Sealaska Heritage Institute: Yaadaas Clan Crest with Benjamin K’uyáang Young | Sealaska Heriatge

Hikta handlai destush ijin. Wagen, wagen ath kai gin lu yadas hath eyu di, di ijin. Plagwat awa, Gladys Morrison, di nano ijin. Khungs keis, Claude Morrison, di chinu ijin. Wáagán atstaang, Joylyn Young iskén Timothy Young diyaalin Luijin.

Hwaa. Hello, good people. I want to thank you folks for tuning in and for listening to this talk today. My name is Benjamin Young. My Haida name is Kwéyáng, and I'm Yak'wlanas.

From the village of Heidelberg. But even so, I was born Yadas, coming from the lines of Otstong, my mother Joylyn Young, and her mother Klawgwa Tawa, Gladys Morrison.

Even so, my father, my father is Timothy Young, and my maternal grandfather was the late Kungskeis Claude Morrison. Now, just to give a little background there, I was Yaadas up until I married my eagle wife, from which I became a raven, Deyoyale again. So just to give you the background there. Today I wanted to speak with you folks. I have the grand I have the grand distinct privilege of speaking to you folks about the Clan and Crest Project and kind of the rediscovery process that we follow.

And I wanted to talk about this as kind of the learning as a continuum. When I grew up, now, and this is kind of what we're taught as young children, we're taught, or we always ask this question, are you raven, are you eagle? And then you usually consult your mother, you consult your family, you consult your aunts, and you learn things bit by bit. I'm an eagle. And then sometimes, okay, I'm an eagle beaver.

Okay, I'm Yadás. That's my clan. I'm a Yadás. But then every single bit of identity that you come upon always breeds more questions, I should say. What does that mean to be that?

Does it mean the same thing to be Yaadas and to be Eagle Beaver? Do we have other crests? What are the restrictions there? Do we have permission to wear this as crests as early as a child? See, depending on who you speak with, you'll get different things.

For instance, even in my adult life, I learned that the old way of doing things would be For instance, children, especially young girls, would wear more floral patterns on their jewelry, and then when they became women, they would start wearing their crest designs. Things like this you pick up on that continuum. Do we favor any particular village or area? What do we have rights to? What are we responsible for?

What are we— what do we need to guard versus What do we share with other clans? All these questions come about, and us as a Haida Nation, us as, I should say, Southeast Native peoples even, we always find ourselves somewhere in that continuum. Growing up in Heidelberg, a lot of us knew what our moiety was, whether we were Raven or Eagle. If we were lucky, we knew a favoured crest that went along with that, for instance, Eagle Beaver. But if you were really fortunate, if you had living grandparents or if you had folks that really instilled it within you, you would know your clan, I should say.

And then furthermore, so a lot of us are kind of— could be stagnant for years in one of those stages.

And I couldn't be more thankful for some of the the more pivotal moments, the more paradigm shifts that happen within our nation. And one of those was brought about by Hootsinnskliz, Robert Davidson. Robert Davidson had what's called a gyasla, a giveaway, a good big potlatch that he was planning. And he got this inspiration to do a gyasla, or this giveaway, because he wanted to give each living clan a design, a banner, a large, let's say 6 by 10, it varied in size, but very large, very large banner for each clan to hold in their events because he wanted every clan to be identified if they were having, for instance, a funeral, a celebration, or a commemoration of some sort, he didn't like going to any kind of a community event without knowing, without being able to identify what clan that particular person was.

So he decided to give a clan banner to each one of the clans in Masset. Anskitigit on Haida Gwaii, and that was in 2016. Once he realized that it wasn't as well attended by the Alaskan group, he then made plans to have a, he then made plans to have a large Gyaasla in Heidelberg, which took place in 2018. Now he came to our village, to Hikta'andlaay, to Heidelberg on two different occasions, I remember, telling us to get ready and be prepared, kind of giving us notice.

He warned us that you don't really want to be stuck sitting down and confused when I call up your clan's name. You want to know who you are. And he begged the question, if you want to know that, who is your mother's mother's mother? And once you ask yourself that question, once you answer that, once you do your own history, you're going to have a better understanding of who you are and what you're about. So then as a community, we held these meetings and we said, okay, who is going to represent us?

