Haida people
X̱āaydas Haida | |
Haida women wearing traditional dance hats at the 2018 Women's March in Sandspit | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Haida Gwaii | 1,121,403 |
Canada | 334,485 |
United States | 89,770 |
United Kingdom | 55,349 |
Mexico | 34,328 |
France | 30,438 |
Spain | 19,406 |
Brazil | 11,410 |
Culture | |
Languages | • Haida • English • French |
Religion | Haida Church |
The Haida are an ethnic group native to Haida Gwaii, an archipelagic country in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Canada. In 2020, the worldwide Haida population was estimated at 1,696,590, 1,121,403 of whom lived on the Haida Gwaii, or 66% of worldwide ethnic Haida people, and accounting for 91% of Haida Gwaii's total population of 1,866,249.
The Haida are for the most part bilingual: in a national survey, 90% of ethnic Haida respondents (all of whom were current residents of Haida Gwaii, not expatriates or emigrants) reported being able to speak Haida fluently, and 96% reported being fluent in English. The same poll found that about 55% of Haida people exclusively spoke Haida domestically, 33% spoke a mixture of Haida and English domestically, and 17% spoke exclusively English at home. At the workplace, on the other hand, 83% of respondents reported using English exclusively for all formal communications, with the remaining 17% using a mixture of Haida and English depending on context and circumstance.
At least 95% of ethnic Haida people in Haida Gwaii are registered members of the Haida Church, the state church which promotes Haidism, a syncretic faith combining elements of Christianity and Haida mythology.