In 2019, the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (S.H.I.P) submitted a request to the Queen Charlotte Village Council to change the name of Queen Charlotte back to the ancestral "Daajing Giids."
Daajing Giids, in the Haida language, means roughly "the hat of a child of a chief." Daajing means "hat," whereas giids means "child," but according to GwaaGanad (a member of SHIP), "giids" is an honourable term, so it likely means the child of a chief."
Listen to the attached audio clip to hear the members of the program speak about what Daajing Giids means.
The Skidegate Haida Immersion Program began in 1998 and has been documenting the Skidegate Haida language of Xaada Kil for the purpose of saving a language that is quickly disappearing.
The protection and preservation of Xaada Kil is a lengthy process, and it is due to the efforts of Haida elders—10 very committed and dedicated Elders who are fluent speakers of the Skidegate Haida Language.
The average age of these Elders is 80. The Elders attend S.H.I.P five days a week, ten months of the year. They represent approximately 50 per cent of today’s fluent Skidegate Haida speakers.
Of the more than 60 Indigenous languages spoken in Canada, Haida is unlike any other. It is a language isolate (meaning it has no other language relatives, like French has with Spanish and Italian, for example) consisting of three main dialects: Alaskan (Xaat kil), Masset (Xaad kil), and Skidegate (Xaayda kil).
The elders at S.H.I.P wrestle with fragments of upwards of 19 dialects in order to come to a consensus on any given translation. When no one solution can be settled on, they write down and record all of their options.
Since the original request to change the village name, with an interruption in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Village of Queen Charlotte Council has been engaging with Village residents, business owners and island stakeholders to have meaningful discussions, listen, share knowledge, and ask and answer questions.
In March 2022, the village disseminated a Community Response Form to formally gather opinions of residents and property owners. The results of the 380 conforming responses, which were shared at the May 2, 2022 council meeting, indicated that 48.7 per cent of respondents strongly supported a change, 11.8 per cent somewhat supported a name change, and 36.3 per cent did not support changing the name of the village. Council’s subsequent resolution on May 16, 2022 that supports restoring Daajing Giids as the municipality’s name is the most recent step in an ongoing process started in 2019 that is without precedent.
To change the municipality’s name, council must ask the Minister of Municipal Affairs to advance a request to cabinet. By way of the ground-breaking resolution on May 16, council has triggered the statutory two-week notice period that aims to see a formal request to Minister Nathan Cullen by June 6, 2022. From there, Cullen will need to decide whether to advance the request for an Order-in-Council.
Listen to the full episode of CICK News to hear the voices of Queen Charlotte Mayor Kris Olsen, Minister Nathan Cullen, as well as S.H.I.P. Members GwaaGanad (Diane), Crystal and Denver.