This is who— this is how you find out who you are. Now it's time to— now it's time to push ourselves farther and deeper than just knowing what moiety we are, what moiety and favorite crest we are, or what our other crests are. What is our clan name, and who is our other family members in town, and who's our family members that have moved off but are still very much connected to us.

I was privileged to be able to be one of the co-MCs, one of the master of ceremonies for that Gyaas'la in 2018. So I was able to share the introduction of each one of the clan history, kind of a surface level kind of a surface-level job, but anything like that was an incredibly big deal for us. See, we've lost a lot of our older generation, kind of the pioneers of Heidelberg, maybe back in 2012, 2010, around those times. So that spawned a great legacy for identity development for all of us in Heidelberg, as well as Kasaan, and anyone that moved out to kind of the hubs of Ketchikan, Juneau, Anchorage, Seattle. That left quite a legacy for us because it was such a positive and fulfilling experience for all of us to really deepen, take a look inside and say, okay, who are, who are we?

Who have we always known ourselves to be? And let's not forget this again.

It's also, I should say, highlighted in the children's book by Sarah Davidson called Dancing with Our Ancestors.

It also left a legacy of, I should say, an identity reminder because we were able to get smaller banners of each of the ones that were handed out to each clan in each one of the Alaskan clans. We were able to give to the preschool, and we were able to hold— we were also able to hang them into the— in the gymnasium. So for each large event, people could look up and look up and be able to see and remind themselves of what was given out and which clan that they belong to. I'm here to talk to you folks about the Yadaz clan. Now, Yadaz "Yadá," I should say, is a verb that John Enrico translates as "high class." So, "Yadás" would be translated as "the honorable people." And to go even further, Yadás is a branch of a larger clan that came from Haida Gwaii called the Sts'uts.

Stistis is also known by a few names depending on how folks like to say it. I've heard it said Stastis, Stistas, and also Sungashlanis.

So that original clan, that original clan I should say, comes its name, the Stistis is a name given to the salmon eggs after young have begun to form. So a woman was the only one left of her tribe, and from her all the families sprang. So in that case, it's a name that highlights the survival aspect of that clan. And the Yaadas is known as— the Yaadas is known as the Alaskan branch of the Stustis. Even so, even so, if we go back, go back further, Henry Edenshaw said that his father, who was the chief of the Stustis, assigned two origins to his family.

A small part of them, including the chief, came down from the Stikine, what we call Stakan, whence was derived the name Edensa. Or glacier. But the majority came from the Nass. There are certain Tsimshian names among them today, for instance, Wea, a great wind, which are said, which is said also as one of the chiefly names that the Haidas have utilized in the past. But again, some of the Stas'tas proper went to Alaska in the Great Migration in the second wave that came to what would become Southeast Alaska.

Some of the most well-known chief names of the Yadas would be San'hat, San'hat, which is a Tlingit word. Some say meaning east wind. Others also say well-respected, so I'll have to get the— I'll have to ask some friends about that one. The Yadas principally came from, or their principal village was Kusam on the east coast of Prince of Wales Island, and how they got there, I had mentioned I had mentioned from the migration, or the second, I should say, the second wave of migration was largely documented and put forth by my great-grandfather, Kwan Da Jim Adenso. And he was interviewed by Dan Vaughn, who then my aunt, Lillian Pettville, my great-aunt Lillian Pettville, told this story.

And this is— so this is largely based on, on her portrayal of the story. But it kind of started— it started out with a Raven Clan, and that was the Kuitas. The Kuitas was kind of— were kind of a poorer clan on the northwest, or the northern coast of Haida Gwaii. They were a clan that didn't have access to much resources. Kwitas in the name means to eat mud, or mud eaters.

They were given that name because they dug up a lot of roots, they would eat certain barks, and it would stain around their mouths. So these Kwitas, although they weren't treated very well and they didn't have access to a lot of resources, in the ever-increasing populated portion of Haida Gwaii, they decided to make a move north. And when they moved north, when they moved north, it was early summer and they were able to make a safe passage all the way up to what would become Cordova Bay.

And stories of their prosperity and how much their livelihoods and how much their lives, I should say, improved, reached back to Haida Gwaii. So it got other clans talking. And in this migration story, it made other clans want to go and meet up with them and see if they could also prosper in this new land.

