It was a typical day at Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology. Patrons gazed at the west coast totem poles, the painted masks and carved feast bowls. Bill Reid's depiction of the Haida creation story, with Raven perched atop a clam shell, the first people crawling out below was in the background, and artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas explained how he was about to turn things upside down.

"See this 27-foot canoe," he pointed at a boat carved in 1985 by Reid and others. "We're flipping it over and tying it to the top of an 11-foot Pontiac Firefly."

The man who invented Haida Manga is standing in an improvised studio at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is positioned between his sculptural works in progress - two large, copper-coated "shields," which he will install outside MOA's front doors - talking about meeting places, middle places, and margins. "I'm trying to play the edge between the neighbourhoods," he says, indicating the way the interface between First Nations and colonial culture has shaped his current project - and his life. "I grew up that way. I was the only pale-looking Haida in the whole village... the only green-eyed, light-haired kid."

In front of a fire pit in the Performance House at the old village site of Qay'llnagaay or Sea Lion Town, near Skidegate on Haida Gwaii, direct and indirect contributors to Raven Travelling gathered to celebrate the launch of the lavish coffee table book that coincides with a national touring exhibit of the same name that celebrates two centuries of Haida art. The celebration commenced when the Haida version of a wild man of the woods slipped into the room, two women screamed and the creature was ceremonially drummed out of the hall.

Amid the usual flurry of pre-exhibition activity at the Vancouver Art Gallery, painters, preparators, curators, all working in quick concert to prepare Raven Travelling for its public opening this Saturday (June 10), unusual cross-cultural elements emerge. Billed by the VAG as the most comprehensive exhibition of Haida art ever assembled, it is also a ground-breaker for that institution in terms of cooperation with a First Nations community.