a) Introduction
A small archipelago off the northwest coast of Britsh Columbia is known as the “islands of the people.” This island is diverse in both land and sea environment. From the 1700’s when the first ship sailed off its coast and a captain logged about the existence, slow attentiveness was given to the island. Its abundance, in both natural resources physical environment, and its allure in the concealed Haida peoples, beckoned settlers to come to the island. Settlers would spark an era of prosperity and catastrophe for the native and environmental populations.
b) Physical Characteristics of Environment
Haida Gwaii is composed of many small islands consisting of a multitude of inlets, rivers, and beaches (Dalzell 13, and Horwood and Parkin 13). These, more than 150, islands create an isolated archipelago totalling in approximately 9940 km2. Freshwater systems, inlets, waterways, rivers, and lakes are scattered throughout the islands (www.gohaidagwaii.ca). Areas, such as the Skidegate Inlet, between the lowland Graham Island and the narrow, steep-sloped Moresby Island, provide broad view of the landscape (Horwood and Parkin 52). The 100 km wide (www.gohaidagwaii.ca), Hecate Strait, dividing Haida Gwaii with the mainland, is shallow and temper-mental with shallow areas, huge waves, rock overfalls, and tide rips (Dalzell 14).
The west coast of the islands is on the edge of a continental shelf created by ancient volcanic movement (Broadhead 5) .This volcanic activity is due to plate tectonic movement which also created the numerous amounts of earthquakes on the island. Compared to the rest of British Columbia, Haida Gwaii has the most earthquake activity (Broadhead 5), the last of which being in a magnitude of 7.7 on t...
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...Economic Trends in Communities on
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The Anishnaabe Tribes of the Nishi, Mkwa, Chemong, Wagosh, Jiiman, and all others residing within the territory, do hereby cede, release and surrender to the Government of the Dominion of Canada for her Majesty the Queen and their successors, all rights, claims, titles and privileges, to the lands encompassing the treaty area hereafter defined and described.
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While walking down the beach, the white, warm sand mushes between your toes. The sun’s radiant rays beam off your glowing skin. The sound of waves crashing blocks out the external world. There is no other place like the gorgeous tropical islands of Hawaii. The wide range of flowers, cuisine, and wildlife makes it one of the most picturesque places on Earth. It also leads the United States with the highest racial minority rate making it the most diverse state. However, there are numerous hidden dangers of Hawaii, and not all ethnic groups get along causing sharp tensions across the island.
Before European contact with Turtle Island, the Native Peoples fully occupied the lands, maintaining extensive trade networks, roads that tied different nations together and successfully adapted to the particular natural environments across the continent.15 In her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes of the Natives also adapting the environment to their
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When a native author Greg Sams said that the reservations are just “red ghettos”, the author David disagree with that. He thinks there must be something else beyond that point. After his grandfather died, he somehow changed his mind. Because he could not think anything e...
...e" (Trask xix). This incident beautifully illustrates and signifies tourism's impact in American society. Like most Americans, this woman uses a discourse that has been shaped by tourist advertisements and souvenirs. The woman's statement implies that Trask resembles what the tourist industry projects, as if this image created Hawaiian culture. As Trask asserts, Hawaiian culture existed long before tourism and has been exploited by tourism in the form of advertisements and items such as postcards. Along with the violence, endangered environment, and poverty, this exploitation is what the tourist industry does not want to show. However, this is the Hawai'i Haunani-Kay Trask lives in everyday. "This is Hawai'i, once the most fragile and precious of sacred places, now transformed by the American behemoth into a dying land. Only a whispering spirit remains" (Trask 19).
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Jovik, Sonia P. and James O. Jovik. (1997). “History.” Atlas of Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, p.408.
Just north of Vancouver Island, there is an archipelago of islands shaped like an upside down triangle. Sitting just east of the Pacific fault line, experiencing upwards of fifty inches of rain per year, wind speeds as fast as 165 km/h, and heavily populated with trees weighing as much as three blue whales, one would expect the most turbulent part of these islands to be the environment, but they’d be wrong. The history of Haida Gwaii is one of the most complex and bloodiest in Canadian history. John Vaillant takes a look at this history and the way it forever changed the landscape of Haida Gwaii in the novel The Golden Spruce. By telling the stories of both the European loggers and the Haida, Vaillant demonstrated just how easily capitalism and greed can affect entire communities, the diplomacy between these communities, and how one tree brought these communities back together again.
Around the world, their are beautiful places called “the seven wonders of the natural world”. These sites are fantastic because of there fascinating views and the fact that they were naturally made, not by humans. One of these seven natural wonders of the natural world is the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Queensland, Australia. The Great Barrier Reef was formed by corals growing on submerged islands. The sea level then continued to rise, “leading to more corals growing and forming.” (Zimmerman). The Great Barrier Reef is “a mosaic of 2,900 individual reefs” and can be “seen from space and is not only the world's largest coral reef system but also the largest structure
Many people today know the story of the Indians that were native to this land, before “white men” came to live on this continent. Few people may know that white men pushed them to the west while many immigrants took over the east and moved westward. White men made “reservations” that were basically land that Indians were promised they could live on and run. What many Americans don’t know is what the Indians struggled though and continue to struggle through on the reservations.
People have lived on Vancouver Island since the last ice age, when the Bering Strait froze and allowed human passage from Asia to North America. The Pacific Northwest tribes thrived for thousands of years in this rich ecosystem, where trees grow to such vast sizes that a hollow trunk may hold twenty people without much trouble. For thousands of years, the forest remained a bountiful network of life: moss and lichens crept over every tree...
J. Douglas Porteus, “The Modernization of Easter Island”, Dept. of Geography, University of Victoria, 1981