And in this case, the Yadaz people, so the Yadaz clan wanted to also make that voyage north, but they couldn't remember at that time when the Kuitas made their way up. So instead of going early summer, they actually went early fall, which brought about really really bad weather. And as they went north, they ended up getting blown farther east, so they didn't land in the same— and they didn't end up landing in the same area. The way my aunt put it, and I'll read a bit from Gathlingai, from her recorded history of it. At last, the Yadas were ready and they were starting to sail away, but they had a hard time.

The wind was blowing severely. The weather too was not good. In fact, it was really bad. Once in a while, the wind gave them a hard time. After they sailed a long time, they came near land and rowed to it.

They didn't know where they were. They landed at Cape Shacken, down on the sand, which would have been on Prince of Wales Island.

Now, so they pronounced Cape Shakun as the Spanish did. They started living up north of Cape Shakun, but the weather was really bad there as well, and it was like living at Masset, like living on the ocean side. When the weather was too tough for them, some of them went out looking, looking so they can move to another place. For a long while they looked, moving several times. When they got back to the wind, when they got back, the wind was so hard it made them run for safety.

They landed up the creek. They didn't like it much, but even then it was too stormy. It got cold with rain. They were getting desperate, so then they started building their house. They worked on the trees.

They started clearing the trees and the land too. While they were hurrying to make their homes, Raven used to fly around them. Once in a while in the mornings, he'd come there and he'd fly around above them. When he flew around above them, he'd call out, "Tots, tots, tots." That's the only thing he'd say. After he flew around above them repeatedly for some time, He'd fly away and then he'd return.

Once in a while when it was getting evening, he'd fly down once again. He'd always come from the same way. Then he'd fly down again the same way. And always when he flew around above them, he used to say, "Tots, tots, tots, tots." They finally realized what he was doing, flying back down the same way for this reason. They started to be curious about him.

Some men went running after him. When they got up towards the COVID they arrived at a creek. Really, they were just astonished. There were a lot of fish in the creek. It was so full with dog salmon.

They were really excited. They threw some into the canoe any old way. Some of the men threw them onto the beach too because they were happy. They were excited. They rowed back fast.

And they called to the ones at the camp. After that, those that were left behind in the house really worked fast. They prepared the smokehouse too. Hurry, hurry, they called to each other. Finish your smokehouse as you go along.

There were many fish, as was said. They all, the women too, were working hard. In the meantime, the men started transporting the fish. There were really so many dog salmon. They were working on them just as fast as they could go.

They were hurriedly cutting them up and they were trying to dry them. Meanwhile, some of the men were hunting, but they were most happy with the fish. Really, everybody was working for a while. Some of them were getting acquainted with different places. They— when they arrived, they have found that Cartabay wasn't far off from where they had landed, so they moved there.

This is what they called Kasaan. But later they found Dog Salmon Creek. They named it for what the raven used to say. They called it Tsawt's, and the place where they lived they called Tsawt's Choonee.

But now Eagle Creek is called Chomley. Now when fall fishing comes, when fall fishing season comes, there are lots of fish. They named the creek for the way the raven called, and when they settled at that place across from Tsát'shúnii too. Their chief, their leader, she didn't know what he died of. He died and they were living across from the small water that flows, a place with good ground and beautiful scenery.

It was there they buried the man. It is for him they named a small flowing creek, but she couldn't recall his name. Since then, they were— since then, when they dry their fish, they all moved to the place they found. It was Kasaan. They call it Old Kasaan now, but it was back at that time that people first moved to Kasaan.

The people were the Yaadas Haida clan. My people are Yaadas. From there, they moved to New Kasaan, but she isn't sure when. The reason I'm telling you this is because of the struggle of the Yaadas people. The Muddy Mouth people moved when it was near summer.

For this reason, things were good for them. But when the Yaadas people moved, it was becoming fall. When the Yaadas moved, it was such a struggle for them. The weather was bad and cold, and that's the reason— that's the reason I tell— I told you about the raven and how he saved them. The raven saved them at the place where it was first called Staatschuni.

When we tell stories in Haida, they're they're not really specific. The talk goes anywhere storytelling. And when because of the Raven, the Raven people's living conditions improved. As white people say, I will say to you folks, they didn't forget it. And then too, they always appreciate.

Kasaan land was nice, fish was plentiful, deer was near there. At Cartabay too, Sakai were near and plentiful. They made a good move, the Yadas people. Now I'll end at that spot as far as that story goes. Now that's how I think that was really important as far as just being grateful for the sacrifices, sacrifices especially that our clan made in order to make a better life for themselves.

