Witnessing the spirit of Cedar as medicine– before the logging trucks arrive

APTN News: By Odette Auger

The majority of old growth Cedar forest on Vancouver Island is gone.

Logging, the climate crisis and, some say, government policies are hampering its recovery.

Here is the story of the Cedar and what it means to the Kwakwaka’wakw people.

Light rain makes its way through the canopy of what is called second-growth forest – 50-year-old Cedars planted after a clearcut that grow around massive stumps of old growth trees that are long gone.

For centuries, the Kwakwaka’wakw people have come here – gripping strips of bark in both hands and walking backward to pulling them off in 70 foot strips. 

John Macko, hereditary chief Kodako (‘Namgis Nation) is standing before a Cedar with his axe. He raises it and cuts a six-inch line in the bark, explaining that this is usually done on the north side of the tree because there are fewer branches.

After the cut, he pries the bark up with his fingertips, grasps the soft, highly textured bark and starts to pull up. 

Underneath, the wood gleams, moist under the bark. That moisture is why the bark can be pulled in this way.

He says he’s proud to supply the Cedar he harvests to carvers making impressive masks for potlatch dances, including the sacred T’seka or red Cedar bark ceremony. 

“My family are harvesters,” he says. “I carry on with the traditional harvesting of the foods, the smoke, fish, clams, seaweed.” 

As a natural resource, Cedar was abundant, and for West Coast nations, every part of the tree had its purpose and use. Now he finds it’s been getting harder and harder to find Cedar to use as medicine. 

“I supply the friendship centers, the schools, even a prison,” he says.

He learned young, watching an Elder in Kingcome weaving hats and baskets. 

“That was 40 or 50 years ago, I never thought I’d be in the Cedar bark business,” he says. “I watched her do it and I learned how she was nicking and cleaning.”

It’s been raining here the past two days, so the timing is right. Cedar bark pulling happens in the spring, when the sap is running. That’s when the inner bark layer’s cells are dividing, building up both wood and bark.

Climate change is shrinking the moist window of harvest time, which Macko finds concerning. 

“This five or six day stretch of hot weather, the Cedar will start to dry on the tree … So I’m worried about this climate change. I think my season is only maybe two or three weeks,” he says.

Macko was a logger for as long as his body could keep up. 

He points to the larger stumps, remnants of the first cut. The harvester has to work around logging operations, too. 

Macko keeps an eye on where they’re going to cut and tries to get in there to harvest the bark before the trees are gone.

He can only access logging sites on the weekend when the industrial machines are at rest and often harvests from a site that is dynamited the day after, for road building to the next cut block, he says.

After the bark is pulled, he holds the end in one hand and uses a blade in the other to separate the inner cambium layer into thirds – a process called “thinning.” He continues in this way, until the one 70-foot strip has become three.

t̕łaḵwe’tka’nakw, Valerie Morgan (ʼNa̱ mǥis Nation), is harvesting with Macko on this day. She returns to her home territory when the Cedar sap is running. Morgan is a weaver, fashion designer, and teacher. She demonstrates how to tie a rope to the end of the strip, once the pull is too high up to just pull by hand.

The rope gives more hold for a longer walk backward, and she continues the pull.

At the very end, she says “I think that’s over 60 feet, that one.”

She takes a knife and cleans the rough, textured bark off the long strip, coiling it once she’s done. She’ll let it dry in a loose bundle to avoid any mildew. Once dried, it can be soaked to soften and make it ready for weaving.

As a fashion designer, she uses traditional materials. It’s important to her to preserve these skills – she teaches a range of workshops, from making Cedar hats and regalia to tumplines.

“We have to have respect for these trees,” says Morgan. “There’s a certain width that you can pull off of a tree. Then it’s going to heal itself. If you pull too much more, you’ll kill the tree.”

New forest trees are just ‘pecker poles’ 

The marks left when Cedar is pulled make these “culturally modified trees,” and let “everyone know, they won’t ever touch this tree again. All weavers are respectful of these trees,” says Morgan.

Macko says the 50-year-old Cedars are the right age to harvest bark.

Cedars are meant to live 1,000 years – and can live as long as 2,000 years if conditions are ideal.

In today’s industrial logging, the second-growth stands are often only 50 years old before clear-cutting starts. In past decades, once an old growth block was logged, they usually didn’t plant Cedar to replace it, so the new forests have very few new Cedar trees.

“An awful lot of the coast in the lowest elevation areas were logged more than 50 years ago,” explains Rachel Holt, an ecologist who has been studying forest management and policy in B.C. for 30 years.

Her work on old growth forests and biodiversity includes writing the technical status report for the province in 2020.

She describes how the original forest would have had all ages of trees within the same stand, as the natural ecosystem, “There would be the monumental trees, the canoe trees, and the bark stripping trees, because those forests were very mixed in age and size.

