Канаданың Британдық Колумбиясындағы Хайда Гваай архипелагы

Archipelago in British Columbia, Canada

Haida Gwaii ('/h//aɪ//d//ə// /'/g//w//aɪ/; / X̱aayda gwaay, literally "Islands of the Haida people"), with a total landmass of Other major islands include Anthony Island (Ḵ'waagaaw / Sɢ̱ang Gwaay), Burnaby Island (Sɢ̱aay Kun Gwaay. yaay), Langara Island (Kiis Gwaay), Lyell Island, Louise Island, Alder Island (Ḵ'uuna Gwaay / Ḵ'uuna Gwaay. yaay), and Kunghit Island. (For a fuller, but still incomplete, list see List of islands of British Columbia.) Part of the Canadian province of British Columbia, the islands were known from 1787 until 2010 as the Queen Charlotte Islands, and colloquially as "the Charlottes". On June 3, 2010, the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act formally renamed the archipelago as part of the Kunst'aa guu – Kunst'aayah Reconciliation Protocol between British Columbia and the Haida people. The islands form the heartland of the Haida Nation, upon which people have lived for 13,000 years, and who currently make up approximately half of the population. The Haida exercise their sovereignty over the islands through their acting government, the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN, X̱aaydaG̱a Waadlux̱an Naay). As recently as 2015, the Haida Nation hosted First Nations delegations such as the potlatch and subsequent treaty signing between the Haida and Heiltsuk Nation. A small number of Kaigani Haida also live on the traditionally Tlingit Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. Some of the islands are protected under federal legislation as the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, which includes the southernmost part of Moresby Island and several adjoining islands and islets. Coastal temperate rain forest at the shore, the preserve also includes the San Cristoval Mountains, so named by the first European explorer, Juan Perez, and the oldest surviving European place name on the BC coast. Facilities are minimal, and access is via boat or seaplane. Also protected, but under provincial jurisdiction, are several provincial parks, the largest of which is Naikoon Provincial Park on northeastern Graham Island. The islands are home to an abundance of wildlife, including a large subspecies of black bear (Ursus americanus carlottae), and the smallest subspecies of ermine, the Haida ermine (Mustela haidarum haidarum), both endemic to the islands. Black tailed deer, elk, beaver, muskrat, two species of rats, and raccoon are introduced species of mammals that have become abundant, imparting many ecological changes to the ecosystem.

The economy is mixed, including art and natural resources, primarily logging and commercial fishing. Furthermore, service industries and government jobs provide about one third of the jobs, and tourism has become a more prominent part of the economy in recent years, especially for fishing and tour guides, cycling, camping, and adventure tourism. Aboriginal culture tourism has been enhanced with the establishment of the Haida Heritage Centre at Kaay Ilnygaay.

Public education is provided through School District 50 Haida Gwaii, which operates elementary and secondary schools in Masset, Port Clements, Daajing Giids (formerly called Queen Charlotte), Sandspit, and Skidegate. The Old Masset Village Council operates Chief Matthews School, a K/4 through grade 5 (and grade 6 as of the 2023 24 school year) school. Higher education programs are offered at the Haida Heritage Centre in partnership with the University of Northern British Columbia, and with the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society.

Publicly funded health services are provided by Northern Health, the regional health authority responsible for the northern half of the province. Haida Gwaii is served by two hospitals, The Northern Haida Gwaii Hospital and Health Centre in Masset and the Haida Gwaii Hospital in Daajing Giids which was completed in fall 2015. Haida Gwaii has four British Columbia Ambulance stations. They are staffed by approximately 36 casual emergency medical responders (EMR), and one part time community paramedic based in Masset.

At the time of European contact in 1774, the population was roughly 30,000 people, residing in several towns and including slave populations drawn from other clans of Haida as well as from other nations. It is estimated that ninety percent of the population died during the 1800s from smallpox alone; other diseases arrived as well, including typhoid, measles, and syphilis, affecting many more inhabitants. The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic alone killed over 70% of the Haida people. By 1900, only 350 people remained. Towns were abandoned as people left their homes for the towns of Skidegate and Masset, for cannery towns on the mainland, or for Vancouver Island. Today, around 4,500 people live on the islands. About 70% of the indigenous people (Haida) live in two communities at Skidegate and Old Massett, with a population of about 700 each. In total the Haida make up 45% of the population of the islands. Anthony Island and the Ninstints Haida village site were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006; in the decision, the decline in population wrought by disease was referenced when citing the 'vanished civilization' of the Haida.

Haida Gwaii is considered by archaeologists as an option for a Pacific coastal route taken by the first humans migrating to the Americas from the Bering Strait. At this time Haida Gwaii was likely not an island, but connected to Vancouver Island and the mainland via the now submerged continental shelf. It is unclear how people arrived on Haida Gwaii, but archaeological sites have established human habitation on the islands as far back as 13,000 years ago. Populations that formerly inhabited Beringia expanded into northern North America after the Last Glacial Maximum, and gave rise to Eskimo Aleuts and Na Dené Indians. Although unsubstantiated, an oral tradition told by the Haida Chief, Albert Edward Edenshaw, says that the Haida came from northern Alaska and travelled to Haida Gwaii in search of new territory. Underwater archaeologists from the University of Victoria are seeking to confirm that stone structures discovered in 2014 on the seabed of Hecate Strait may date back 13,700 or more years ago and be the earliest known signs of human habitation in Canada.

