Influential carver says Haida culture is ‘enveloped in art’ | Canada Voices

The 62-year-old Haida artist Kihl ‘Yahda Christian White has been carving since he was a boy growing up at Old Massett on Haida Gwaii. Today, the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver, dedicated to preserving the legacy of that influential Haida artist, has mounted a retrospective of White’s long career.

Preserving the stories and treasures of the Nuxalk nation

It starts with the small intricate argillite pieces with which White began, mining the fine-grained black stone from the local mountains, and proceeds through his work in wood, including large totems, masks, canoes and paddles. He carved his first totem pole, for his father’s inauguration as Chief Edenshaw, in 1995 and has worked on several others since, including carving a pole with family members during the COVID-19 lockdowns that was raised in 2022.

White also trains young carvers, and designed and built a longhouse that was erected in 2005 with the help of the community. Canoe People’s House is now home to the Tluu Xaada Naay Society, the Haida arts group and dance troupe. White is a founding member of the Old Massett Repatriation Committee, bringing Haida cultural property and human remains back to the First Nation in the bentwood boxes he has carved.

How did you start carving?

I remember seeing the first totem pole being raised in 1969. It was carved by Robert Davidson and his brother Reg Davidson. I would have been six or seven years old when that was raised.

Seeing that pole was a big inspiration for me. My father was a carver too. He started right around the same time as the pole went up; he started carving in argillite and then copper and silver and gold. He kept on working with that and so I picked up his old argillite carving tools, along with my brothers. I was the oldest brother, there were six of us. I have three sisters and two brothers.

I was ready to carve. It just came naturally to me. There’s a piece in the exhibition, a whalebone piece, it was one of my earliest pieces. I remember carving a couple more, another whalebone piece, I sold to the lieutenant-governor of B.C. for $20. He had visited my parents’ place.

Then I realized I could make money off this and I just started to carve steadily, selling my carvings locally to teachers, to relatives, to people from the Department of National Defence stationed here, to gift shops.

In my teens I was going out with my friends to visit carvers, it was kind of a community of artists, giving each other tips. The younger carvers would show the older carvers their work, and get advice. There was friendly competition among artists, who could carve the fastest, who could carve the best.

What’s argillite like to work with?

It’s messy. It’s very dusty, a fine dust. I have to go to the mountain to quarry the stone and to carry it out, which is laborious and dangerous. I’ve done that trip many times, maybe over 30 times. I’ve always taken people along with me to help carry out the stone. I’ll get enough to have a year’s supply or even five years’ supply. I might retire from carving argillite in the next few year because it’s so physically demanding and dusty.

It’s been a mainstay for me because I found I could excel in that work, but it was always a commercial project because I would sell to galleries and to collectors.

After I start carving the pole for my father and then I start doing masks, I realized there is more to our culture. So I started doing things for more of a ceremonial purpose and giving back to the community.

You have been very involved with the repatriation committee, bringing objects back to Haida Gwaii. Do you feel these objects still have any place in museums?

Of course. When I go to New York, I go into the American Museum of Natural History, I see the Great Hall. I feel that those poles are ambassadors for our culture, they are showing our culture to the world. I go to the British Museum, I see a Haida totem pole that once stood over here and I see that as an ambassador. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, there’s a pole carved by my great-great grandfather.

Some First Nations avoid the word art, because they feel it’s a European concept. What do you think?

I disagree. There is a saying “instead of a design.” What that means is it’s abstract. There are designs that are very hard to interpret, sometimes you look at it a certain way, you can see a little bird head in there; you can notice the salmon head design. The ovoids, the U shapes, the split shapes, they’re kind of randomly placed. So it’s more open to interpretation and these were done on purpose.

I think our people understood that what they were doing was an abstract form, the highly abstract art form known as formline design.

People could say it’s ambiguous, but I don’t really like that word because it becomes almost like a generic and our work was far from generic. It was a very distinctive, very accomplished. Some deep thinkers and very artistic people had created this work.

So formline design, which makes Haida art so distinctive, suggests a belief in art for art’s sake?

Our whole culture was totally enveloped in art. Every object in the house was painted or carved, from spoons to bowls to the bentwood chests and boxes, the fish hooks, everything was embellished with designs – the ceremonial objects, the rattles, the drums, the amulets, the jewellery. There were just so many objects that our ancestors created, it’s taken me a lifetime to learn.

Kihl ‘Yahda Christian White: Master Haida Artist continues at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art to Feb. 1, 2026, 639 Hornby St., Vancouver.