Lyell Island, known also in the Haida language as Athili Gwaii, is a large island in the Haida Gwaii archipelago on the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada. The island is a part of the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site and had been the focus of anti-logging demonstrations that led to the park's creation. Among those arrested by the RCMP on Lyell Island was Svend Robinson, MP, at which time the Haida people conferred on him one of his bestowed indigenous names, meaning "White Swan". Lyell Island was the focus of protests as much of its forests had been a mortuary grove for those who died in the smallpox epidemics that ravaged the archipelago in the 18th and 19th Centuries.