“Infilled, dense hemlock stands” seeded themselves, she explains and “Cedar has a harder time under those circumstances getting established– and it wasn’t planted. There was not a requirement to replant with suitable species at that time.”

A statement from the Ministry of Forests says they “always” aim to “closely mimic pre-existing species distribution, and maintain or enhance biodiversity through government reforestation efforts.” The same email states “the most common forest types are dominated by hemlock and balsam, with lesser amounts of red Cedar” in this region.

However, the ministry shares that, “Tree planting efforts lead [sic] by BC Timber Sales” led to planting of 751,180 seedlings in Northern Vancouver Island over the past five years.” Information provided included a breakdown, 70 per cent of those seedlings were Red Cedar, 15 per cent Yellow Cedar, and the remaining 14.7 per cent is fairly evenly divided between Spruce and Firs, and only .8 per cent is Western Hemlock.

The Ministry of Forests states,“Red Cedar is included in harvesting activities in Northern Vancouver Island, and as a result is replanted more every year than any other tree species to ensure sustainable forestry practices of this iconic species into the future.”

A quick scan of the government’s “forest products” weekly report gives another reason to be planting 85 per cent more Cedar than “original” hemlock, with Cedar topping the price listat $1,375 per 1,000 board feet– triple the value of spruce, pine or fir.

Some take comfort in thinking of forests as a renewable resource, but old-growth forests are irreplaceable – and disappearing at a rapid pace.

Only 19 to 20 per cent of the original old-growth forest remains on Vancouver Island, including parks, according to data from Sierra Club BC. In 2023, Sierra Club reported more than a third of Vancouver Island’s last old-growth forests have been logged since the 1993 Clayoquot Sound protests.

The numbers are more dire when site productivity is considered. This describes the growing conditions of a forest, in other words, whether trees grow faster or slower.

In Kwakwaka’wakw Territory on Vancouver Island, less than two per cent of what little old-growth remains consists of what the forestry industry call “good” productivity sites – places that can grow large trees. Of these remaining old-growth stands, only eight per cent have Cedar as a leading tree species.

Things are even worse in Kwagu’lth territory in this region, where less than one per cent of the remaining old growth is good/medium sites with big trees.

One of these “good sites” is 60 feet away from the bark harvesters. This grove benefits from the water nearby, which Macko explains, makes it a “good productivity” spot for loggers that “will probably be gone tomorrow.”

Morgan agrees, “It’s getting harder and harder. Even where we were yesterday – they’re going to dynamite it today. I mean, that’s all going to be gone. All of that is going to be gone.”

“There’s not going to be much left for us,” she says. “It makes me sad because even though you have the little ones coming up, and you’re bringing them out and you show them everything, by the time they hit an age when they’re going to go out, there’s going to be nothing out there for them.”

Just as she says that, a logging truck rumbles by.

“Now I see they’re getting logs just 12 inches,” Macko says, “And I counted roughly on a truckload, there are 100 trees on the truck, just pecker poles.”

Tree of life

“Some think of trees as a resource, but Indigenous people don’t,” says N’alag̱ a / Kaaw Kuuna, Avis O’Brien, a Kwakwaka’wakw and Haida cultural empowerment worker.

Much of her work is in Indigenous youth suicide prevention, “supporting them to reclaim the parts of their identity that were stolen in the process of colonization,” she explains.

“Our connection to land was severed through residential schools. Our connection to our spirituality was severed.”

Cedar has been an integral part of her finding healing and wellness, she says.

O’Brien was two years into her sobriety and recovery journey when her sister brought Cedar weaving back into their family.

“When I touched the medicine of Cedar for the first time,” she shares, “it began the journey of dismantling that systemic shame that had been placed on me.

“Cedar is the Tree of Life – the survival of our people depended on this tree. Everything from birth to death.”

She explains everything– from houses, to canoes, to clothing, and baby diapers were made from Cedar.

“It had its utilitarian purposes, but also it’s central to ceremonies. It’s incredibly important to our people for healing. How that works is the spiritual component of Cedar,” says O’Brien.

“She has the ability to absorb our energy. So our spiritual energy, our physical energy, the thoughts that we’re thinking, the emotions that we feel all become imbued into that medicine.”

Boughs of the Cedar are used for brushing.

“The boughs take off anything that we’re not needing, that our bodies are not needing, and that we’re ready to let go of,” she says.

O’Brien says it’s getting harder to access Cedar.

“What I’ve noticed in Kwakwaka’wakw territories is that the Cedars are dying. I notice every year, every summer, the boughs get a little bit more brown. You can’t brush with dead Cedar boughs, and you can’t weave with bark from a dead Cedar tree.

“These Cedar trees are dying because they thrive in a rainforest and our climate is rapidly changing into something different than a rainforest.”

O’Brien says people “often have to go long distances to get Cedar.” She travels to her other home territory, Haida Gwaii, to harvest Cedar because the impact of climate change seems to be less there.

“You see some Cedars that are dying, but not at the rate that we do here on Vancouver Island.”

