In old Haida villages in the Queen Charlotte Islands, also known as Haida Gwaii, the shamans had their own island (the one above is near the old village site of Skedans). Shamans were medicine men, but also a link between the world of humans and spirits (in our times, they've been busted down to herbalists).

Because the normal people feared the spiritual power of the shaman, they wanted them close, but not too close. The shamans lived, and were buried, on their islands.

After doing a boat tour around Louise Island, I spent last Friday night in Queen Charlotte at the town's Art Walk event. There were a lot of countercultural-looking people there.

One fellow who had been on the boat tour muttered to me -- and rather sneeringly, at that -- that many of the people in the crowd looked like they wouldn't wouldn't fit in anywhere else.

That had me wondering about whether I should consider Haida Gwaii to be an archipelago of shaman islands.

I mean that in the best possible way.