Our Inspiration – And an Invitation

Magic Canoe honors and carries forward the vision and legacy of Haisla First Nation elder Wa’xaid, Cecil Paul, who envisioned a magic canoe.

Photo: Owen Perry

In the 1990s, on the central coast of British Columbia, the Haisla First Nation faced the threat of industrial logging of 800,000 forested acres (324 hectares) in their unceded territory known as the Kitlope: a landscape filled with abundant wild salmon and trees more than 800 years old. As word of the threat spread beyond British Columbia, people from all walks of life joined the Haisla’s campaign to protect their homeland.

As one of the leaders of the campaign, Xenaksiala/Haisla First Nation elder Wa’xaid, Cecil Paul, envisioned a supernatural or magic canoe where everyone could work together to save the Kitlope. The more people that came, the bigger the canoe grew. “It is a magical canoe because there is room for everyone who wants to come into it to paddle together. The currents against it are very strong but I believe we can reach that destination and this is the reason for our survival.”

Today, the Kitlope remains intact, as the largest coastal temperate rainforest watershed in the world. Although Wa’xaid walked on in December 2020, his legacy of a magic canoe remains, gifting all of us this vision of deep collaboration and the sharing of possibility and hope.

Just as it was then, the same is true now: there is room for everyone in the Magic Canoe. So jump in, grab a paddle, and join us as we work to create a more prosperous, secure home—for all of us.

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“You guys call it the Kitlope,” Wa’xaid once said. “But in our language we call it Huchsduwachsdu Nuyem Jees. That means the land of milky blue waters and the sacred stories contained in this place. You think it’s a victory because we saved the land. But what we really saved is our heritage, our stories, which are embedded in this place and which couldn’t survive without it, and which contain all our wisdom for living.”

Recommended book

Stories from the Magic Canoe of Wa’xaid

CECIL PAUL & BRIONY PENN

ISBN: 9781771603379

Told in Cecil Paul’s singular, vernacular voice, Stories from the Magic Canoe spans a lifetime of experience, suffering, and survival. This beautifully produced volume is in Cecil’s own words, as told to Briony Penn and other friends, and has been meticulously transcribed. Along with Penn’s biography of Cecil Paul, Following the Good River (Fall 2019) (below), Stories from the Magic Canoe provides a valuable documented history of a generation that continues to deal with the impacts of brutal colonization and environmental change at the hands of politicians, industrialists, and those who willingly ignore the power of ancestral lands and traditional knowledge.

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Recommended book

Following the Good River: The Life and Times of Wa'xaid

A biography by Briony Penn

ISBN: 9781771603218

Following upon the success of Wa'xaid's own book of personal essays, Stories from the Magic Canoe (above), Briony Penn's major biography of this remarkable individual will serve as a timely reminder of the state of British Columbia's Indigenous community, the environmental and political strife still facing many Indigenous communities, and the philosophical and personal journey of a remarkable man.

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Magic Canoe works in collaboration with Salmon Nation Trust: a Public Benefit LLC focused on whole system design and instigation of creative initiatives and companies that improve the health of our bioregion. Read the thesis here.

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Magic Canoe is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable organization (Tax ID: #85-2100120) under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. This website may contain images of people that have walked on.

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