AHOUSAHT FIRST NATION TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA A young hunter heads out duck hunting.

The author Victor Hugo wrote that, “anywhere one can dream is good, provided the place is obscure, and the horizon is vast”. The west coast of Vancouver Island, the furthest western point of Canada is such a place. To do justice to this mythic landscape is near impossible, but few writers and artists who visited would be able to resist an attempt. Clayoquot Sound is a rugged paradise, home to the Nuu-chah-nulth people, a political alliance of First Nations related through blood, culture and language. Life’s beauty and violence, struggle and celebration, is played out in these coastal villages, far removed from the gleeful tourism brochures of the Pacific Northwest.

AHOUSAHT TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA The young hunters quota of ducks will feed their large extended family.

AHOUSAHT TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA The young hunters quota of ducks will feed a large extended family.

TLA-O-QUI-AHT FIRST NATIONS TERRITORY/PACIFIC RIM NATIONAL PARK RESERVE, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA A beach clogged with logging debris. The logging industry has decimated salmon spawning tributaries. Clean-up efforts are beginning to bring about positive results.

MAAQTUSIIS VILLAGE, AHOUSAHT, BRITISH COLUMBIA A flooded walkway leads out of Maaqtusiis village into ancient forest.

OPITSAT VILLAGE, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA Master canoe carver takes a break.

OPITSAT VILLAGE, BRITISH COLUMBI,A CANADA Canoe carvers work to finish a canoe in heavy Pacific Northwest rain.

TOFINO, TLA-O-QUI-AHT FIRST NATIONS TERRITORY, VANCOUVER ISLAND, CANADA Gisele Martin, owner of Tla-ook Cultural Adventures, prepares a dugout canoe to introduce visitors to her peoples territory.

AHOUSAHT FIRST NATION TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA A man teaches his younger brother to skin a whitetail deer.

AHOUSAHT FIRST NATION TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA The skeletal remains of a fishing boat laid to rest in the village cemetary. Three brothers were lost to the sea.

MAAQTUSIIS VILLAGE, AHOUSAHT FIRST NATION TERRITORY, CANADA Two friends take a break from sanding a canoe in the village boatshed.

TLA-O-QUI-AHT TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA Local community leader and boys in a coastal village hit by chronic unemployment.

AHOUSAHT FIRST NATION TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA An Ahousaht man and his child head out onto the waters of Clayoquot Sound.

MAAQTUSIIS VILLAGE, AHOUSAHT FIRST NATION TERRITORY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA The village ambulance is broken down next to the local government council office.