Dogfish, is a folk name for a small bottom-feeding shark which has hardly been hunted as its meat is not that great. People are generally wary of this fierce, solitary and wandering creature.

The Nuu-chah-nulth feared giant, malicious Shark monsters who lived in the deep holes under cliffs and liked to eat canoes.

Dogfish is an important crest and mythic being among the Haida. Robert Davidson and Bill Reid created a lot of impressive and beautiful Dogfish designs.

Reid was attracted to the dogfish design calling it the "most ingenious exercise in abstraction in the whole Haida bestiary." The mythical Dogfish woman was a female shaman of prodigious powers, but stories of her reputation seem to be unrecorded. 

The Dogfish may be perceived as a female counterpart to the Raven, taking up all the personal yearnings and dreams that a male image could not represent.

For sources go here.