Bill Reid – illustratör

Raven's Cry is a Northwest Coast classic -- a moving and powerful work that is a fictionalized retelling of the near destruction of the Haida nation.The Haida are a proud and cultured people, whose home is Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) off the coast of northern British Columbia. Until the first Europeans arrived in 1775, the Haida were the lords of the coast. The meeting of cultures was a fateful one: the Europeans had the advantages of firearms and immunity to their own deadly diseases. In just 150 years, the Haida and their culture were pushed to the edge of extinction.Christie Harris recreates this tale of tragedy and the ultimate survival of native spirit with dignity, beauty and ethnographic accuracy.

This new edition of a collaboration between one of the finest living artists in North America and one of Canada's finest poets includes a new introduction by the distinguished anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Ten masterful, complex drawings by Bill Reid and ten tales demonstrate the richness and range of Haida mythology, from bawdy yet profound tales of the trickster Raven to poignant, imagistic narratives of love and its complications in a world where animals speak, dreams come real, and demigods, monsters, and men live side by side.