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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #60157 Hard SGang Gwaay: a Haida village site in Gwaii Haanas

Read the following passage.

A. SGang Gwaay Llnagaay, once recorded as Ninstints and as Nan Sdins, is a Haida village site on a small island near the southern tip of Haida Gwaii, off the west coast of British Columbia. It is known for what still stands there: the remains of big cedar longhouses and a group of carved poles, some raised as memorials and some for the dead. Together they show the power and artistry of Haida society in the 19th century. In 1981 the island was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and as a National Historic Site.

B. The village stood in a sheltered bay on the east side of the island, where land and sea had long supplied its people. Recent research there points to more than 12,000 years of Haida use and care of these resources. Its longhouses were framed with very large posts and beams over deep, tiered house pits, and a row of them stood behind the poles. The poles carried crests of the Eagle and Raven clans, and some mortuary poles once held human remains. Three figures in tall hats were often carved at the top of Haida poles, recalling watchmen once posted to raise the alarm when enemies approached.

C. Contact with outside traders changed the village within a century. The maritime fur trade around Haida Gwaii, which ran largely from 1787 to 1840, brought great wealth but devastated the sea otter population. Diseases such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis followed. At least 20,000 Haida are thought to have lived on the islands in the late 1700s, but fewer than 600 were left by the late 1800s. Survivors from the southern villages gathered at SGang Gwaay and were then invited to settle at Skidegate, and the village was occupied until shortly after 1880.

D. Today Parks Canada and the Haida care for the site together. In summer, Haida Gwaii Watchmen live on the island, limit how many visitors are on shore at one time and explain its history. Crews straighten leaning poles and clear away moss, but in 1995 hereditary chiefs decided that the poles should in time return to the earth. This shared care grew out of a turning point in 1985, when the Haida Nation led a blockade against logging on Lyell Island and 72 people were arrested. The stand drew international attention, and in 1993 Canada and the Haida signed the Gwaii Haanas Agreement to manage the area jointly.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
During the warmer months, guardians stay on the island and control how many people come ashore.

- 2.
Within about a hundred years, the Haida population fell to under a thirtieth of its earlier size.

- 3.
Figures cut into the highest part of some columns represented guards who once warned villages of attack.

- 4.
Sailors from the trading ships were the ones who brought the deadly illnesses to the village.

- 5.
Haida leaders agreed that the wooden columns should one day be allowed to rot away.

- 6.
The village has been known by other names in earlier documents.

- 7.
The village sat by a protected inlet on the eastern coast of the island.

- 8.
An act of protest led by the Haida opened the way to joint control of the wider area.

- 9.
What survives at the site shows the skill and strength of the community that made it.

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