Skidegate House Models: From Haida Gwaii to the Chicago World's Fair and Beyond

Explores the Skidegate model village carved by Haida artists for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair

In 1892 seventeen Haida artists were commissioned to carve a model of HlGaagilda Llnagaay (the village of Skidegate on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia) for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The Skidegate model, featuring twenty-nine large houses and forty-two poles, is the only known model village in North America carved by nineteenth-century Indigenous residents of the village it portrayed. Based on...