Sacrifices and the hard work of survival that it took in order to actually tame the land and be able to utilize the land, especially when the weather was— especially when you're working against the weather in favorable conditions— in unfavorable conditions, I should say. The Yáad, now you heard me earlier talk about the Yáadás beaver. Or being Eagle Beaver.

The tsin, or the beaver, is one of the favorite crests, or I should say primary crests. And it wasn't until very recently that I figured out, or found out why and how we came upon the beaver as a crest. Crest. Now, this is— the beaver is actually one of the most favoured crests, or I should say most common crests, among Haida Eagles. Not only Yadas have it, but also it occurs 12 times as one of the clan crests of others within the Haida Nation.

So it's just as frequent as, for instance, the frog or the sculpin. Now, it is attributed, is attributed to a certain woman that was living on North Island. This is, this was highlighted by John Swanton. A woman of the Weeja Gitans, another Eagle Clan, while living at North Island, we call this K'ee'm, K'ee'sk'waii, of which the Alaskan Haida are called K'ee's. K'ee's haatai.

We got our name from North Island, K'ee'sk'waii. While living at K'ee'sk'waii, or North Island, this woman was captured by the Tsimshian and taken as a slave to Port Simpson. On her breast, she had a figure of a skate tattooed. And the son of a Port Simpson chief who had captured her, becoming attracted by this, ended up marrying her. Her children on the Tsimshian side form a small family, but some of them returned to their Haida relatives.

There, it does not appear that they constituted a separate division. So, from there, not only did they bring back the beaver, but they also brought back the hummingbird crest. From the mainland, or I should say from the Tsimshian territory.

So that being a very popular crest, like I said, 12 crests, or say 12 clans, also feature the beaver as one of their crests they utilize. Another explanation of how the Haida how the Haida people acquired the beaver crest is, I should say, less credible by the sources that I've talked to. It's Marius Barbos, and his information that he collected is usually said to be taken with a grain of salt. Even though it's a— even though, I should say, it's less trusted, I think it's I think more history is better than less, so I'll also explain how he thought, or what he put forth, the way in which the Haida acquired the beaver as a crest. He said that this is due to the beaver as a coat of arms having been introduced by the fur trade through the Northwest Company.

Whose emblem the beaver was. Beaver Hall was its headquarters in Montreal since about 1800. After the amalgamation of the North-West Company and the older Hudson's Bay Company, the new concern under the name of the Hudson's Bay Company maintained the use of the beaver as a trade emblem. Fort St. James in the Northern Rockies was established in 1908 by the Northwest Company. The Nass River Post was founded by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1831 and transferred to Fort Simpson, which later became Port Simpson, in 1833.

Fort Victoria as a center was established in 1843. The use of the beaver as a privilege to Native middlemen in the fur trade business was adopted soon after. These middlemen belonged to the very Eagle Clan that had assumed the same function further north within the earlier Russian fur traders.

So with that, why is this important?

Well, it's important because it connects us with the land, it connects us with the people, it connects my clan with a lot of shared history. From other folks, I should say, our other neighbors. And it tells me that we— it tells me of the struggle. It tells me of the sacrifice, things that I could look back at and be very grateful for the life that I'm able to live, that others are able to live, and the conveniences, I should say, that we enjoy today. But it also makes me reflect on how well acquainted, how well acquainted that we are as a people, as a clan, with our landscapes, with our neighbors, with the villages, with the land, air, waterways, as well as the animals that dwell in them.

I know there is a lot of other stories that could be told, and I'm hoping that this video brings about more. This is just the beginning, this isn't the end-all. I'm very humbled to be able to share this history, and I'll— and I could end with this: "Aztlugin gyahtlingas isandiyun tsidim." "Argent sud astina gum yakya anslu yakyi thik sudha, gen khwan dik gyasunda id hat ai thedeta." So, what I said is, "This is what I know to be right. If what I'm saying isn't the complete story or isn't right, then I'd welcome anyone to tell me more, to tell me more of the stories, more of our history, more of the truth as they know it.

Feel free to reach out and add to this, especially if you know any other details that I may have missed. I'm up for correction and I'm always willing to learn more. Di kil ha de lang giwa lang sen de lang an kil la awi agen. Hawa! Thank you for listening.