Dances of the Kwakiutl: An ethnographic account by William Heick in 1951
Channel: Anthropology: Do Kamo
Date: 2022-04-01

An ethnographic account by William Heick at Fort Rupert in 1951 of the "dance of the secret Hamatsa society". The Kwakiutl First Nation culture is often, among anthropologists at least, associated with the famous ethnographic works of Franz Boas and George Hunt, which were conducted several years before Heick's audiovisual recordings. 

It is through their lenses that much of classical anthropology got shaped. Their perspectives radiate within the discipline to this day. 



⸙ William Heick (1916 – 2012), was a San Francisco-based photographer and filmmaker, best known for his ethnographic photographs and documentary films of North American Indian cultures (i.a. Hupa, Navajo, Blackfoot and Sioux). Heick served as producer-director and chief cinematographer for the Anthropology Department of the University of California, Berkeley on their National Science Foundation supported American Indian Film Project. He filmed a number of award winning films in this series along with the documentaries Pomo Shaman and Sucking Doctor, a Pomo doctoring ceremony considered by anthropologists to be one of the most complete and outstanding films of an aboriginal ceremony made to date. 

⸙ Kwaguʼł (or Kwakiutl) are a Kwakwakaʼwakw tribe of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast from central British Columbia, on northern Vancouver Island. Their main community is called Tsax̱is or Fort Rupert. The ancestral language is Kwakʼwala, a language that is a part of the Wakashan language group. In their language, Kwaguʼł translates to Smoke-Around-the-World referring to the smoke that exited from the many bighouses in their villages.

The band government of the Kwaguʼł is the Kwakiutl First Nation. The anglicization "Kwakiutl" and other forms of this group's name was for a long time used to describe all the Kwakwakaʼwakw peoples, but properly refers only to this group.[citation needed] The term "Kwakiutl" is also used by the Laich-kwil-tach or Lekwiltok (Euclataws or Yucultas, historically) who migrated from the vicinity of what would become Fort Rupert to what is now the City of Campbell River and adjoining islands at the start of the 19th century; they identify as the Southern Kwakiutl. 

⸙ Among the first scholars to study the Kwakwakaʼwakw peoples were German-American anthropologist Franz Boas and Canadian ethnologist George Hunt.

⸙ Franz Uri Boas (1858 – 1942) was a German-born American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical particularism and cultural relativism.

Virtually all anthropologists today accept Boas's commitment to empiricism and his methodological cultural relativism. Moreover, virtually all cultural anthropologists today share Boas's commitment to field research involving extended residence, learning the local language, and developing social relationships with informants. 

Finally, anthropologists continue to honor his critique of racial ideologies. In his 1963 book, Race: The History of an Idea in America, Thomas Gossett wrote that "It is possible that Boas did more to combat race prejudice than any other person in history."  

⸙ The Canadian George Hunt (1854 – 1933) was a consultant to the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas; through his contributions, he is considered a linguist and ethnologist in his own right. He was Tlingit-English by birth and learned both those languages. Growing up with his parents at Fort Rupert, British Columbia in Kwakwaka'wakw territory, he learned their language and culture as well. Through marriage and adoption he became an expert on the traditions of the Kwakwaka'wakw (then known as "Kwakiutl") of coastal British Columbia.

Working with Boas, Hunt collected hundreds of items for an exhibit of the Kwakiutl culture for the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, and accompanied 17 people of the tribe there. Boas taught Hunt to write in Kwakiutl, and the native ethnologist wrote thousands of pages of description of Kwakiutl culture over the next decades. 


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Photography William Heick
Producer Robert Gardner
Sound Morris Dowd 

Produced by Orbit Films for release through Dimensions Inc.