Reg Davidson is an internationally acclaimed Haida artist who creates large and small cedar sculptures, silk-screen prints, jewellery, weaving, carved masks and painted drums. Davidson began his artistic training under the guidance of his father, Claude Davidson, chief of the village of Dadens, Haida Gwaii. Many members of the Davidson family are artists, including Reg's well-known brother, Robert Davidson.

Davidson is also an accomplished dancer and singer with the Rainbow Creek Dancers, a Haida dance group that he and his brother formed in 1980. He had also designed and created much of the dance regalia for the group, including masks, drums, and kid leather dance capes.

His work is held in many public collections across Canada, including the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and in private collections around the world. Davidson's poles can be found from Massett to Shanghai.

Gwaai Edenshaw, (Hluugiitgaa) is an Eagle from the Ts'aalth clan. Edenshaw is a carver and designer working in a broad range of materials. In recent years, he has focused primarily on jewellery design, or jewellery techniques in sculpture.

At 16, Edenshaw was mentored by Bill Reid, who trained him in the traditional forms of Haida art. Three years later, he worked on his first totem pole under his father, Guujaaw. Since then, he has worked on three more poles with his father and two with his brother, Jaalen.

Also drawn to the medium of theatre, Edenshaw was an artistic consultant on Bruce Ruddel's Beyond Eden, and continues to write and design for the K'aalts'idaa Kah players, a Haida storytelling society he helped to establish.

Jaalen Edenshaw, a member of the Ts'aahl – Eagle Clan of the Haida Nation, was born in Masset, Haida Gwaii in 1980. He grew up in an old boat shed, and at 16, moved from the islands for schooling. After earning a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Victoria in 2003, he returned home to Haida Gwaii, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters.

Edenshaw began studying Haida art and the intricacies of design at age 13. Since then, he has received inspiration and guidance from many Haida artists and apprenticed with Guujaaw and Jim Hart – working on several totem poles, smithing Copper Shields, and building two canoes (18' and 35').

Today, he works in two-dimensional design, argillite, copper and wood, in addition to writing and producing theatre-based activities on traditional Haida storytelling. His work has been widely exhibited, including the 2006 show, Raven Traveling, at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Michael Erdmann is a multidisciplinary designer with clients including Palliser Furniture and Amazon Fresh. His work has been widely published and featured in prestigious exhibits such as Habitat: Canadian Design Now and Aurora Canadese: Canadian Designers in Milan.

Erdmann is also the co-founder of Motherbrand, a creative studio that promotes local design and culture in Canada and internationally. He has created, curated and produced dozens of exhibitions including shows at Tokyo Designers Block, Felissimo Design House in New York, Toronto's Design Exchange, Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Arts and the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2006, he co-created The Canadian Design Resource, a growing on-line gallery of Canadian design that attracts an international audience of more than 30,000 visitors a month.

Patty Johnson is a Canadian designer who has been cited for synthesizing craft and mass production in her work. Her consultancy and design work represent diverse international interests and include clients such as Sephora, Keilhauer, Nienkamper, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Trade Facilitation Office of Canada, and the United States Agency for International Development.

Her work has won many awards and has been included in ID Magazine's "Annual Design Review Awards", the International Design Yearbook, Newsweek's "Design Dozen 2006" and, Wallpaper's Best of 2009. Her North South Project was awarded an ICFF Editors Award at New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair in May 2006.

With the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management Designworks Centre, she received a Skoll Foundation research grant to develop a transferable business model that harnesses the skills of artisan producers and creates new ways for regional groups to act as single powerful exporters to international markets.

Currently Johnson is working on projects in the Caribbean, Guyana, South America, and on the West Coast of Canada with First Nations Communities. Her new collection for Mabeo Furniture won the Editor's Award for Craftsmanship at the 2008 International Contemporary Furniture and she launched a new collection of furniture and products from the Caribbean at the 2010 ICFF.

Johnson has lectured widely in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America and India. She holds a MA Design from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, United Kingdom.

