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.
Two nations, two tellings
Raven appears independently in both Tlingit and Haida tradition, and this entry does not merge the two into one story. In the Tlingit telling recorded by John R. Swanton in Tlingit Myths and Texts (1909), Raven tricks his way into a wealthy old man's household at the head of the Nass River to steal his boxes of stars, moon, and sun. In a Haida telling recorded by Swanton in Haida Texts and Myths (1905) and reinterpreted by the Haida artist Bill Reid in his sculpture The Raven and the First Men (1978 to 1980), Raven finds a giant clamshell on the beach at Rose Spit, Haida Gwaii, and coaxes the small beings inside it out to become the first Haida.
Clan property and public telling
Among the Tlingit, Raven-cycle stories can be clan-owned (at.óow) in their fullest ceremonial form. What this site presents follows the form these stories take in the public retellings published by Sealaska Heritage Institute and in Swanton's and the Dauenhauers' recorded texts, not a claim to ceremonial or clan-specific content.
Both are shapeshifting, morally ambiguous figures whose schemes, rather than any straightforward heroism, reshape the world; the comparison is a common one in popular writing about tricksters, not a claim of historical contact.
Source Notes
These records lack edition and translator details. Their wording has not been verified as a direct quotation.
The Tlingit telling of Raven stealing the boxes of stars, moon, and sun from the wealthy old man at the head of the Nass River, recorded at Wrangell.
A Haida telling of Raven and the clamshell of the first people, recorded in the Skidegate dialect.
Worship & Cult
How Raven was venerated in ancient times
Worship Practices
Raven stories continue to be told publicly today, including through Sealaska Heritage Institute's published collections, and are carved and painted on totem poles, house fronts, and regalia across Tlingit and Haida communities; this site does not describe any restricted ceremony connected to Raven.