The coastal migration hypothesis of the settlement of the Americas suggests that the first North Americans may have been here as the oldest human remains known from Alaska or Canada are from On Your Knees Cave. Anthropologists have found striking parallels between the myths, rituals, and dwelling types of the Koryaks—inhabitants of the Kamchatka Peninsula—and those of the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. At this time the island was twice as large as today. There is strong genetic evidence for these early people having an origin there. The Koryaks were a matrilineal seafaring people hunting whales and other marine mammals. Kujkynnjaku, the Raven, is their primary deity. Most of the Raven myths are similar to those of the Koryak. The Haida people regularly took slaves from their wars with other peoples around them.

The archipelago was first sighted by Europeans in 1774 by Juan Pérez, at Langara Island,in 1778 by James Cook and in 1786 by Lapérouse. In 1794, the Haida captured and sank two American maritime fur trade vessels seeking to acquire sea otter pelts, Ino, under captain Simon Metcalfe, which was captured in Houston Stewart Channel near Ninstints, and Resolution, captured near Cumshewa Inlet. In both cases only one crewmember survived. In 1851, the Haida captured the Georgiana, a ship carrying gold prospectors, and held its crew for ransom for nearly two months. The islands played an important role during the maritime fur trade era of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During most of that era the trade in the islands was dominated by Americans. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 put an end to American claims to the islands. Following the discovery of gold in the 1850s the British made efforts to exclude whatever American territorial claims might remain. The Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands was a British colony created by the Colonial Office in response to the increase in American marine trading activity resulting from the gold rush on Moresby Island in 1851. No separate administration or capital for the colony was ever established, as its only officer or appointee was James Douglas, who was simultaneously Governor of Vancouver Island. In essence, the colony was merged with the Vancouver Island colony for administrative purposes from the 1850s to 1866 when the Colony of Vancouver Island was merged with the mainland, which until that point was the separate Colony of British Columbia.

The climate is oceanic (Cfb), except near the summit of Mount Moresby where the climate is subpolar oceanic (Cfc). It is very similar to the climate of the west coast of Scotland in terms of average temperatures and total year round precipitation, but the latitude is lower than the west coast of Scotland; it is 52° 39', the same as southern Ireland. In the relatively shielded areas around Tlell and Sandspit annual rainfall averages from to

In July 2012, entrepreneur Russ George dispersed of iron sulphate dust into the Pacific Ocean several hundred miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii. The Old Massett Village Council was persuaded to finance this geoengineering experiment as a "salmon enhancement project" with $1 million in village funds. Lawyers, environmentalists, and civil society groups are calling the dumping a "blatant violation" of two international moratoriums. George said that the Old Massett Village Council and its lawyers approved the effort and at least seven Canadian agencies were aware of it. The 2013 salmon runs increased from 50 million to 226 million fish, but research conducted on 13 major iron fertilization experiments in the open ocean since 1990 concludes that the method is unproven, and with respect to the Haida Gwaii project, "scientists have seen no evidence that the experiment worked".

The islands are located along the Queen Charlotte Fault, an active transform fault that produces significant earthquakes every 3–30 years. This is the result of the converging of the Pacific and North American Plates along the archipelago's west coast. Major earthquakes have occurred in the Haida Gwaii in 1949 and 2012. Though the region is prone to fair geological activity, there is little infrastructure set up to gather accurate information to warn locals of possible threats. Many residents, notably from First Nations communities, have been critical of the fact that they must rely on information coming from neighbouring American states such as Washington or Alaska and from the USGS (United States Geological Survey). Regardless of the inconsistencies, Environment Canada does regularly do field tests across the Pacific coast of British Columbia relating to this matter. The Cascadia subduction zone does pose some additional earthquake risks, but, most importantly, the subduction zone poses direct tsunami risks to the coastal settlements on the western side of the islands.

The artwork known as Spirit of Haida Gwaii, by Bill Reid, is featured on the reverse of Canadian $20 bills produced between 2004 and 2011. It depicts a Haida chief in a canoe, accompanied by the mythic messengers Raven, Frog and Eagle (the first casting of this sculpture, Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Black Canoe, is on display in the atrium of the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC, the other, Spirit of Haida Gwaii: the Jade Canoe, is on display in Vancouver Airport). Haida art is also frequently seen on large monumental sized cedar totem poles and dugout canoes, hand crafted gold and silver jewellery, and even as cartoons in the form of Haida manga.

The Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in England repatriated items in its collection to the Haida people. The Museum returned the items as part of its initiative to return Native American and First Nation artefacts.

The Haida language was proposed for classification as part of the Na Dene family of languages on the basis of a few similarities with Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit. Many linguists, however, consider the evidence insufficient and continue to regard Haida as a language isolate. All 50 remaining speakers of Haida are over 70 years old. Telus and Gwaii Trust recently completed a project to bring broadband internet to the island via a microwave relay. This enables interactive research to be carried out on the more than 80 CDs of language, story and spoken history of the people.