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TRICKSTER'S TURN: New Books on Bill Reid
Bill Reid: The Making of an Indian Maria Tippett New York: Random House Inc., 2003.336 pp. Illus. $25.00 paper.
Bill Reidand Beyond: Expanding on Modern Native Art Karen Duffek and Charlotte Townsend-Gault, editors Vancouver: Douglas ScMcIntyre, 2004. 256 pp. Illus. $45.00 cloth.
THERE IS NO DOUBT that Bill Reid is a significant figure in Canadian art. His monumental sculptures make his presence inescapable. They are widely admired in an age when public sculpture is often contentious and the "fine arts" have fragmented into a host of special interest groups. From the Raven and the First Men, 1978-80, at UBC'S Museum of Anthropology (MOA) to the Black Canoe: Spirit of Haida Gwaii, 1986-91, at the Canadian Embassy in Washington and its "jade" cousin, for which Vancouver Airport paid $3 million in 1995 - the highest price ever for a Canadian art work - Reid's commissions have come from civic institutions, governments, and corporations alike. Now his work appears on the Canadian twenty-dollar bill. This kind of honour has been accorded to few artists in Canada: the Group of Seven, Emily Carr, Paul-Emile Borduas, and Jean-Paul Riopelle are the only comparable examples.
What are the aspirations symbolized by Reid's adoption as a Canadian emblem? Is he the token of a Canada where art flourishes and liberal values embrace racial diversity? Or is this the latest instance of the settler appropriation of the Aboriginal image to signal the identity of a new colonial state? And a decoy, perhaps, that hides the ongoing expropriation of and disregard for Canada's First Nations? Reid's career has continually raised such awkward questions. As a Canadian of mixed Euro-American and Haida ancestry he began his life in a white urban setting and established a career as a professional broadcaster. When he trained in jewellery arts, joined anthropological expeditions to salvage totem poles from depopulated Haida villages, and transferred the intricate nineteenth-century Haida designs he was studying in museums onto golden brooches and caskets for wealthy collectors, the question arose as to whether he was simply a "white man's Indian." What sort of a "Haida" was he? And was this really the "renaissance" of Northwest Coast Aboriginal art that the press and art world announced it to...