Black wings slice through the air, and a deep "Tok! Tok!" can be heard croaking overhead. You've just been visited by a raven, the largest of the corvids, and an important figure in Coast Salish stories.
As a bird, ravens are known for their intelligence and ability to solve complex problems. As a figure in Coast Salish stories, Raven is by turns a hero and a trickster, symbolizing knowledge, cunning, and even creation itself. Squaxin Island and Skokomish artist Andrea Wilbur Sigo took inspiration from her peoples' stories about Raven, and brought this mischievous and powerful figure to life in her Raven Fine Art Print.
In one Coast Salish story, it is Raven whom we have to thank for the light of the sun and moon in the sky. Andrea shares a retelling of a traditional Coast Salish story about Raven here:
Raven Steals the Light
There once lived a very powerful and rich chief who had a beautiful young daughter. The chief got the sun and the moon and he hung them up in his house. Because he had the sun and the moon, it became dark everywhere.
Because of the darkness, the people could not hunt or fish. They had to crawl around in the forest feeling with their hands until they found something which might be wood to burn in their fires.
Raven asked the chief if he would return the sun and moon, but he would not. So the smart black bird devised a plan. He saw how the chief's daughter went to a small stream to get water every morning, so he hid near there and waited for her to return. When he saw her coming down the trail, he turned himself into a fingerling, a tiny fish, and jumped into the water. When she dipped her drinking cup into the stream, Raven, disguised as a fingerling, quickly swam into it. She did not see Raven and drank the water.
Inside her body, Raven turned into a baby and so the girl became pregnant. After a short time, the daughter gave birth to a baby boy. The baby grew fast and was soon a young boy. The grandfather was very fond of his grandson and would do anything for him. One day the boy began crying for something.
The chief asked him, "What do you want, grandson?"
The boy pointed to the sun and moon hanging from the ceiling. The chief decided to let him play with them if it would make him stop crying. So the boy took them outside and played with them for a while, but then he threw them high into the air. When the old chief ran out to see what had happened, Raven became himself again and flew away. Since that time there has been light.
"We are a living culture," shares Andrea. "Just like Raven, our people have always learned to evolve and be creative thinkers—always changing with time. In the beginning of my career, I started with a pencil and paper as computers weren’t even talked about; now I can use those same drawing techniques drawing on a screen. I start every drawing with a circle, and watch the circle transform into designs that maintain the strong roots of our people, while leaping into the future so we can grow new branches on our trees. With the modern technology we have today, I can take our cultural designs and share them with the world in so many ways. The thought of what will be at my grandchildren’s fingertips excites me: what more will they create with those same strong roots so they can leap into the future themselves?"
As a gift for a wise friend, or hanging in your office to remind you of your own intelligence, our Raven Fine Art Print makes a classic addition to your wall and art collection.
Like Andrea's style? Shop her other products in Andrea's "shop by artist" section.
- Giclée fine art print (unframed)
- Open edition; made by Eighth Generation
- 8" x 11" artwork size (w/ .5" border on all sides: total print size including margins is 9" x 11")
- Canson Aquarelle Rag 310 gsm paper meets the highest archival standards
- Professionally packaged and shipped flat
- Hand signed by the artist
- Eighth Generation’s fine art prints include "AC" for "Artist Centered." This unique denotation references our purposeful effort to align business practices with artist interests rather than collector interests.
- Original work is pen and marker on antique silk ledger paper
Our Native-designed fine art prints are created in our studio on archival paper. This is one more example of our Native business taking back production so we can further invest in our artists and community!
Known as giclée prints (pronounced "zhe-clay"), our fine art prints are distinguished from mass-produced prints due to their quality, longevity, and value. We print using a state-of-the-art, large-format fine art printer in our Seattle-based art studio. Because they're printed on acid-free paper, our prints won't degrade over time, and when displayed out of direct sunlight will maintain their color saturation and fine detail for decades.
Thank you for supporting Inspired Natives®, not "Native-inspired."
