Haida Elder taught Skidegate dialect and weaving to a new generation XYZ

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Gladys Vandal, whose traditional name was Jiixa, was recognized as an expert weaver, and for her dedication in documenting her dialect.Tomas Borsa/Handout

Gladys Vandal, a Haida Elder whose traditional name was Jiixa, was renowned on Haida Gwai’i and beyond, first for her bark and root weaving and then for her commitment to documenting her dialect while first-language speakers like her were still alive.

But her much bigger gift to the world was her lifelong enthusiasm for sharing her knowledge and skills with anyone who wanted to learn from her, says Haida Elder Diane Brown (GwaaGanad).

Ms. Brown was reminded of that recently while looking at a 1978 photo of Haida people in ceremony, in which only one of them wore a traditional hat of woven cedar bark.

“Now, everyone’s got one,” Ms. Brown says. “That’s because of Jiixa. Anyone who wanted to learn how to weave, all you had to do was bring your own bark and Jiixa would teach you. And she taught the Haida language to so many people.”

She was born Gladys Minnie Hans on May 19, 1938 on Haida Gwai’i, to Kathleen and Isaac Hans. The youngest of 10 children, she grew up in Skidegate feeling pampered and loved, says daughter Brenda Vandal (Dulgiits). She attended day school on Haida Gwai’i, which spared her the life-shattering experience of residential school so common to Indigenous people from her era.

Jiixa’s love for the Haida culture manifested in many ways, say those who knew her. She was her clan’s matriarch, counted on by Haida leadership for guidance and wisdom. She was an expert weaver, working with cedar bark as well as famously difficult spruce root. She cooked traditional Haida foods, and loved teaching others to do the same.

But her particular passion for the last two decades was the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (SHIP). It launched in 1998 to bring together first-language Elders with new learners and listeners to share and document the Skidegate dialect.

“Jiixa was an integral part of SHIP as a fluent speaker,” says Kevin Borserio (Luu Gaahlandaay), who worked closely with Ms. Vandal and eight other Haida Elders on the project until his retirement two years ago.

“The Elders created hundreds of books and recordings. They brought us 40,000 words that fill a 1,200-page glossary, and created hundreds of lessons. They literally go to school until they die. One of the Elders told me, ‘We’re doing this for the Haida children not yet born.’ “

Even from her hospital bed in Daajing Giids when she was in the late stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Ms. Vandal was video-conferencing into SHIP sessions with a passion that she’d had since childhood.

“From the age of 10, she had this instinct of capturing and preserving,” says Tomas Borsa (Gabuu), who grew close to Ms. Vandal while doing university research on Haida Gwai’i and was later adopted into her clan.

“Over her lifetime, she amassed a huge collection of recordings – things like her at age 10 recording her dad and uncle singing. Her filing cabinet is like a personal museum. When someone like Jiixa dies, she is hard to replace.”

Ms. Vandal met “the love of her life,” logger Al Vandal, in 1967, at a time when both were emerging from previous marriages. It would be a match for the ages, says Brenda Vandal, who was adopted as an infant by the couple from within Gladys Vandal’s extended family.

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Ms. Vandal lived a life true to her Haida culture that extended well beyond weaving and language.Tomas Borsa/Handout

The late Mr. Vandal was not only his wife’s most devoted fan, says their daughter, but his expertise in the woods ensured Ms. Vandal always had the best cedar bark to work with as a weaver. In the years when she was teaching people in Skidegate how to weave Christmas decorations, Ms. Brown remembers Mr. Vandal preparing individual bags of cedar bark for participants, each holding exactly enough for one reindeer.

“It was an amazing love story she had with my dad,” says Brenda Vandal. “The young guys used to say to him, ‘You should teach husband.’ “

The Vandals moved from logging town to logging town along B.C.’s central coast in the early years of their marriage, before returning to Skidegate in 1992 when Mr. Vandal retired.

That homecoming deepened his wife’s appreciation of a traditional Haida life. The couple joined the Haida Watchman program, spending summers as hosts and cultural interpreters for visitors at five traditional Haida villages in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve.

Those years helped Ms. Vandal hone her weaving in more ways than one, notes her daughter: “She could interweave people together. The gifts she had, she generously shared with everyone.”

In 2019, Mr. Borserio reached out to a friend at Vancouver Island University with the idea of recognizing the work of Ms. Vandal, Ms. Brown and seven other SHIP Elders through the awarding of honorary doctor of laws degrees. The timing was ideal: 2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

VIU’s dean of education was immediately onside, Mr. Borserio recalls.

The university chartered a plane to bring the Elders from Haida Gwai’i that June. A contingent of 60 community members climbed aboard and spent four festive days being celebrated in Nanaimo. The recognition came not a moment too soon: Five of those Elders have died in the years since.

Ms. Vandal leaves her daughter, Brenda; stepdaughters, Darlene Venturato and Michelle Cilli; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Living a life true to her Haida culture extended well beyond weaving and language for Ms. Vandal, Mr. Borserio says. Prayer was vital to her, in keeping with Haida beliefs that the Creator should be kept central to daily life.

“Like Haida Elder Ada Yovanovitch, Jiixa wanted everyone to know how to pray in the Skidegate language. She loved to pray and was a very spiritual person,” Mr. Borserio says. “We had prayer at SHIP to open every day, and we’d list off members of the community who were sick and sad. What a gift, to be in ceremony to start every day! Jiixa lived that.”

Ms. Vandal’s friends from SHIP made sure to sustain that connection in the last two years of her life, when her ALS had advanced to the point of requiring a permanent move into the Xaayda Gwaay Ngaaysdll Naay health centre in Daajing Giids, where she died on Sept. 2 at the age of 85.

Adopted clan member Julia Weder (Skaak’aadang Jaad) collaborated with Ms. Vandal in that period on several rap videos in Haida, now posted to YouTube. Ms. Vandal proposed the idea one night while she and Ms. Weder were watching rappers perform on a televised New Year’s Eve countdown. “She loved being able to spread culture that way,” Ms. Weder says.

Mr. Borserio visited Ms. Vandal regularly at the health centre, helping to maintain her connection to SHIP and bringing her a favourite meal of herring roe on kelp.

“She cooked for me for 20 years, so now I had the chance to do the same for her,” he says, adding that his own wife’s death from ALS seven years ago deepened the bond between him and Ms. Vandal at the end of her life.

Ms. Vandal’s long commitment to strengthening and sharing Haida culture and community will keep her alive for decades to come in the cultural practices of all the people who learned from her, Ms. Weder says.

“I really don’t feel like we’ve lost her, because even when we don’t mention her, she’s in people’s weaving, their drawing, their cooking,” she says. “She has transitioned, but she’s always with us.”