Bill Reid and Beyond

Bill Reid’s work has long been acknowledged for its astute and eloquent analysis of Haida tradition, and for the paradox of making modern art from the old Haida stories. It helped to make the so-called renaissance of Northwest Coast Native art visible to all. Bill Reid and Beyond pays Reid the compliment of expanding on his own clear-eyed self-scrutiny as he came to stand for Native art and artists, more perhaps than he would have wished.

The book’s nineteen contributors write from many perspectives, breaking down boundaries between art history and anthropology, between academic and artist, between colleague and politician.

Alert to the political, economic, and social events of Bill Reid’s lifetime, which have radically changed the way in which Native art is produced and received, this book participates in the important ongoing debates about Native art, demonstrating vividly that the exchange of ideas can, like works of art, change people’s minds.

Karen Duffek is curator of art at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver and author of Bill Reid: Beyond the Essential Form and The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations. Charlotte Townsend-Gault is associate professor of art history at the University of British Columbia. She edited Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. The other contributors include Doug Cranmer, Marcia Crosby, Leslie Dawn, Aaron Glass, Guujaaw, Gwaganad (Diane Brown), Alan L. Hoover, Aldona Jonaitis, Ki-ke-in (Ron Hamilton), Bill McLennan, Marianne Nicolson, George Rammell, Miles Richardson, Doris Shadbolt, David Summers, Loretta Todd, and Scott Watson.

List of illustrations

Foreword by Nika Collison

Preface by Ruth B. Phillips

Introduction: Image and Imagination by Charlotte Townsend-Gault and Karen Duffek

Part I: Expanding the Understanding of Haida Art

On Its Own Terms by Miles Richardson

The Will to Be Haida by Doris Shadbolt

A Matter of Choice by Bill McLennan

Goldsmith/Culturesmith by George Rammell

Part II: Locating Community

Man, Myth or Magic? by Guujaaw

A Non-Haida Upbringing: Conflicts and Resolutions by Gwaganad (Diane Brown)

On Shifting Ground: Bill Reid at the Museum of Anthropology by Karen Duffek

Bill Reid: Master of Patronage by Alan L. Hoover

Haidas, Human Beings and Other Myths by Marcia Crosby

Part III: Revisiting the Revival

What is a Renaissance? by David Summers

Reconsidering the Northwest Coast Renaissance by Aldona Jonaitis

"Other-Side" Man by Doug Cranmer

Memories of Bill Reid: A Most Unlikely "Indian" by Ki-ke-in (Ron Hamilton)

Was Bill Reid the Fixer of a Broken Culture or a Culture Broker? by Aaron Glass

Part IV: Reconciling Aboriginality and Modernity

Two Bears by Scott Watson

Struggles with Aboriginality/Modernity by Charlotte Townsend-Gault

A Bringer of Change: "Through Inadvertence and Accident" by Marianne Nicolson

Re: Reading Reid and the "Revival" by Leslie Dawn

Beyond by Loretta Todd

Bibliography

Biographical Notes on the Contributors