How Raven Brought Light to the World
Haida People – Canada
Long ago, everything was dark. Raven, who had been around forever, got tired of bumping into things. One day, he found an old man with a special treasure—a tiny box containing all the light in the universe, hidden in many boxes.
Raven really wanted that light, so he came up with a plan. He waited until the old man’s daughter came to the river to gather water. Then Raven changed himself into a single hemlock needle and dropped himself into the river, just as the girl was dipping her water basket into the river. As she drank from the basket, she swallowed the needle. Raven turned into a tiny human inside her belly, grew, and was born as a human baby.
Like all grandfathers, Raven’s grandpa loved his grandchild very much. But when Raven asked for the box to play with, the old man said the child could never touch the special box holding special treasures.
Raven-child begged and begged to be allowed to see what was in the boxes. The grandfather finally allowed Raven-child to open the first box. When he opened the box Aurora, the Northern Lights escaped to fill the night sky. It took a long time and all of Raven’s talents to gain sympathy before the grandfather allowed Raven to play with the second box. When the lid came off, all the stars in the universe were released. After many temper tantrums and gentle persuasions also the third box was relinquished and the moon was revealed.
Finally, Raven pleaded time and again to see the last treasure and hold the light for just a moment. In time the old man yielded and lifted from the box a warm and glowing sphere Raven begged and finally got a chance. His grandpa tossed him a warm, glowing ball from the box.
As the light came to him, Raven turned into a huge bird and grabbed it with his beak. Moving his powerful wings, he burst through the smoke hole in the roof of the house and escaped into the darkness with his stolen treasure.
When the light got too heavy, Raven threw it into the air as high as he could releasing all the light of the universe. The stars, the moon, the northern lights and …. of course, the sun.
And that’s how light came into our world.
Adapted by the Haida Skidegate elder Captain Gold (2008).
Under license Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA. 
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This story is an adaptation based on Haida, Tsimshian and Tlingit mythology. This story can be found in John Reed Swanton’s Haida Texts and Myths and Tlingit Myths and Texts, and in Franz Boas’ Tsimshian Mythology. However, the adaptation offered here is a transcription of the retelling delivered by Haida Skidegate elder Captain Gold during a 2008 Haida Gwaii Wood Festival. In addition, Irma Verhoeven, an adopted member of the Namgis Nation of the Kwakwaka’wakw People, obtained permission from the Haida People to share this creation myth.
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It is thought that the ancestors of the Haida people have inhabited the Haida Gwaii archipelago on Canada’s Pacific coast for around 12,500 years (Fedje, 2005), although archaeological evidence for human habitation is estimated to be between 6,000 and 8,000 years old (Kennedy, Bouchard & Gessler, 2010). It is estimated that, by the time the first contact with Europeans took place – specifically with the Spanish explorer Juan José Pérez-Hernández, in 1774 – the Haida population numbered several tens of thousands. However, the massive arrival of European settlers was a collective trauma from which the Haida population has not yet recovered.
It is known that in the 19th century, around 90% of the Haida population disappeared due to diseases brought by the colonisers, such as smallpox, typhoid, measles and syphilis. But it was the smallpox epidemic of 1862-1863 that marked a turning point for the Haida people, as about 70% of the population died in those two years.
However, there are indications that the huge mortality caused by the smallpox epidemic of 1862 could have been avoided.
On 12 March this year, a steamer called Brother Jonathan arrived in Victoria harbour on Vancouver Island with several hundred miners attracted by the gold rush that had broken out at that time. Unfortunately, one of the miners was sick with smallpox. The problem was that, by then, Victoria was a major source of radiation for a possible epidemic. Not only was the town full of fortune-seeking miners, but the area around Victoria was populated by a multitude of indigenous people from the region’s various ethnic groups, who regularly flocked there, attracted by the fur trade that the white settlers had established.
When the outbreak of smallpox was detected, the colonial government not only failed to take the necessary quarantine measures to isolate the virus, but also, incomprehensibly, pushed the indigenous people out of the city, thus spreading the disease throughout their home communities, which covered all the coasts and islands of the region.
Over the next year, more than 30,000 indigenous people died, 60 per cent of the total indigenous population in the area, ‘a crisis that left mass graves, deserted villages, traumatized survivors and societal collapse’ (Ostroff, 2017).
