Bill Reid
Acclaimed Indigenous scholar Gerald McMaster’s new book marks the 100th anniversary of the Haida artist’s birth.
"Loo Taas," 1986
red cedar wood and paint, 50’ in length. (collection of the Haida Heritage Centre at Kay Llnagaay, Haida Gwaii; courtesy of Guujaaw)
Gerald McMaster (photo Sebastian Kriete)
Gerald McMaster tells the story of Loo Taas, a cedar canoe paddled to Vancouver's Expo 86, in this excerpt adapted from his new book, Iljuwas Bill Reid: Life & Work, part of the Art Canada Institute's free online art book project. McMaster is the Canada Research Chair of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University in Toronto, where he leads other researchers as the director of Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge. He was the curator of the 1995 Venice Biennale and artistic director of the 2012 Sydney Biennale. He is nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) and a citizen of the Siksika First Nation.
The story of Loo Taas by Bill Reid, the epic-sized red cedar ocean-going canoe, reaches back 800 years to when the 240-foot tree she was carved from began to grow in Haida Gwaii. Loo Taas is one of Reid’s most important works, and her significance is still unfolding today as the vessel continues to participate in important events in the Haida community.
Few 20th-century artists were catalysts for the reclamation of a culture. Reid (1920-1998) was among them. During the 1950s, Reid worked as a radio announcer, then established himself as a well-respected jeweller. Following in the footsteps of his great-great-uncle, the master Haida artist Daxhiigang (Charles Edenshaw), he went on to innovatively respond to Haida worldviews, eventually producing renowned large-scale monuments such as The Raven and the First Men (1980) at the UBC Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver and Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Black Canoe (1991) at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. With such works, Reid’s art, different from, yet in homage to, his ancestors, spoke to new audiences.
Bill Reid, “Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Black Canoe,” 1991
plaster and metal, 13’ x 20’ x 11’ (collection of the Canadian Embassy, Washington, D.C. © Bill Reid Estate)
Passionately engaging with a culture whose practices were once banned by the Indian Act, Reid embraced and emboldened a tidal shift that produced symbols for a nation, and his art became iconic. During his 50-year-long career as a passionate artist and an adamant community activist, mentor and writer, he was prolific and articulate, creating nearly 1,000 original works and writing dozens of texts that gave voice to his vision and the cultural issues of his day.
Loo Taas was commissioned for Vancouver’s Expo 86. The vessel was designed by Bill Reid and built in his ancestral village of Skidegate by a dedicated team of carvers led by Tucker (Robert) Brown over the winter of 1985-86. Reid’s interest in canoe making had been sparked by seeing a 19th-century Northwest Coast canoe painted by Daxhiigang in storage at the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History) when it was located in Ottawa.
Haida canoe being steamed at the UBC Museum of Anthropology by Bill Reid and team in 1985. The steaming technique softens the cedar
making it more flexible, and allows the wooden vessel to be widened after it is carved. (photo by William McLennan; courtesy UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver)
Inspired to learn more, he studied other examples and read books, gathering insight into this art form that for centuries had been at the heart of Haida culture but to him was still an enigma. In order to gain first-hand experience with the traditional processes and methods, in the early 1980s Reid started working with Haida carver Guujaaw (b.1953) and Kwakwaka’wakw carver Simon Dick (b.1951) to build a 25-foot inshore canoe. Shortly after came Loo Taas.
Although Loo Taas marks the apex of Reid’s career, at this time he was also struggling with Parkinson’s disease. As his health declined, Reid enrolled and relied on many others to see his visions through to the end, mentoring them in the process. Possibly, in a mysterious way, what weakened him physically strengthened the impact of his artistic legacy.
Artmaking in Haida society depends upon community participation. With the carving and launching that brought Loo Taas to life, the work, created by many in conjunction with Reid, resulted in a kind of artistic potlatching. It was an artistic gifting that afforded others the opportunity to be involved, to learn, to remember and to enact in the present Haida knowledge and ways of being. Together with his Haida relations, he called forth and brought to life an animate component of Haida culture critical to the ongoing health and beauty of Haida society. Like a prayerful poem, she was conjured by Reid, but her coming into being had in mind those who truly needed her.
Bill Reid carving in Skidegate around 1976. (photo by Martine J. Reid; courtesy of the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancouver)
Reid began his career believing that the social patterns that were necessary to produce great Haida art were irretrievably lost to the past. Loo Taas gifted him the opportunity to witness the contrary. Every step of making and using her asked her people to know again who they are and to enact in the present the knowledge and ways of their ancestors. As Reid proclaimed, “Western art starts with the figure – West Coast Indian art starts with the canoe.”
In response to Reid’s wish for her name to mean “Wave Eater,” Kaadaas gaah Kiiguwaay (Raven-Wolf Clan) matriarch Hazel Stevens established her Haida name from loo (wave) and taas (eat).
Community Elder and Haida activist GwaaGanad (Diane Brown) remembers the making of Loo Taas: “It was really exciting. No one had made a big canoe in Skidegate in over 100 years. The day they steamed her open, the whole village came out.”
Launch of the "Loo Taas" canoe in 1986. (photo by Ulli Steltzer; collection of the Haida Gwaii Museum, Skidegate (Ph 08535); courtesy of the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Vancouver, and Princeton University Library, New Jersey)
Following the vessel’s duties at Expo 86, Loo Taas was paddled back up the coast from Vancouver, following traditional trade routes and visiting many villages along the way. Each landing garnered a “royal welcome” that brought whole villages out to greet her and precipitated celebratory feasts.
Segments of the journey were turbulent, but Loo Taas proved unfailingly seaworthy. Mysteriously, her homecoming to a “big knock-down” celebration in Skidegate aligned precisely with the Haida victory in the impassioned movement to protect the forests of Gwaii Haanas.
In 1989, she was shipped to Rouen, France, and paddled by a delegation of Haida up the Seine River to be exhibited at the Musée de l’homme in Paris. And, in 1998, she fulfilled Reid’s wish to carry his ashes to his final resting place: his grandmother’s once-populated Haida Gwaii village of T’aanuu. Still she goes on. ■
Iljuwas Bill Reid: Life & Work by Gerald McMaster, Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2020, can be downloaded for free here.
PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.
