In Search of the Hamat’sa: A Tale of Headhunting. [DVD.] Aaron Glass, producer and director. Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 2004. 33 min.Reviewed by Alexander D. King
In Search of the Hamat’sa: A Tale of Headhunting
is a DVD written, shot, edited, and directed by Aaron Glass during the
course of his dissertation research with Kwakwaka’wakw people in
British Columbia.[1] It is an impressive testament to
the power and low cost of modern computers and digital video cameras.
We have reached the era where the only barriers to making great
ethnographic videos are intellectual ones, and Glass has surmounted
those. Using the famous Kwakwaka’wakw dance of the Hamat’sa, this
33-minute video discusses the historical and on-going relationships
among Canadian First Nations, anthropologists, and museums. Glass
introduces two leading questions that guide most of the narrative: 1)
“How did this once secret and restricted dance become their most
visible image?” and 2) “Why, then, did a dance prohibited by the
government come to be claimed by the nation a century later?” The
Hamat’sa ‘cannibal’ dance is the most dramatic aspect of Kwakwaka’wakw
winter festival performances, especially for white audiences, and was
central to the Canadian government’s 1884 prohibition of potlatch
ceremonials. The dance and associated masks and paraphernalia were also
prominently featured in the scientific ethnographic work of Franz Boas,
as well as in the commercial, sensationalist work of the photographer
Edward Curtis. Both men photographed and filmed dances. Although each
had very different intentions and hoped for different effects, both
helped to “turn the Hamat’sa into an emblem and a symbol” of
Kwakwaka’wakw culture and Kwakwaka’wakw people.
Glass
subtly lays out how the image of the Hamat’sa dancer emerging from the
screen “has come to suggest the complex relations between scholars,
museums, and native people.” The American Museum of Natural History in
New York and Chicago’s Field Museum were central to Boasian
anthropological work, and Kwakwaka’wakw people themselves have used
museums in British Columbia to represent their culture to the
public. Glass’s narration at times seems to suggest that men like
Boas and Curtis appropriated images of Kwakwaka’wakw people, but the
complex story of cooperation and accommodation by Kwakwaka’wakw emerges
through the presentation. For example, Boas organized a display of
Kwakwaka’wakw culture and performances of the Hamat’sa for spectators
at the Chicago World’s Fair, and this required the enthusiastic
cooperation of several respected elders at the time. Curtis’s fictional
film In the Land of the Head Hunters
likewise included the participation of now revered ancestors to produce
representations that current elders find deeply problematic. These
practices of working with scholars and playing to tourists have
continued unabated through the entire 20th century and will persist in
the foreseeable future. Dancing the Hamat’sa in public generates
continuous discussion among Kwakwaka’wakw people about the
appropriateness of public presentation and commercialization of a
sacred dance, which Glass artfully captures in conversation.
In Search of the Hamat’sa
does clearly answer the two questions posed at the outset. The
cooperation of Kwakwaka’wakw people in the use of their most sacred
dance for public spectacle has been part of the political and economic
engagement of Kwakwaka’wakw people with wider society. For
example, the chief and carver Mungo Martin worked at the Museum of
Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in the 1940s and the
Royal British Columbia Museum in the 1950s (Glass 2006).
Martin restored totem poles for the UBC Museum of Anthropology and
helped them collect many Hamat’sa masks. At the RBCM in Victoria, he
hosted the first legal, public potlatch ceremony across the street from
the parliament building.
One
might complain that Glass could have presented more clearly the
spectacle of wealth and power inherent Kwakwaka’wakw potlatch
ceremonials as they developed in the 19th century and beyond. However,
this would have made for a longer, overly complicated presentation. I
am greatly impressed by the many themes touched upon in what is a
fairly short video: history of Americanist anthropology, museums and
representations, appropriation of indigenous cultures by whites,
colonialism and resistance/accommodation, fieldwork, Kwakwaka’wakw
contemporary life in Alert Bay, Northwest Coast potlatches/feasts,
hereditary titles and dances, the dynamics between tradition and
innovation in art, Christianity and traditional religions, and
fieldwork relationships between anthropologist and the people he or she
is studying. For example, Glass refers to his lack of a “hereditary
right” to dance the Hamat’sa, and in another fascinating scene Wayne
Alfred, who has already presented a schematic of the Hamat’sa dance for
us, watches and critiques the dancers in Boas’s film footage from 1933.
Alfred is impressed and states that he will study the film to take some
of the men’s moves, because “they are both my relatives.”
A viewing of In Search of the Hamat’sa
with several colleagues and graduate students in the anthropology
department at the University of Aberdeen was followed by a lively
discussion of the issues raised in the video. It is, however, best
suited for introductory students. The DVD is divided into 20 chapters,
so one can easily jump straight to a short section for an illustration
of a single point, or skip a short bit here and there to save time. It
is easy to imagine tying in any one out of a dozen books or articles to
this video.
The
DVD includes many beautiful shots, and Glass is to be commended in his
filming, as well as his writing and editing. It is provocative without
being pompous, sympathetic but not romantic, and reflexive without
being overly self-obsessed. A third question of how an anthropologist
carries out field research, is not explicitly posed, but at times
dominates the narratives so that the video will strike some
anthropologists as overly self-reflexive. I was pleased to see Glass
give the final word to the quietly eloquent Wayne Alfred, who shares
provocative insights while the credits roll to one side. In Search of the Hamat’sa
should be in every anthropology department’s A/V collection and it will
be of value to museums stewarding Kwakwaka’wakw collections.Note1. In Search of the Hamat’sa: A Tale of Headhunting is distributed in the U.S. through Documentary Educational Resources (http://www.der.org/films/in-search-of-hamatsa.html), in the UK through the Royal Anthropological Institute (www.therai.org.uk), and in Germany through IWF Wissen und Medien gGmbh (www.iwf.de). Reference CitedGlass, Aaron2006
From Cultural Salvage to Brokerage: The
Mythologization of Mungo Martin and the Emergence of Northwest Coast
Art. Museum Anthropology 29(1):20-43.Alexander
D. King is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.
His research focuses on the language and culture of indigenous peoples
of the North Pacific, particularly Kamchatka, Russia. He has published
articles in Anthropology and Humanism and Focaal, as well as several chapters in edited collections. Much of his research is summarized at http://www.koryaks.net/.