Stolen Spirits of Haida Gwaii

Quiet Canines Podcast · Oct 6, 2026 · 3m

In the late 1890s, a missionary on Haida Gwaii discovered that Haida graves had been dug open. Coffins and bones were scattered everywhere because George Dorsey, a famous curator at the Field Museum of Natural History, had sent men to rob the site. Dorsey believed that primitive cultures were vanishing and that science had a legal right to salvage their remnants.

While colonial settlers treated their own cemeteries as sacred, they viewed indigenous graves as a source of curiosity and profit. This practice was fueled by doctor Samuel Morton, who published a book in 1839 claiming white people…