"Raven and the Box of Daylight is the Tlingit story of Raven and his transformation of the world—bringing light to people via the stars, moon, and sun. This story holds great significance for the Tlingit people. The exhibition features a dynamic combination of artwork, storytelling, and encounter, where the Tlingit story unfolds during the visitor’s experience."--

In a time when darkness covered the land, a boy named Weget is born who is destined to bring the light. With the gift of a raven's skin that allows him to fly as well as transform, Weget turns into a bird and journeys from Haida Gwaii into the sky. There he finds the Chief of the Heavens who keeps the light in a box. By transforming himself into a pine needle, clever Weget tricks the Chief and escapes with the daylight back down to Earth. Vividly portrayed through the art of Roy Henry Vickers, Weget's story has been passed down for generations. The tale has been traced back at least 3,000 years by archeologists who have found images of Weget's journey in petroglyphs on the Nass and Skeena rivers. This version of the story originates from one told to the author by Chester Bolton, Chief of the Ravens, from the village of Kitkatla around 1975.

"Raven and the Box of Daylight is an ancient creation story based on oral history that has been passed from generation to generation for thousands of years."--Back cover.

In her first book, Blonde Indian, Ernestine Hayes powerfully recounted the story of returning to Juneau and to her Tlingit home after many years of wandering. The Tao of Raven takes up the next and, in some ways, less explored question: once the exile returns, then what? Using the story of Raven and the Box of Daylight (and relating it to Sun Tzu’s equally timeless Art of War) to deepen her narration and reflection, Hayes expresses an ongoing frustration and anger at the obstacles and prejudices still facing Alaska Natives in their own land, but also recounts her own story of attending and completing college in her fifties and becoming a professor and a writer. Hayes lyrically weaves together strands of memoir, contemplation, and fiction to articulate an Indigenous worldview in which all things are connected, in which intergenerational trauma creates many hardships but transformation is still possible. Now a grandmother and thinking very much of the generations who will come after her, Hayes speaks for herself but also has powerful things to say about the resilience and complications of her Native community.

A long time ago, Raven was pure white, like fresh snow in winter. This was so long ago that the only light came from campfires, because a greedy chief kept the stars, moon, and sun locked up in elaborately carved boxes. Determined to free them, the shape-shifting Raven resourcefully transformed himself into the chief's baby grandson and cleverly tricked him into opening the boxes and releasing the starlight and moonlight. Though tired of being stuck in human form, Raven maintained his disguise until he got the chief to open the box with the sun and flood the world with daylight, at which point he gleefully transformed himself back into a raven. When the furious chief locked him in the house, Raven was forced to escape through the small smokehole at the top — and that's why ravens are now black as smoke instead of white as snow. This engaging Tlingit story is brought to life in painterly illustrations that convey a sense of the traditional life of the Northwest Coast peoples. About the Tales of the People series: Created with the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Tales of the People is a series of children's books celebrating Native American culture with illustrations and stories by Indian artists and writers. In addition to the tales themselves, each book also offers four pages filled with information and photographs exploring various aspects of Native culture, including a glossary of words in different Indian languages.

A retrospective celebrating this Tlingit artist's unique alchemy of Northwest Coast formline design and glass-blowing technique. In a meeting of European glass-blowing tradition and Northwest Coast design, Preston Singletary's art depicts cultural and historical images from his Tlingit ancestry in richly detailed, beautifully hued glass. By infusing traditional formline design with fresh energy through the use of modern materials, his work pays homage to his forebears. Recognized internationally, Singletary's works are held in such museum collections and galleries as the National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Seattle Art Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, NY), the Spirit Wrestler Gallery (Vancouver, B.C.) and the Handelsbanken (Stockholm, Sweden). This beautifully illustrated retrospective of an innovative artist at midcareer accompanies a touring exhibition. It includes a DVD and features essays by Melissa Post, curator at the Museum of Glass; Steven Brown, former curator of Native American art at the Seattle Art Museum, and Walter Porter, a Tlingit storyteller.

This is a critical analysis of contemporary politically engaged art.