Bill Reid didn’t just reclaim his heritage—he reimagined it for a modern world. Born in 1920 in Victoria, B.C., to a Haida mother and a European-descended father, Reid spent much of his early life distanced from his Indigenous roots. His mother, Sophie Gladstone, had been removed from her community under Indian Act policies, and the family struggled with identity across generations.

It was only in his twenties, working as a CBC broadcaster in Toronto, that Reid first glimpsed the breadth of Haida art and asked himself who he might become. He studied jewelry making in Toronto, then traveled to London to hone his craft. But always, the question pulled him back to Haida Gwaii—and to the legacy of his maternal ancestors, including the famed carver Charles Edenshaw (Reid’s great-uncle in lineage) whose forms and stories would echo through Reid’s work.

Reid’s life was a bridge: between generations, between ancestral form and new techniques, between art and activism. He created jewellery, copper and silver pieces, prints, massive sculptures in wood and bronze. Over fifty years, he produced well over 1,000 original works and wrote essays defending Indigenous culture and insisting on the dignity of “well-made objects.”

One of his iconic works is The Raven and the First Men (1980) — a monumental cedar carving housed at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. Using Haida myth, Reid depicts Raven discovering the first humans in a clam shell, coaxing them into the world. That sculpture feels like storytelling made physical: myth as structure, as presence, as shared history.

Another landmark is Spirit of Haida Gwaii (1987/1991). Originally cast in black bronze, later in jade tone, it presents a canoe carrying 16 figures representing Haida myth, leadership, and environmental kinship. Part prayer, part monument, it’s also a reminder that Reid’s art often paused when political stakes were high: he once halted casting to protest logging of Haida lands.

What draws me most to Reid’s work is how he handles tension. The tension between modern and traditional; between past erasure and renewed memory; between public spectacle and quiet interiority. His pieces don’t just stand in museum halls—they carry ancestral voices, sometimes loud, sometimes whispering. And he always insisted that a Haida artist must think beyond aesthetics: “Joy is a well-made object, equal only to the joy of making it.”

His later years were marked by illness—Parkinson’s disease slowed his hands, but not his vision. Even as he leaned more on assistants for large works, his spirit held firm, demanding precision, respect, dialogue.

Bill Reid’s legacy is enormous, not just in the scale of his sculptures, but in how many minds and conversations he continues to shift. He helped revive Haida artistry in the public eye; he made Indigenous narrative visible in a country still struggling with colonial memory. He remains a kind of cultural axle—as relevant as ever in times when the voices of Indigenous makers must be heard.

If you’d like to walk through the many forms he created—from carved cedar to fine silver, from myth to monument—the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in Vancouver holds a sweeping collection reclaiming his spirit and vision.

Photo at the top of page by Jim Cox.