It’s low tide and I’m standing among golden kelp and jagged rock pools looking up at Taaw Tldáaw. The massive slab of basalt erupts from the middle of the seemingly infinite beach, its sheer facade draped with moss and its clifftop laden with old-growth spruce and western red cedars. Later, the ocean’s monstrous tides will flood the rocks I’m standing on to form a huge blowhole. Some 47 miles (76 kilometers) north is Alaska, but there’s no knowing that from here.
I’m on the northern shores of Xaayda Gwaay.yaay Haida Gwaii, an archipelago of around 150 islands off the Pacific north coast of British Columbia. Haida Gwaii—which means “islands of the people”—is the ancestral homeland of the Haida Nation who have been stewarding these islands and ocean for over 13,000 years.