Nox Sim Gan: then and now

The Cedar Mother
by Hetxw’ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson), illustrated by Natasha Donovan

Nanaimo: Strong Nations, 2026
$24.95 / 9781774921586

Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic

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On the first page of The Cedar Mother Gitxsan author Hetxw’ms Gyetxw, also known as Brett Huson, subtly introduces two distinct ways of perceiving that are inherently cultural.

In a single paragraph, Gyetxw presents young readers with an intellectual puzzle and a creative task centred on acknowledging, understanding, and translating cultural difference. 

It’s April and in a snowy forest stands a solitary western red cedar tree that’s centuries old. At the same time, Spring Salmon’s Returning Home Moon is a crescent that’s begun to wax. Nox Sim Gan, the titular forest cedar-matriarch, is a towering presence. “When she was born,” Gyetxw writes, “this road was only a trail used by the Gitxsan, who had never seen a car, wagon, or horse.”

Nox Sim Gan’s life began over 300 years ago,” Gyetxw next mentions, during “the Lasa gagnwiikw, the Groundhog Hunting Moon.” And as she grew, her importance to the surrounding ecosystem grew as well—she sheltered birds, fed deer, and, crucially, “created oxygen for our world.” 

In Gyetxw’s telling, Nox Sim Gan is distinctive on her own but also a facet of a much bigger picture. From sockeye salmon and fungi to birds and humans, the story of the ecosystem relates an intertwined living network, “a delicate balance, as each part of the system depends on the others.”

For the Gitxsan, “who hold immense respect and reverence for Nox Sim Gan,” as Nox Sim Gan is a mother to them; a tree has intrinsic value that cannot conveyed to its mere use or strict function.  

As as the suns sets in the Gitzxan territory, and Nox Sim Gan nears the end of her life cycle, she continues to “provide,” in the form of becoming a story pole, a monument that tells the story of Gitzxan “culture, stewardship, and place in the natural world.” 

Gyetxw (The Bee Mother) ends his story with an image of a cedar sapling (the last of Natasha Donovan‘s vivid and inviting illustrations). She will, in time (and barring real-world issues like habitat encroachment, ecosystem transformation, and, well, tree harvesting) thrive and nurture and provide for centuries to come.

In part, The Cedar Mother is set in a kind of never-never land common to children’s picture books. Portraying a majestic tree, a matriarch, book feels reverential, at points mystical. Yet, it’s here-and-now as well, somewhere with the territory along the Skeena and Bulkley Rivers in Northern BC. And there’s science too. Footnoted terms like “nutrients,” “photosynthesis,” and “fungi” offer a way for the intended pre-teen reader to scientifically contextualize the tree as functioning within a vast, deep, and dizzyingly complex system. 

There’s the Gitxsan people, too, who are presented as chorus-like—harmonious in outlook and belief. They’re somehow otherworldly—outside of time—too: as depicted by Gyetxw, they might be of a particularly ancient religious order, preternaturally attuned to the cosmos, guardian-like, and sibylline; and as such it’s hard to imagine them in the present day and commenting on news headlines as they pick up a frozen pizza for dinner.

The actual, everyday Gitxsan community members who drive vehicles with gas-powered engines whose emissions contribute to climate change that, in turn, has adverse effects on conifer health, for instance, are absent altogether in Gyetxw’s picture book. Ditto for Gitxsan forestry workers. In the name of flow perhaps, the book skirts messy and contradictory human politics. The Mothers of Xsan series (The Cedar Mother is the eighth volume) is geared toward pre-teen readers, so maybe the elegance of simplicity makes sense here.

Brett Josef Grubisic assigns, edits, and posts fiction, poetry, and children’s lit reviews for BCR; occasionally, he contributes reviews as well. [He’s written about recent books by Nathan Fairbairn, Otoniya Bitek, Martin Butler, Hannah Beach and Maggie Hutchings, Zsuzsi Gartner (ed.), Jennifer Cooper, Caroline Adderson, Sunny Dhillon, Wanda John-Kehewin, Ryan O’Dowd, Michael V. Smith, David Bouchard, Alice Turski, Louise Sidley, K.J. Denny (ed.), Sonali Zohra, Carrie Anne Vanderhoop, Kristen Pendreigh, Sam Wiebe, Maureen Young, Daniel Anctil, and Adam Welch for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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