Sacred-One-Standing-and-Moving
Haida · deity · mythic primordial · Recorded classification
Sacred-One-Standing-and-Moving (Ḵuuya Gyaag̱andal) is the world-bearer of Haida cosmology. In the Skidegate myth recorded by Swanton under the title 'Sacred-one-standing-and-moving, Stone-ribs, and Upward,' the supernatural beings gather to choose who will hold up the islands, and he accepts the task, balancing Haida Gwaii on a great pole braced against his chest above a copper box. When he stirs, a marten runs up the pole and the vibration is felt across the land as an earthquake. The figure remains vivid in living Haida culture: he was carved on the Gwaii Haanas Legacy Pole raised at Windy Bay in 2013 to commemorate the 2012 Haida Gwaii earthquake.
Domains
- earthquakes
- earth support
Powers
- to hold up the islands of Haida Gwaii
- to make the earth quake when he shifts
Relations
- subordinate to: Power-of-the-Shining-HeavensWithin the cosmological hierarchy Swanton recorded, the world-bearer, like all Sganagwai, holds power derived from Power-of-the-Shining-Heavens.Marianne Boelscher Ignace, 'Haida Religious Traditions,' in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference), 2005 (secondary)
Sources
- Sacred-One-Standing-and-Moving is the supernatural being who upholds the land of Haida Gwaii and whose shifting causes earthquakes.: John R. Swanton, Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate Dialect (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 29), 1905 (secondary); George F. MacDonald, Haida Monumental Art: Villages of the Queen Charlotte Islands (University of British Columbia Press), 1983 (secondary)