Haida Filmmaker: Short Documentary
Friday, February 7, 2020 at 12:44PM Link below for a short documentary by Haida Filmmaker, Christopher Auchter
... two brothers carve their community’s first totem pole in nearly a century.
This film is part of a special Op-Docs series of short documentaries at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
In the late 19th century, the Canadian government outlawed the cultural practices of Indigenous people. Potlatches, a central ceremony where totem poles were raised, were banned in 1885. The ceremonies were driven underground, and totem poles — pillars of Pacific Northwest Indigenous culture — were destroyed or taken away.
The Potlatch ban was lifted in 1951, but many traditions were deeply affected.
Until 1969, that summer, 22-year-old Robert Davidson and his brother, Reg Davidson, led the carving of the first totem pole raised in their small Canadian town in nearly a century. As Haida people, they returned to their community a pole, monumental in scale and significance. A Haida renaissance had begun.
A 1970 film titled “This Was the Time” documented that occasion, but it left a lot unsaid. With access to the same archive, the Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter captures the legacy of that bold act of defiance in the short documentary above.
Virginia J. Vitzthum