Beau Dick (Walas Gwa’yam)

Chief Beau Dick (Walas Gwa’yam) was a carver, activist, and hereditary chief of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations of British Columbia. Born in Alert Bay in 1955, he began carving under the tutelage of his father and grandfather Benjamin and James Dick and went on to work alongside renowned Northwest Coast artists Henry Hunt, Doug Cranmer, Robert Davidson, Tony Hunt, and the late Bill Reid.

Most well-known for his remarkable masks of mythological figures,  Chief Beau Dick’s outstanding artistic virtuosity allowed him to carve a variety of subject matter with equal force. Deeply rooted in Kwakwaka’wakw heritage, his work is noted for its creative embrace of outside influences, including Japanese Noh masks and Yup’ik dance masks. He both created masks for potlatches held by his own community and collaborated with commercial galleries, often experimenting with subject matter and scale. His participation in the fine art world culminated in 2017 when he was chosen as Canada’s representative at Documenta 14 in Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany.

Chief Beau Dick was also an influential Indigenous and environmental activist. In 2013, he enacted a copper-cutting ceremony on the steps of the BC Legislature in Victoria to shame and denounce the federal government for legislative abuses of Indigenous treaty rights and the devastating effect of commercial fish farms in traditional Kwakwaka’wakw territories. It was the first copper-cutting ceremony in over a century.