...inspired by ancient spirits
If you lived in a lovely green land that was filled with bears both black and grizzly and did most of your traveling on the sea you would call the animal that we call a sea lion today, a Sea Bear. Grizzly bears eat salmon, sea bears eat salmon, […] Read more »
Flying Frog Frog’s appearance in ancient Haida Art is fascinating because there were no Frogs on Haida-Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) until they were recently introduced. To the Haida, Frog was a strong spiritual being and was a watchman and messenger from the spirit world. While Frog may seem a small […] Read more »
The Potlatch The potlatch may be one of the most misunderstood social mechanisms in history. When settlers and traders arrived on the Northwest coast, they were invited to great week long winter parties where every one was fed, and fed very well, and great quantities of goods were […] Read more »
Raven Transforming It was Raven, with both human and bird qualities, which placed the sun, the moon and the stars in the heavens. First, that sly character, would devise a way to trick Grandfather Creator into letting him play with the glowing orbs in his magic box. Succeeding in that […] Read more »
These two designs are a celebration of the salmon that sustain life and culture on the North West Coast. We who live here often take the salmon for granted just as people in other places may take their daily bread for granted. Salmon may not be quite as important to […] Read more »
Wolf is an enigmatic character on the North West Coast because there is not a great body of Wolf stories as there are for Eagle and Raven. On Haida Gwaii the Wolf was only known from hearsay as there were no wolves on those islands, but the Wolf was an […] Read more »
Orcas have shown great reasoning capabilities and creative thinking in encounters with humans. I have had many encounters with Orcas myself having been a commercial gillnet fisherman in my early years. I have never found a reliable story of an Orca harming a human in the wild. I […] Read more »
Lovebirds Bracelet With Abalone Inlay In the 18th century when the Native cultures of the Northwest Coast were flourishing and the wealth of the fur trade was flowing throughout the world, a curious custom was born. When a man was mature and wealthy enough to seek a wife he […] Read more »
This Large Beaver Bracelet with Abalone Inlay hand carved by Owen Walker is in keeping with the Northwest Coast Indian lore that speaks of Beaver, who at first was a woman who loved to swim. Many of the stories of the first peoples are both entertainment and a cautionary tale similar […] Read more »
This Large Eagle Bracelet, hand carved by Owen Walker, is a good representation of one of the two principle clans of the North West Coast peoples. Just as elsewhere in the world, eagles are respected for their strength and acrobatic flying abilities. There are many many eagle stories most of […] Read more »