ABSTRACT
WASHINGTON, D.C.: OUTSIDE THE CANADIAN EMBASSY’S MAIN entrance sits, resplendent in a pool of water, a monumental black sculpture by artist Bill Reid. The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, a six-meter-long, four-meter high, five thousand kilogram canoe, holds a shaman, Raven, Bear Mother, Grizzly Bear, Dogfish Woman, Eagle, and Beaver, amongst other characters. The canoe participates in an ironic doubling, for some of these figures are not Native, but are figments of Bill Reid’s creative intersections between Haida and Anglo culture, commentaries on dominant mythologies and cultural production. Its prow is aimed at the Capitol. Appropriation of nativeness by Canada or an unsettled and disrupted attempt at nationalist encircling of the Other? Hull, Quebec, across the river from Ottawa and the parliament buildings, in the political center of Canada: toward the far end of the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s (CMC) Grand Hall, sitting by the immense windows which afford a view of the nearby river and the parliament, is The Spirit of Haida Gwaii. A full-sized, white cast of the black, bronze-cast Embassy sculpture, this Haida Gwaii gazes inward, away from the windows and the sweeping vista of river and parliament buildings to rest on its museum surroundings. It sits amidst totems, feast dishes, and the houses of the CMC’s Native northwest coast. Surrounded by the monuments that form its ‘cultural context,’ ensconced in an enormous, sun-filled room, this Haida Gwaii also marks the distance between Canadian History and Native Space. Above this serene Grand Hall where space erases the normal sense of time is the History Hall, in which modern progress is restored through the narrative paths that detail European settlement.
