Tlingit and Haida TraditionRegion
Haida Gwaii
The archipelago off the coast of British Columbia, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands, that is the Haida nation's homeland, and the setting of the story of Raven and the clamshell of the first people at Rose Spit.
About Haida Gwaii
Homeland and setting
Haida Gwaii is the Haida nation's home archipelago, and archaeological evidence, including finds in the islands' karst caves, documents human presence there for at least 10,000 to 13,000 years, among the longest continuously documented human occupations on the Northwest Coast. In Haida oral tradition, recorded by John R. Swanton and retold by the sculptor Bill Reid, it is also the setting of Raven's discovery of the giant clamshell at Rose Spit (Naikoon), from which he coaxes the first Haida people into the world.
A living homeland
Haida Gwaii is not only the setting of a story from the past: it remains the Haida Nation's home today, governed in significant part through the Haida Nation's own institutions, and Haida artists and tellers continue to tell and depict the Raven stories associated with these islands.
On the map
Haida Gwaii among other places of the Tlingit and Haida Tradition.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- John R. Swanton, Haida Texts and Myths, Skidegate Dialect
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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