Carrie Anne Vanderhoop Bellis is a Naxiin and Raven's Tail Weaver of Masset Haida and Aquinnah Wampanaog decent. The daughter of Haida artist Evelyn Vanderhoop and David Vanderhoop, she comes from a family with a strong weaving tradition. Her grandmother Delores Churchill is a world-renowned Haida basket and textile weaver; her mother and her aunts, April and Holly Churchill, are highly respected weavers and teachers. Vanderhoop learned from them the traditional Raven's Tail and Naaxiin weaving techniques, as well as cedar harvesting, preparing, basketry and hat weaving. Apprenticing under her mother Evelyn, Carrie Anne Vanderhoop Bellis often serves as her teacher's assistant and plans to continue working with her in the future.

Evelyn Vanderhoop is a Haida artist from the Gaw Git'ans Git'anee family of Massett, Haida Gwaii. She comes from a family of artists. Her grandmother, Selina Peratrovich, was a culture bearer as a Haida basket weaver. Her mother, Delores Churchill, continues to weave textiles and teach basketry. Continuing in their footsteps, Vanderhoop weaves Raven's Tail and Naaxiin, (Chilkat) textiles.

She has been a professional watercolour artist for more than 30 years. One of her paintings was referenced for a United States postage stamp commemorating Native American dance. Her training as a textile weaver began in 1993. She is one of only a few weavers to accept the challenge of weaving the complex and exquisite chief's robe of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Naaxiin. Vanderhoop has gone on to win awards and numerous commissions for her Naaxiin and Raven's Tail weaving and currently teaches the Northwest Coast First Nations textiles.

Christian White was born in Queen Charlotte City and raised in Old Masset, Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia). He is from the Dadens Yahgu'laanaas Raven Clan and his Haida name is Kilthguulans (Voice of Gold). He started carving argillite at the age of fourteen under the direction of his father, Morris White. He studied the work of the great masters and especially of his great-great-grandfather Charles Edenshaw.

A self-supporting artist since the age of seventeen, Christian shows an advanced knowledge of Haida forms and an emerging personal style based on narrative story telling and strong use of inlays of various materials, even in his earlier pieces. His sculpture Raven Dancer was purchased for the permanent collection of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology when he was 21 years old. He has constructed a major longhouse in his home village of Masset and is a dedicated teacher and cultural participant. He has been active in the repatriation committee lobbying for the return of Haida artifacts and for overseeing the return to Haida Gwaii and reburial of human remains taken away for study.

Lisa Hageman Yahgulanaas, Kuuyas 7waahlal Gidaak (Precious Potlatch Woman) is a Raven of the Yahgulanaas clan of Haida Gwaii. She is a textile artist specializing in the art of Raven's Tail, a geometric Pacific Coastal style of wool weaving. Thanks to the teaching of Evelyn Vanderhoop, Yahgulanaas proudly continues a long family lineage of renowned weavers, carvers and painters, emulating their high standards with each piece she creates.

Yahgulanaas has presented her weaving at the Forum of United Indigenous Peoples in Pau, France (2006), the National Museum of Ireland (2007), and the first symposium of weaving on Haida Gwaii (2008). She was awarded a grant by First Peoples' Heritage, Language and Culture Council (2009) and commissioned for the permanent collection of the Haida Heritage Centre at Kaay'Llnagaay. In 2009, she created the first entirely z-twist warp, weft and weave robe on Haida Gwaii in over 150 years with the weaving of the Chief's Robe known as The Hageman-7idansuu Robe.

Lisa Hageman Yahgulanaas

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a very active player in a vibrant shift in the comfortably familiar world of Canada's iconic First Nations' art. After a career that spanned three decades of involvement in high-profile Haida political successes, Yahgulanaas decided to finally apply his formal training in classic Haida design.

He takes from an extensive corpus of Haida narratives and transforms them into contemporary, accessible and socially relevant art. Yahgulanaas invented a new genre of graphic narrative called "Haida Manga" – part Haida, part Asian, and all Michael – to combat the simplistic narratives perpetrated about Indigenous people of the Pacific Coast. He's telling another story altogether: of complex human beings struggling, loving and dreaming just like everyone else.

Social and environmental issues continue to play a big role in his works and, when blended with his passionate belief in the power of the small, Yahgulanaas is clearly adeptly blending appealing imagery with contemporary issues.