Many of the coastal indigenous cultures, including the Salish, have legends about how the Raven released light to the world. While the details of these stories vary from nation to nation and even family to family, the core narrative and teachings are rather consistent. The story always involves an antagonist who, for one selfish reason or another, has all of the world’s light – the sun, moon, stars, etc. – hidden away, leaving the entire world in a state of darkness. The Raven, notorious for his cleverness, then uses the darkness to his advantage to trick the antagonist so that he can steal the light and release it to the world.
In one Salish version of the myth, it is the Seagull who has hidden the light in a chest inside his house, which forced the entire world to stumble around in darkness. But Raven eventually become so upset with the suffering of his people that he decided to place sea urchin shells outside Seagull’s door, which – due to the darkness – Seagull would fail to see. When Seagull eventually walked outside and keeled over in pain, Raven offered to help him remove the spines from his feet, and Seagull accepted the offer. He painfully dug around and claimed that he could not see what he was doing, so Seagull opened the chest containing the light so that Raven could see the spines. But as soon as Raven saw the sun, moon, and stars – he snatched all of the objects, flew though the smoke hole, and released them to the sky.
This parable carries some important teachings regarding greed and generosity. Seagull’s greed was so immense that it had harmful consequences on everyone around him, but he had no concern for their suffering. But it was only a matter of time before this level of selfishness would, in classic mythological reversal of fortunes, turn around on Seagull. In his attempt to selfishly contain the light of the world, Seagull ended up harming himself when he fell into Raven’s trap – as he was, literally and figuratively, blinded by his own greed.
Using the classic symbolism of light and dark, love and hate, givers and takers – this story demonstrates the far-reaching negative consequences of greed – to those around us and, ultimately, to ourselves. At the same time, it illustrates that Raven’s care for his fellow beings was able to light up the entire world. With stories like this, it should be no surprise that, even today, Raven remains a revered symbol in Salish culture, while Seagulls are relatively absent from our myths and art.
In regards to reconciliation, this dichotomy between the harm of greed and the value of generosity should be a guiding principle for our collaborations. As the city of Victoria and local First Nations work together, I hope we will remember that today’s selfish action is tomorrow’s self-harm –and continually ask ourselves whether our actions are guided by greed or generosity.
