Being in Being: The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay

John Steckley teaches in the Human Studies Program at Humber College in
Toronto. He is the author of Beyond Their Years: Five Native Women's
Stories.

In this third volume of Bringhurst’s trilogy are stories told in 1900
by 73-year-old Haida mythteller Skaay of the then-abandoned Haida
community of Qquuna. The main part of the text comprises the 5550-line,
five-part cycle of stories connected with Qquuna. The second-largest
section is made up of a 1400-line telling of “Raven Travelling,” an
important Northwest Coast story.

As with his two previous works, Bringhurst brings his poet’s vision
to Haida mythology, and the reader is enriched by that vision. He
employs a vocabulary and a sensibility to the study of oral tradition
that is refreshing and best illustrated by the following quote: “Until
his early seventies, he lived in a world without writing. That is to
say, a world in which voices were pure spirit, made of memory and
breath, never captured by the hand nor by machines. It was a world in
which stories far out-numbered human beings, and where the spirit beings
of story were portrayed in innumerable carvings, paintings, masks. The
mythtellers’ visions and ideas were recalled in many forms, but words,
like dancers’ gestures, disappeared as they were formed.”

Bringhurst also reasserts that Native mythtellers do not merely recite
anonymous oral tradition but are poets crafting what they speak. While
this gives the mythtellers the recognition they deserve, he does not
muster evidence to back up his assertion. Perhaps such evidence can’t
be mustered.

Being in Being is not an easy read, even for readers with knowledge of
Native culture. Still, much can be learned in reading the book. As
Bringhurst himself states, “After reading [Skaay] for years, I know
that while his poems can be spoken, heard or read in the space of a few
hours, years are what it takes to perceive what they contain.”