Recently a site visitor asked me about Bill Reid’s The Raven and the First Men, mentioned in my opening statement. Living and working as I do far off the beaten path, books have become my umbilical cord back to the art world. In the early 80's I came across Indian Artists At Work, by Ulli Steltzer. Just my kind of book, beautiful black and white pictures of artists and their work, and few words. The book came home with me primarily because of two pictures, one of Bill Reid holding a tiny Raven Discovering Mankind in the Clam Shell and the other of Fred Davis working on a piece of a man changing into a killer whale. Both pieces seemed to push beyond the Haida traditions, true to them but something more. 
Bill Reid often portrayed Raven. In Steltzer’s book, he said, "Raven is the deus ex machina, the most important figure in Haida mythology. There are many Raven myths. He is the one that caused everything to happen, though quite inadvertently. He was, for instance , the one to steal the sun, but it was the Eagle who put it up in the sky so there would be light in the world. The Haidas are divided into Raven and Eagle moieties. All the other crests, like the Bear, Beaver, Killer Whale, are minor crests."
Years later, stopping for gas, after two whirlwind days at the World’s Fair in Vancouver, BC, I bought a postcard of The Raven and the First Men. At first I thought it was the finished piece from the book....until I turned the card over and read the dimensions - 210 cm high x 180 cm wide. It was evening, we were already late heading home, there was no turning back to find it. So I have only seen this piece through the pictures in this post. They are both primarily from the same vantage point; but I have drawn enough clam shells and made enough sculpture to know that this piece is one of those rare sculptures that will read well no matter what your vantage point.
The Raven and the First Men is perfect in form, in line, but more importantly for me, in how it captures, becomes the Haida creation story that it portrays. The piece displayed at the U. B. C. Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is still on my Must See Someday List, but I would be just as thrilled to hold the tiny original version in my hand.
