SG̱ang Gwaay Llnagaay (Ninstints)
Ninstints
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The Haida name SG̱ang Gwaay Llnagaay means "Red Cod Island Town", after the Haida name for the island itself.
- In 1957 a salvage team that included the Haida artist Bill Reid sawed down several poles and shipped them by navy vessel to museums in Victoria and Vancouver.
- Only the carved upper sections of some poles were taken in 1957, while their plain lower trunks were left standing at the village.
- A mortuary pole removed in 1957 was returned to the Haida Nation by the University of British Columbia in 2019.
- Haida mortuary poles were raised upside down, with the tree's base at the top, hollowed out to hold a bentwood box containing the remains of a high-ranking person.
- Chief Koyah, after whom early traders named the village, clashed with more ship captains than any Haida chief of his day; his people seized the brig Ino in 1794.
- Despite the violent encounters, traders kept returning to Koyah's territory in the 1790s because of the quantity and quality of its sea-otter furs.
- Thomas Price, the last chief born at the village, became a celebrated Haida carver, particularly admired for his work in argillite.
- SG̱ang Gwaay is the earliest recorded village in the southern part of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago people have lived on for at least ten thousand years.
Why it is worth it
On a sheltered bay of a small island at the southern tip of Haida Gwaii, weathered cedar poles lean out of the rainforest above the shore, their carved faces softened by moss and rain. This is SG̱ang Gwaay Llnagaay, the village long known in English as Ninstints — the largest group of Haida totem poles still standing where they were raised, among the remains of the great cedar longhouses they once fronted. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981 and is a National Historic Site of Canada.
The village sits on the east side of Anthony Island (SG̱ang Gwaay in Haida), just west of and facing Kunghit Island, and was one of the southernmost and most secluded of the major Haida settlements. People lived here from at least the 4th century AD, and the island lies within the territory of the Kunghit Haida, who held the southern end of the archipelago in some two dozen villages. Haida testimony recorded by the ethnographer John R. Swanton counted about twenty longhouses here. The English name comes from Nan Sdins, the most powerful of the village's chiefs in the mid-19th century; ship captains of the time habitually called villages after their leaders, and earlier traders had known the place as Koyah's, after a previous chief.
European ships arrived with the maritime fur trade: George Dixon traded here for sea-otter pelts in 1787, followed by Charles Duncan, Robert Gray and John Kendrick, whose visit in 1789 turned relations hostile. Through the 19th century disease devastated the village, above all the smallpox epidemic of 1862, and by 1878 the last residents had moved to Skidegate. What remains — house pits, fallen beams and mortuary and memorial poles — is now looked after by Haida Watchmen within Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site. By Haida choice the poles are left to return slowly to the forest rather than being preserved against decay.
Getting there
SG̱ang Gwaay lies at the far south of Haida Gwaii, off the north coast of British Columbia, and is reached only by sea or by air from the communities in the north of the islands. The nearest airport is Sandspit Airport (YZP), about 135 km to the north. On the mainland, Terrace lies about 320 km away across Hecate Strait.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
SG̱ang Gwaay Llnagaay, commonly known by its English name Ninstints, is a village site of the Haida people and part of the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site on Haida Gwaii on the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada.
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