speaker, though he calls himself proficient. Jaskwaan (Amanda Bedard) helped with translations, and in particular she helped as we worked the script to make the three dialects agree and make sure they spoke to each other. That last area is where she really impressed me. I was amazed because I saw her enter as a new learner, and now she has this level of proficiency in Haida. And then there’s Dooley, a so-called silent speaker [someone who hears and understands the language well but does not speak it as much], who has been exercising his voice more and more. So I feel more hopeful than ever for our language.

Adeana Young as Hlaaya (left) and William Russ as Kwa in Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown’s film Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife). Photo: Niijang Xyaalas Productions, © Isuma Distribution International