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Type
RegionMythology
Tlingit and Haida Tradition
Coordinates
53.2°N, 132.1°W
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.
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.
“A Haida telling, recorded in the Skidegate dialect, of Raven finding the clamshell of the first people on the beach at Haida Gwaii.”