Document généré le 27 sept. 2021 18:05 Espace Sculpture The Black Canoe Bill Reid and The Spirit of Haida Gawaii John K. Grande Sculpture et anthropologie Numéro 19, printemps 1992 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/10021ac Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Le Centre de diffusion 3D ISSN 0821-9222 (imprimé) 1923-2551 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Grande, J. K. (1992). The Black Canoe: Bill Reid and The Spirit of Haida Gawaii. Espace Sculpture, (19), 30–33. Tous droits réservés © Le Centre de diffusion 3D, 1992 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ ^^ •Jjjuyjuu The Black Canoe BILL REID AND THE SPIRIT OF HAIDA GAWAII John K. Grande ooking for all the world like the last survivors from a Li grea t natural disaster, or a motley crew of mythical expatriates embarked on a journey to who knows where, the profusion of half-human, half-animal characters thatpopulate Bill Reid's The Black Canoe aren't the typical ones one would expect to meet up with in Washington D.C. Culled from the ancient Haida culture this mysterious cast of redolent beings have all the intricacy of a jewellery box design scaled up 100 times over and woven in bronze. Part of physical cosmology of Haida beliefs and customs, the heraldic and traditional motifs that adorn this canoe are outward expressions of a seafaring culture that thrived along the coastal bays and inlets of the Queen Charlotte Islands in northern British Columbia for some 8,000 years before they came on a collision course with European economic expansionism. 30 ESPACE 19 PRINTEMPS/SPRING 1992 It is typical of Bill Reid's resilient character that he and British literature. It was in the 1940's, when he study goldsmithing at the Central did not see the placingof this massive bronze tribute went up north to visit the Haida Gawaii and met his School of Art and Design in Lon­ to cultural self-sufficiency in the wasteland nexus of grandfather Charles Gladstone, an argillite carver, don, England in 1968 to further his America's bureaucratic and commercial empire as that his curiosity about Haida customs, mythology, already significant technical exper­ an act of cultural subjugation. In Reid's own words, and carving traditions was aroused, but he remained tise. The numerous small scale "In considering the art for the building, it occurred an outsider looking in. While working as a C.B.C. carvi ngs he has made over the years: to me that this was an appropriate opportunity to broadcaster in Toronto he studied jewellery and boxes, jewellery and carved relief represent the kernel of the founding nations, which engraving at Ryerson. By the 50's he was carving in work in gold, silver and cedar are are really not acknowledged in any other way in both European and Haida styles in his native city of now in many private and museum Washington, except in museums." Vancouver. While attending his grandfather's fu­ collections worldwide. He is one of Born of a Haida mother from Skidegate, B.C. and neral in 1954, he discovered the sculpture of Charles the only natives anywhere to com­ a Scots-American father, Bill Reid is a native crafts­ Edenshaw, one of the last great Haida carvers with bine a sophisticated knowledge of man and a sculptor par excellence, as readily at direct links to the original craft traditions, active at a traditional native imagery with ad­ home with European as with native traditions in art. time when the Haida culture proper had collapsed. vanced technical expertise based Often credited with singlehandedly resurrecting the In 1957 Reid gained direct experience working on years of formal training. Haida language of formline painting relief carving with one the last old-time Kwakiutl carvers, Mungo The Haida were a brash, some­ and three dimensional carving , Reid revived a Martin, recreating a Haida totem that had disinte­ times violent seafaring culture, but sophisticated cultural legacy that lay dormant for grated at the Friendship Peace Park on the U.S.­ ecologically resolved. The potlatch decades, was in danger of extinction. He brought Canada border in Blaine, Washington. Martin sang ceremon ies that took place between the formal traditions of Haida art back to life, but to the wood as he worked, as if evoking the ancestral opposing families of the Eagle and transformed them into a truly contemporary artform, spirits of a long ago out of the wood itself. He didn't Raven lineages were an effective in part because he had the liberty of knowing that no speak much, simply pointed to a small human figure form of social, familial and eco­ one was looking over his shoulder to tell him how to signalling Reid to begin carving. A little later Reid nomic exchange in a region bur­ do it. asked, "Mungo, where are the Band-Aids?" and was geoning with natural resources. Any As a youth, Bill Reid was relatively unaware of his told, "We don't use'em," the implication being that number of items: cedar boxes, native roots. His original interest was in American a native carver never cut himself.1 Reid went on to masks, jewellery, utilitarian and decorative objets were given away in these feasts. The notion of capital accumulation or amassing wealth over time beyond basic necessity was simply not high on a Haida's list of priorities. A colonial com­ menting on potlach activities of Kwakiutl, the Haida's neighbors to the south in 1895, wrote that he was, "told by the older men that they might as well die as give up the custom."2 Douglas Cole, a cultural historian at Simon Fraser University states that, "Instead of adopting the social values of their European employers and customers, they used their earnings to reinforce the most significant aspects of their social systems."! Contact with white colo­ nial culture catastrophically re­ duced the Haida population from 8,000 to a mere 600 people due to smallpox epidemics. Villages were abandoned and the remaining Haida regrouped to live in Skidegate and Masset. The carvings and paintings of war canoes, body paintings, oral literary and dance traditions effectively died out, though artifacts were still made for collectors and visiting tourists. Bill Reid, The full size plaster model for The Dogfish Woman showing formline relief carvings on The Raven's Wing typical to Haida sculpture. July 1989. Photo credit: Ulli Steltzer. Bill Reid, The Black Canoe, 1991. Detail. Photo credit: Ulli Steltzer. ESPACE 19 PRINTEMPS/SPRING 1992 31 The reserve of Haida cultural little vessel in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome. The reason was longstanding Haida land claims, immi­ heritage we see in many world class animal images it contains - the family's bees - are nently threatened by commercial logging firms' museums are relatively recent, less heraldry alone, with hardly a shred of mythology plans to clear-cut sections of Lyell Island. When a than 200 years old. The Haida did left. Bernini's boat is white instead of black, and full deal was finally arrived at between the federal, not beleive in preservation of arti­ of ruminative sighs instead of embryonic speeches. provincial, and Haida, blockades came down, facts, but instead recreated them And though the tourists crowd upon it by the thou­ Gawaii Haanas (literally The Islands of Awe in perpetually. They lived in a world sands, it is resolutely empty: an abandoned ship, Haida language) became the South Moresby Na­ of wood and water and did not go simultaneously melting and sinking into its pool." tional Park Reserve. Work on the construction of a through the stone, bronze and iron When he was asked to create two Welcome full size clay prototype build over a complex web of age progression that European cul­ Figures for the Chancery, the entrance court to the welded steel and wire mesh armature resumed in tures did. As a result, we have little new Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C. by its 1988. Over 100 interlocking positive sections were evidence of the Golden Age of their architect, Arthur Erickson in 1985, it was already formed and cut from a plaster mold. Continually past, one that is every bit as com­ apparent that Bill Reid's plans for the project were critical of the work as it progressed "from one end to plex as our own for its lineage of decidedly more ambitious than that. He wanted to the other", Reid had sections taken apart and reas­ indigenous evolution and local create more than a mere adjunct to Erickson's build­ sembled numerous times, to rework details he was variation. In The Black Canoe; Bill ing, a sculptural calling card that would be humbled not satisfied with directly on plaster. Each piece of Reid and the Spirit of the Haida by the architecture. Reid decide that he would prefer this jigsaw puzzle in 3D was coated in white shellac Gawaii , a book he co-authored to create a monumental sculpture that would recall to stabilize the plaster during shipment to the Ta Mix with Vancouver-based photogra­ the black argil lite canoe carvings of the 19th century Foundry in Beacon, New York.