Some things begin as a dream, as this one did — but it wasn’t mine.
In December 2024, our Nanaay (grandmother) our Clan matriarch Evelyn Crosby passed away at 96 years old. Two months later, members of the Kumugwe Cultural Group — led by my husband Andy Everson — traveled to Aotearoa New Zealand to complete a cultural exchange with the Māori that had been decades in the making. Andy has maintained this reciprocal relationship since 1996. We were honored to host the Māori in 2018, and we had planned to return in 2020 before Covid made that impossible. Finally, in early 2025, we made the journey.
That trip ignited something in my daughter Marlo. Spending time with our Māori friends, a family who had raised their children immersively speaking their language at home — fluently, naturally, as a living thing — stirred something in her. Marlo had been taking online Haida language courses for two years, but seeing what full immersion could look like changed her vision of what was needed. She came home and fortuitously found out about a new Haida language immersion program in Masset. At the same time, a dream she’d been holding quietly began to take shape: carving a totem pole with her uncle Jesse.
On a wing and a prayer, she applied to the language program. She was accepted. In September 2025, she left her beautiful home in K’omoks that her husband and his family built for them, and moved up to Haida Gwaii, and was immediately on the hunt for a log to carve for the totem pole.
I’m Erin Brillon, founder of Totem Design House. I carry the Haida name Kalga Jaad — Woman of Ice — my grandmother’s name, put onto me by my uncle Ken, our family’s hereditary chief and historian, as a lineage name that has been carried by our matriarchs for generations. My brother Jesse Brillon carries the names Skil Xaaw and Xaaw Sgaana. We and my children are registered band members of Skidegate Village, Haida Nation — the oldest granddaughter and oldest grandson of our Clan matriarch — and we have been quietly, deliberately rebuilding what was nearly lost.
In 2022 we hosted our first clan feast in over 150 years. In 2024, Andy held his first potlatch, upholding the chieftainship placed on him, and our clan upheld prerogatives by repaying the bride price Andy had paid — an act that hadn’t occurred in our clan in over a century. In Haida culture these aren’t just ceremonies. They are the foundation of our governance, our identity, our living law. To restore them after generations of silence is profound in a way that is difficult to fully articulate.
Our grandmother Evelyn was the eldest daughter of Edna, who before her had been the matriarch of Laana Ts’aadas — an Eagle clan of Skidegate. After the catastrophic losses of smallpox and colonization had nearly decimated our clan, Edna raised eleven children, essentially single-handedly repopulating our clan.
In Haida culture, a matriarch isn’t simply the head of the family. Traditionally, she is the keeper — of knowledge, of culture, of the people who come to her for guidance and care. That lineage runs from birth order of the eldest from Elizabeth to Edna to Evelyn — and carries forward in my mother, also named Edna Elizabeth, who bears the names of her grandmothers before her. As the eldest granddaughter, my daughter and I also carry on that thread that has guided our matriarchs.
Jesse is a master jewellery carver, but this is his first time working at this scale in wood. Marlo had never carved a pole either. And it’s a big learning curve for both of them. Fortunately, Karver Everson, Marlo’s husband, and Junior Henderson, both master totem pole carvers, are mentoring them both. Watching two people carve something they have never carved before — at a scale our clan hasn’t attempted in over two centuries — is profound beyond words.
The pole will be raised this July, open to the public. We will be hosting a memorial potlatch for members of our Haida communities to follow, honoring our grandmother Evelyn and our matriarchs who came before her.
I’m compelled to real honesty here, because it has to be said — this work is not easy. Cultural revival sounds beautiful and magical from the outside, and it truly is — but it also carries a weight that isn’t often spoken of. There are fractures. There is negativity to contend with. There is the particular exhaustion of trying to rebuild something precious while navigating aspects of human nature that are disappointing. We do this work anyway, because we recognize that we are uniquely positioned to do it. As lineage holders, as the eldest grandchildren of our matriarch, and through the years we have invested in learning our culture — time spent with cultural leaders and master artists, work spent healing and empowering our people — Jesse and I have been shaped into people who can carry this. If not us, then who can carry this work forward?
What we earn through our modest Totem Design House income is invested into efforts like this one. We are not wealthy. We are choosing, again and again, to invest what we have into upholding a culture that was nearly erased — by disease, by residential schools, by the slow suffocation of colonial pressure on our people’s sense of who they are and what they deserve to carry forward.
Marlo had a dream born from the desire to restore what was lost and ignited by witnessing what was possible from others who share a fierce love for language and culture. Jesse picked up new tools. And somewhere in that space between a young woman’s vision, her uncle’s design and her husband’s hands, our Clan is finding its way back to something that may have never been revitalized otherwise.
Follow along with us as we bring it home.