Return to the Land of the Head Hunters

Photographer Edward Curtis’s 1914 orchestrally scored melodrama In the Land of the Head Hunters was one of the first US films to feature an Indigenous cast. This landmark of early silent cinema was an intercultural product of Curtis’s collaboration with the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw of British Columbia—meant, like Curtis’s photographs, to document a supposedly vanishing race. But as this collection shows, the epic film is not simply an artifact of colonialist nostalgia.

In recognition of the film’s centennial, and the release of a restored version, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters brings together leading anthropologists, Native American authorities, artists, musicians, literary scholars, and film historians to reassess the film and its legacy. The volume offers unique Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw perspectives on the film, accounts of its production and subsequent circulation, and evaluations of its depictions of cultural practice. Resituated within film history and informed by a legacy of Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw participation and response, the movie offers dynamic evidence of ongoing cultural survival and transformation under shared conditions of modernity.

Brad Evans is associate professor of English at Rutgers University. Aaron Glass is associate professor of anthropology at the Bard Graduate Center.

U'mista Cultural Society Statement of Participation / William T. Cranmer
Foreword / Bill Holm
Preface / Brad Evans and Aaron Glass
Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART ONE. Mediating Indians / Complicating Curtis
1. Edward Curtis and In the Land of the Head Hunters: Four Contexts / Micky Gidley
2. Images of Time: Portraiture in The North American Indian / Shamoon Zamir
3. Indian Landscapes: Pauline Johnson and Edward Curtis / Kate Flint
4. A Chamber of Echoing Songs: Edward Curtis as a Musical Ethnographer / Ira Jacknis
Photo Essay 1. "At the Kitchen Table with Edward Curtis"/ Jeff Thomas

PART TWO. Head Hunters Across Two Centuries
5. Consuming the Head Hunters: A Century of Film REception / Aaron Glass and Brad Evans
6. Unmasking the Documentary: Notes on the Anxiety of Edward Curtis / Colin Browne
7. Indian Movies and the Vernacular of Modernism / Brad Evans
8. Musical Intertextuality in Indigenous Film: Making and Remaking In the Land of the Head Hunters / Klisala Harrison
9. Reflections on Working with Edward Curtis / Barbara Cranmer (Tlakwagila'ogwa)
Photo Essay 2. "Old Images / New Views: Indigenous Perspectives on Edward Curtis" / Dr. E. Richard Atleo, Pam Brown, Marie Clements, Karrmen Crey, Mique'l Icesis Dangeli, Andy Everson, Linc Kesler, David Neel, Evelyn Vanderhoop, and William Wasden Jr.

PART THREE. Reimaging Curtis Today
10. In the Land of the Head Hunters: Reconstruction, not Restoration . Jere Guldin
11. In the Land of the Head Hunters and the History of Silent Film Music / David Gilbert
12. Performing Braham, Interpreting Curtis: A Conversation on Conducting / Neal Stulberg, Owen Underhill, Timothy Long, and Laura Ortman
13. "What the Creator Gave to Us": An Interview with William Wasden Jr. (Waxawidi)
14. Cultural Interpretation / Dave Hunsaker
15. The Kwakwakka'wakw Business of Showing: Tradition Meets Modernity on the Silver Screen and the World Stage / Aaron Glass

Afterword. Twentieth Century Fox / Paul Chaat Smith
Appendix 1. Promotional Images for In the Land of the Head Hunters
Appendix 2. The Kwakwaka'wakw Cast and Crew of In the Land of the Head Hunters
Appendix 3. Curtis Film Props in the Collection of the Burke Musem of Natural History and Culture
Appendix 4. Title Cards from the 2008 Reconstruction of In the Land of the Head Hunters
References
Contributors
Index