The wooden carving depicts a beaver holding a chewing stick with crossed shadows on its tail. Beavers symbolize creativity, artistry, and determination, and were made around 1860. It is now a collection of the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The homeland of the Haida people is located in the Queen Charlotte Islands off the Pacific coast of Canada, separated from the Black Carter Strait and the North American continent, and facing the Alexander Islands of Alaska across the Dixon Strait. It stretches nearly 300 kilometers along the province of Alberta in northwestern Canada. The Haida people did not have writing before, they recorded the stories and legends of their ancestors through carving totem poles.