Argillite: Art of the Haida

An exploration of the art of the Haida, an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their main territory is the archipelago of Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) in northern British Columbia, Canada. Haida society continues to produce a robust and highly stylized art form, a leading component of Northwest Coast art. While artists frequently have expressed this in large wooden carvings (totem poles), Chilkat weaving, or ornate jewellery, in the 21st century, younger people are also making art in popular expression such as Haida manga. In particular, this work explores the Haida carvings created from a type of a hard, fine black silt argillite (a fine-grained sedimentary rock composed predominantly of indurated clay particles), sometimes called 'black slate.' The black slate occurs only at a quarry on a Slatechuck Mountain in the upper basin of Slatechuck Creek, near the town of Skidegate on Graham Island. At one time, around 1900, it was shipped to Victoria for manufacturing; today the Haida have a monopoly on use of the argillite. This artwork has been of high quality and prized around the world since the Haida first began carving it to sell to sailors around