Layers of Understanding: Culture and Protocol Pt. 1

Understanding our culture happens in layers.

Some people understand it through what they were told by the generation before them.

Some understand it through lived experience — practicing ceremony, witnessing protocol in action, and carrying responsibility in real time.

Others come to it through historical records — ethnographies and oral histories (documented during eras when much of our culture was under pressure or forced underground).

Each of these ways of knowing is significant— but none of them alone are complete.

Even our most respected elders speak from the era they lived through. Elders were raised in a time when potlatching was illegal and culture was suppressed, and those who upheld it were discriminated against. The fact that any of it survived is extraordinary. But what has survived to today is not always the full picture.

Today, we are in a different moment. We have access to archival material. We have language revitalization that helps us understand Haida world view. We have artists and leaders who are actively researching and restoring practices that had fallen dormant for generations. We now ask not just what we do, but go deeper into why we do it.

As someone of Haida descent and married into another Northwest Coast tribe, I will be honest: my understanding of prerogatives, lineage responsibilities, and protocol, although well informed, in the grand scheme of things was actually quite limited due to how much was no longer practiced and how much was lost entirely. It took years of immersion — witnessing lived cultural practice, participating in ceremony, and observing the deep historical research being undertaken within Kwakwaka’wakw culture and my husband’s work — for my understanding to deepen and evolve. When you begin to see culture from multiple angles at once — lived practice, historical record, and contemporary restoration — things become much more clear.

You begin to see where misunderstandings arise. You begin to see where practices have shifted due to historical disruption. And you begin to recognize when actions are grounded in traditional protocol or contemporary interpretations— and when they are misunderstood all together.

The more one learns about culture the more you recon with the fact that culture is layered and multi-dimensional, and the learning never ends. How we make sense of those layers depends on how much time has been invested in uncovering them. I am witness to that level of commitment to

understanding as my husband delves deeply in research and restoration as his full time occupation and passion. When we attempt to uphold our lineages and hereditary responsibilities, how deeply we understand those layers matters.

Across the Northwest Coast many communities are navigating similar tensions: Who holds authority? What is a prerogative? What was paused due to colonization, and what must now be restored?

Over the years I have had many conversations with cultural leaders across the Northwest Coast who have raised the same concern: that hereditary roles are increasingly interpreted through colonial frameworks, leading to confusion between hereditary leadership and elected governance. Hereditary leaders are known to devote themselves to protecting their territories from harmful resource extraction as well as guiding their people through the ceremonial, and cultural responsibilities they were traditionally meant to carry.

These are big issues, ones not well served by Facebook posts and comment threads. Still, information needs to be disseminated — but how? In efforts to solve this issue of disseminating cultural knowledge— is why we produced a podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@NextAncestors

When disagreements go public without context, it becomes spectacle instead of clarity. When information is partial, people on the periphery are left confused. And when bad faith enters the picture, transparency becomes even more important.

Because misunderstandings about these cultural layers are now affecting my clan, context becomes necessary. What follows is not a personal dispute, but a clarification of hereditary structure and protocol so that those watching from the outside understand what is actually at issue.