Naas Shaak Aankáawu vs Raven

In the Tlingit telling of Raven and the box of daylight, the wealthy old man living at the head of the Nass River who keeps the stars, moon, and sun locked in nested boxes, until Raven tricks his way into his household to steal them.

In the Tlingit telling recorded by John R. Swanton, this wealthy old man of the raven lineage owns three boxes, nested one inside another, holding the stars, the moon, and the sun. Raven, wanting light for the world, transforms himself into a hemlock needle and is swallowed by the old man's daughter as she drinks from a stream; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to Raven reborn as the old man's grandson. Doting on this grandson, the old man eventually gives him the box of stars to quiet his crying, and Raven opens it, releasing the stars through the smoke hole; he goes on to obtain the boxes of the moon and finally the sun in the same way, escaping with the sun in his beak.

The central figure of Tlingit and Haida oral tradition, who steals daylight from a wealthy old man's nested boxes at the head of the Nass River and, in a Haida telling, coaxes the first people from a clamshell on the beach at Haida Gwaii.

As the poet and translator Robert Bringhurst wrote of the Haida telling, Raven "never actually creates anything; he made the world by stealing, exchanging, redistributing, and generally moving things around." Both Tlingit and Haida traditions cast Raven this way: greedy, funny, and self-interested, yet the figure through whom the world's useful and beautiful things (daylight, salmon, the first people) come to be. Raven's stories are told today by Tlingit and Haida people as living oral tradition, and Sealaska Heritage Institute, the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian nations' own cultural institution, publishes Raven stories for public audiences.