Virtual Village Project

The Virtual Village Project of the Bill Reid Centre at SFU focuses on researching the monumental art and architecture of First Nations villages along the northwest coast from the 18th century to today. Most of the records that are used are digital images and texts brought together in a vast mosaic of this remarkable tradition.

Click the buttons below to go directly to a featured language group. As the work of the Centre proceeds, more language groups, villages and monumental pieces will be added.

Although some of the photographs that comprise this research collection are now 150 years old, and drawings more than 200 years old, those dates pale in comparison with the archaeological evidence that extends the existence of some of these villages more than 10,000 years into the past. Archaeologists are still working on this question, current evidence suggests that the oldest communities anywhere in the New World are to be found along the Northwest Coast of the Pacific.