She points at a series of small holes in the bark of a Cedar outside Campbell River.

“It’s a little beetle, so you can’t weave with the bark. If you tried to harvest that bark, you would find little maggots.

“They’re rampant, they’re just everywhere here.”

Climate change in B.C. is increasing pest threats, with shifting precipitation patterns and higher temperatures, according to the Climate Change Adaptation Program in B.C.

“We’re witnessing the beginning of the end of our culture,” O’Brien says. “There’s an incredible, deep grief that’s hard to put into words. We are witnessing them die.”

In stark contrast to the industrial view stands the deep knowledge that, “Cedars are not a resource, these are our relatives. We are the land. And the land is us and our wellness is 100 per cent connected to the wellness of the land. 

And when the land is suffering and the land is dying, our spirits feel that,” explains O’Brien. “So we have a responsibility to protect the Cedar trees.”

An important part of O’Brien’s work is supporting youth to “resist the spirit of suicide,” including by reconnecting them to their land and culture. She says this includes introducing the medicine of Cedar through brushing ceremonies and weaving wellness baskets.

She explains weaving is a practice that “can bring us into what’s called a flow state where anything else that we’re doing sort of falls to the wayside, and we’re deeply connected to what we’re doing. It brings us into the present moment.”

For young people who are living with intergenerational trauma “from 500 years of colonial genocide being in our bodies,” O’Brien says, “having those kinds of mindfulness are very rare. And so it’s a very powerful medicine to really connect us to our bodies, connect us to our spirit, and connect us to our ancestors.”

When she’s doing that work with the youth, she invites them to “deeply appreciate the gift it is to be able to work with the spirit of this incredibly generous medicine that has given our people so much, since the beginning of time.”

“So it’s really trying to ignite that awareness of how important it is. But there may come a time that we don’t have access to it. And I hope that that’s not the case for our young ones.”

O’Brien wants young people “to know that they’re not broken. What’s broken is what has happened to our people, and what continues to happen to our people. Hope is a tool for revolution…I would like for youth to know that there’s always hope.”

Cedar is our ‘spiritual protection’

Jessie Louie is an Elder from Klahoose First Nation, an Ayajuthem speaking nation, neighbours to Kwakwaka’wakw nations. When she returned from residential school at age 13, she no longer knew the language. She sat across from her mom at the kitchen table, with no words. She went on to be a language warrior, working for decades in language preservation and revitalization. She was able to do that because of her healing journey, which included Cedar.

“I had come clean and sober over 24 years ago. And I think that’s when I first started realizing how important Cedar was to our culture.” It was in a treatment centre that she was reintroduced to Cedar.

Louie uses Cedar as kindling for wood stoves, BBQ sticks for salmon, for bathing, and laying Cedar branches in the ocean to catch herring eggs.

“The herring lay their eggs on there,” she explains, “I really enjoy the taste of just that bit of Cedar on the herring.”

She uses Cedar as spiritual protection, too. She explains that brushing includes asking “Creator and our ancestors to watch over that person and to make sure that everything is good.”

“We put it over our doors to keep the spirits away, especially when somebody has passed on,” she says, and after they pass, “you definitely have to put Cedar underneath their mattress for a year.”

The ʔayʔaǰuθəm (Ayajuthem) word for tree, jeh-jeh, is also the word for relative, explains Louie, honouring the connection.

She remembers her mom sitting outside weaving clam harvesting baskets out of Cedar roots, and her father carving dugout canoes.

“He’d work on them in a private place, carving the big logs down, so that by the time he would finish with the Cedar dugout, it was just so light, to roll around,” she says.

She smiles at the photo she holds, of her father in the middle of carving a dugout.

“My brother and his friends used to be able to have some canoe races out here in the front [Squirrel Cove] with the dugouts. And it was Dad’s dugout that would win,” she says. “You could just see the pride in his face, you know, that he built that dugout.”

The last canoe he carved out was in the early 1990s, she says.

“He used to go in the canoe, and go scout around this area, trying to look for Cedar.”

Towards the end, “he was having a really hard time finding Cedars big enough to build dugouts,” she explains.

“Look around you,” Louie remembers her father telling her, “and you can see what’s happening – he was trying to tell me the future was going to be bleak,” she says. “He said, ‘hʊktəm ʔaxʷi, there’s nothing left.’”

Cool, moist temperate rainforests of B.C’s central coast store more CO2 than the Amazon. In Kwakwaka’wakw territory, broken trees along the highway’s edge show a full view of the slopes dotted with massive stumps, and slash piles.

As Macko drives around his territory, he looks for the pink flagging tape indicating where loggers will be cutting next, in hopes of harvesting bark over the weekends. With any luck, he can get there before the Cedars are taken. He explains the knot in the tape points to the direction the cut will be.

“Sometimes it takes two to three days to find, but I just keep looking for the pink tape.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the Science Media Centre of Canada and Sitka Foundation.