Collection

Intaglio Print on acid-free paper

Edition of 50

2016

13 x 11.5″ (Paper size)

7 x 5.25″ (Image size)

“My first experience actually seeing traditional carving in situ was fishing eulachon at Kemano. I saw graveyard memorials (ah-aluuch-tin): grey, weather-beaten and somewhat moss-covered, but very impressive in their natural state and site. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was part of the beginning of my life-long interest in Haisla culture.

The eulachon fish are special to the Haisla people. At Kitamaat, there is a mountain that has a dip in its outline which the Haisla liken to a canoe. When the sun set in this ‘canoe-dip,’ that signaled that the eulachon were about to spawn in the Kitamaat River and all the Haisla eagerly awaited them!

The wildlife that also pursued eulachon was a true natural phenomenon: eagles, seals, sea lions, crows, ravens, seagulls, otters, mink, sawbill ducks, halibut, porpoises, bullheads, and undoubtedly many others one couldn’t see! To represent all of these creatures in one image, a raven, seagull, sea lion and bullhead are shown, each with an eulachon close to their mouths.

The sea gull is important because Haisla history likened the thousands of gulls flying around the estuary of the Kitmaat River to a giant monster’s mouth; therefore, Kitamaat was a place avoided until the first Haisla settled there.

A young Haisla girl sat on the riverbank and watched as a bullhead waited on the river’s bottom and let the current sweep eulachon into its wide mouth. The traditional net (tak-calth) used to fish eulachon also has a wide mouth and also tapers to a narrow end like a bullhead’s body. A bullhead is shown with a net-like pattern on its body, alluding to the tak-calth’s inspiration.”

-Lyle Wilson, 2016