Haida Gwaii may have been a stepping stone for the first Americans
Off the coast of British Columbia lies an archipelago of about 400 islands where people have lived for 13,000 years. Archaeologists think its then-dry coastline may have guided the first migrants south from the Bering Strait. In 2010 it shed its colonial name, the Queen Charlotte Islands, and became Haida Gwaii.
The name means islands of the Haida people. Two large islands dominate: Graham Island in the north and Moresby Island in the south, together with hundreds of smaller ones covering 10,180 square kilometres. The archipelago sits between 55 and 125 kilometres off the mainland, across the shallow Hecate Strait, with Alaska to the north beyond the disputed Dixon Entrance. During the last ice age it was probably not an island at all but joined to Vancouver Island and the mainland by a continental shelf now underwater, which is why it features in theories of a Pacific coastal migration route.
British explorer George Dixon named the islands after Queen Charlotte in 1787. The Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act of June 3, 2010, restored the Haida name as part of an agreement between the province and the Haida people. In 2024 British Columbia went further, transferring title over the islands and recognising Haida aboriginal title throughout the archipelago. The Council of the Haida Nation, founded in 1974, pursues self-government.
European contact in 1774 was catastrophic. The population then stood at roughly 30,000, but smallpox alone is estimated to have killed ninety percent of people during the 1800s, the 1862 epidemic claiming over 70 percent of Haida. By 1915 only 600 remained, and villages were abandoned. Today about 4,500 people live on the islands, and the Haida make up 45 percent of them, concentrated in Skidegate and Old Massett. UNESCO added the old village of Ninstints, on Anthony Island, to its World Heritage list in 2006.
The south of Moresby and nearby islands form Gwaii Haanas, a national park reserve and heritage site of temperate rainforest and mountains reached only by boat or seaplane. The San Cristoval Mountains there bear a name Juan Pérez gave them, older than any other European label still used along that coastline. Wildlife includes many endemic subspecies, such as the Haida Gwaii slug, sole member of its genus. The economy blends logging, fishing, art and growing tourism, anchored culturally by the Haida Heritage Centre.
Source: Haida Gwaii