However, many of the indigenous people of the area, including the Haida, as well as some historians and scholars, see this as a betrayal by the colonial government, to the extent that many indigenous people today still have not forgiven the white settlers for that death toll. As Marianne Nicholson, a doctor in Anthropology and a member of the Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nations (Kwakwaka’wakw), points out:
The sad thought is, if they had contained those people who contracted smallpox within the Victoria area, the Indigenous population would be far, far higher today. (…) The colonial authorities … knew that would spread smallpox throughout British Columbia. (…) That was an act of genocide against Indigenous people. (…) At that point in time the [government] wanted to be able to claim those lands without having to compensate or recognize Indigenous title. (Ostroff, 2017)
During that epidemic, indigenous populations were reduced by around 90% in some areas. By 1881, only 829 Haidas remained.
The colonial government’s response to the smallpox epidemic, along with the internment of indigenous children in Christian boarding schools from 1911 onwards – one of the greatest cultural atrocities perpetrated by the colonial authorities of the United States and Canada against indigenous peoples – led the indigenous people, according to Nicholson, to ‘accept the colonial grand narrative that British Columbia acquired Indigenous lands fairly and in a legal manner’ (ibíd.).
Joshua Ostroff (2017) describes the situation in a very accurate way:
Whether or not smallpox began as a colonial conspiracy, settlers started occupying the flat, fertile land that was left seemingly abandoned as devastated Indigenous communities consolidated with hopes of later returning home … A belief in terra nullius, or the settlement of ‘empty land,’ spurred land commissioner Joseph Trutch in 1864 to refuse recognition of Indigenous title, kiboshing treaty-making and reducing reserves mapped out pre-epidemic by 92 per cent. ‘The Indians have really no rights to the lands they claim,’ he argued, doling it out instead to settlers, miners and loggers. That’s why, unlike the rest of Canada, the bulk of B.C. is built on disputed, unceded land; there are almost no treaties establishing rights.
The injustices perpetrated against indigenous peoples in this region of the world are, as in many other cases on the American continent and in other colonised parts of the world, devastating. ‘The thing that bothers me the most as a descendant of this history is how unjust all of it is’, laments Kwakiutl Nicholson. She goes on to explain how the land in her ancestral community, Kingcome Inlet, where her ancestors had lived for thousands of years, was taken from them when their population was drastically reduced by smallpox.
According to various estimations, between 1900 and 1915 there were only 350-588 people left of what had once been the Haida People (Trigger et al., 1996; Kennedy et al., 2010). Today, the Haida population has recovered, though by no means to the extent it was before the colonisation by Europeans and their descendants. At present, 2,500 Haida live in their ancestral territory in the Haida Gwaii archipelago, while another 2,000 Haida are spread around the world, mainly in Vancouver and Prince George.
Sources
- Boas, F. & Tate, H. W. (1916). Tsimshian Mythology. Washington: Government Printing Office.
- Fedje, D. (2005). Haida Gwaii Human History and Environment. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
- Kennedy, D.; Bouchard, R. & Gessler, T. (2010). Haida. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Available on https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/haida-native-group
- Ostroff, J. (2017 Aug 1). How a smallpox epidemic forged modern British Columbia. MacLean’s Magazine. Available on https://macleans.ca/news/canada/how-a-smallpox-epidemic-forged-modern-british-columbia/
- Swanton, J. R. (1905). Haida Texts and Myths. Washington: Government Printing Office.
- Swanton, J. R. (1909-2009). Tlingit Myths and Texts. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library.
- Trigger, B. G.; Washburn, W. E.; Adams, R. E. W.; MacLeod, M. J.; Salomon, F. & Schwartz, S. B. (1996). The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas: North America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Associated text of the Earth Charter
The Way Forward: As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning. Such renewal is the promise of these Earth Charter principles.
Other passages that this story illustrates
Preamble: To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny.
Preamble: Earth, Our Home: The protection of Earth’s vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust.
Preamble: The Global Situation: Communities are being undermined. The benefits of development are not shared equitably and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Injustice, poverty, ignorance, and violent conflict are widespread and the cause of great suffering. An unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social systems. The foundations of global security are threatened. These trends are perilous—but not inevitable.
Preamble: Universal Responsibility: To realize these aspirations, we must decide to live with a sense of universal responsibility, identifying ourselves with the whole Earth community as well as our local communities.
Principle 2a: Accept that with the right to own, manage, and use natural resources comes the duty to prevent environmental harm and to protect the rights of people.
Principle 2b: Affirm that with increased freedom, knowledge, and power comes increased responsibility to promote the common good.
The Way Forward: Life often involves tensions between important values. This can mean difficult choices. However, we must find ways to harmonize diversity with unity, the exercise of freedom with the common good, short-term objectives with long-term goals.