Haida artist Bill Reid, shown carving a sculpture, wanted to preserve Haida artistic tradition. (Canadian Press)

The opening of the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver Tuesday was a meeting of Northwest First Nations cultures.

Bill Reid, the artist for whom the new gallery of Northwest Coast art is named, was Haida, but the gallery sits on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people in downtown Vancouver.

Members of the Wolf Clan of the Coast Salish people danced to welcome members of the Haida nation to traditional Salish territory at the opening ceremony. Then the Haida danced and sang in return.

Reid had always feared that the artistic legacy of the Haida — one he termed "strange and obsessive and very great" — would die unnoticed.

The gallery, which opens to the public on Saturday, is another step in assuring that all cultural traditions of the Northwest First Nations and the work of new artists will be preserved.

The totem pole carved for the centre of the building is an example of how Haida art has been passed down through the generations.

Carver Jim Hart studied with Reid in the early 1980s, just as Reid had studied with Hart's grandfather.

"It's celebrating Bill's life, but it's also using my old grandfather Charles Edenshaw's influence," Hart told CBC News. "That's how Bill worked. He admired Charlie's work, so it has characteristics of both men in the pole, and that's paying respect to Bill but also to Charlie."

The gallery was once the home of the Canadian Craft Museum and is also the home of the Chief Dan George Centre.

Its existence is one of the legacies of the city's deal to allow developers to build taller buildings in exchange for providing cultural amenities.

The gallery contains holographic images of Reid's larger works, such as the Spirit of Haida Gwaii — a war canoe filled with disparate creatures who are, nonetheless, all paddling in the same direction.

The original sculpture is at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and it's also the image on the back of the Canadian $20 bill.

Reid started as CBC broadcaster

Co-curator Martine Reid, Bill Reid's widow, is responsible for the jewellery exhibit in one part of the gallery.

She says jewellery-making helped Reid become a great carver in the Haida tradition.

"He recognized the Haida well-made objects— that is, those that were deeply carved," Martine Reid told CBC News.

"In Haida language, which has no general word for art, 'deeply carved' simply means well made. But deeply carved has deeper meaning. It affirms respect for the meanings invested in art, empowering them to be deeply carved into our consciousness."

Before he became internationally known as a Haida artist, Bill Reid worked with CBC Radio and TV.

He was a good storyteller, and there are close to 500 hours of video and audio material about and by him. The gallery is sifting through those tapes to find gems to include in the gallery exhibits.

"Bill was a media personality before he was an artist, so he brought with him a lot of talents of expression," said George MacDonald, co-curator of the current exhibition at the gallery. "So it is a special way of presenting his marvellous works, because each one of his works has a story embedded in it, if not multiple stories, told in his own resonant voice."

With files from Paul Grant