Home

Original advertising for the film describes it as a “drama of primitive life on the shores of the North Pacific.” The action takes place just before the time of the “first exploration” of the Coast; an early scenario featured Vancouver’s ship encountering the Indians, though that scene did not make it into the final film. Nowhere in the film itself or in its advertising materials were the Kwakwaka’wakw identified by name or the location specified as Canada; the film is presented as depicting only a generalized tribe from the Pacific Coast. The story overlays three plot elements onto each other: a melodramatic love triangle; an equally melodramatic series of aboriginal battles (from which the “Head Hunting” title is drawn); and a sampling of Kwakwaka’wakw ceremonial performances. The hero, Motana, falls in love with “the maid of his dreams,” Naida, while on a kind of vision quest that entails praying, dancing, and hunting. Unfortunately for him, Naida is betrothed to an evil sorcerer. After completing his quest, Motana embarks on a battle to win Naida by killing the sorcerer, and the two are married with great ceremony. As might be expected, the sorcerer’s equally unsavory brother, Yaklus, is outraged. He takes his revenge by ransacking Motana’s village, killing the hero’s father (Kenada), and stealing Naida for himself. Strangely, the most magnificent Kwakwaka’wakw dance ceremonies in the film come in celebration of Yaklus’s success in war. But then Motana and his crew stage a dramatic rescue of Naida from the bedside of Yaklus. A remarkable canoe chase ensues, at the end of which the sorcerer’s brother meets his doom in “the deadly gorge of Hyal.” Yaklus’s canoe is capsized in the waves, his men perish, and his dead body washes up against the rocks.  

The Kwakwaka’wakw, Curtis, and the Making of Head Hunters In the Land of the Head Hunters has always been known as “Curtis’s motion picture,” but as part of the impetus behind the current project is to reverse this narrative by putting the Kwakwaka’wakw back at the head of this story, it makes sense to start with them. The Kwakwaka’wakw and their Film The Kwakwaka’wakw (then denoted by English writers as Kwakiutl) first began to accommodate Curtis and his photographic apparatus at Fort Rupert, British Columbia, sometime around 1910. By that time, they already had a substantial history with anthropologists, colonial agents, and early tourists coming to take their pictures. Though the Hudson’s Bay Company operated a trading post in the area since the 1850s, reserves  (reservations) were set up in Kwakwaka’wakw territory in the 1880s, around the same time that missionaries and settlers began to arrive in significant numbers. Fort Rupert, the center of this activity, became a focal point for visiting ethnographers hoping to cash in on the Kwakwaka’wakw’s growing reputation for dramatic ceremonial culture and resistance to assimilation efforts. George Hunt, the son of the local trading post factor, played a key role in brokering a number of important anthropological endeavors, most famously through his work for Franz Boas. Hunt acted as guide, translator, and object and text collector for Boas (as well as numerous other museum ethnographers) for over 50 years. He also worked with Boas to coordinate a group of Kwakwaka’wakw (many of whom were his immediate and extended kin) that lived and performed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. By the time Curtis arrived in Ft. Rupert in 1910, it was logical that he seek out Hunt. As Holm and Quimby (1980) have made clear, George Hunt and his relatives were absolutely essential to the production of Curtis’s film. Hunt himself acted as a production assistant, directing actors and working as a translator. He and his family produced many of the props, sets, and costumes. Many of his relatives acted in the film (see below). Though there are few archival records on the subject, it is clear that the featured selection of cultural practices in the film emerged through the collaboration between Curtis, Hunt, and the Kwakwaka’wakw actors. For instance, an early script included a scene with the highly prestigious Hamat’sa or “Cannibal” Dance, yet this was not included in the final film, likely due to Kwakwaka’wakw input in the matter (Motana occasionally dances like a Hamat’sa, but it is not presented as such). Also, the spectacular group dance featuring numerous costumed figures circling the fire together is a complete fabrication, likely invented on the spot by the actors in order to provide Curtis with a dramatic tableau while not transgressing any ceremonial protocol. One imagines Curtis presenting Hunt with his melodramatic script, and the two men then working together to determine the specific content of scenes. As we discuss elsewhere, it is highly significant that the film was made during the potlatch prohibition, when under ceremonial contexts the Kwakwaka’wakw would have been arrested for performing many of the dances pictured in the film. From both the Kwakwaka’wakw and local Indian Agents’ points of view, the film—a clearly non-ritual and “modern” endeavor—offered an opportunity for income during lean economic years. But for the Kwakwaka’wakw, an additional motivation must have been the opportunity to enact—and thus keep alive—ceremonial and artistic traditions that were otherwise threatened by the active assimilation policies of the Canadian government.   The Kwakwaka’wakw Cast (This information is drawn from Holm and Quimby (1980), based on identifications made by Kwakwaka’wakw in the early 1970s)    “Motana” = Stanley Hunt [George Hunt’s youngest son] “Naida” = Strangely, three actresses portrayed Naida: Margaret Wilson (pictured in the character card at the film’s opening). [George Hunt’s granddaughter; the daughter of Charlie Wilson and Emily Hunt Wilson] Sarah (Abaya) Smith Martin [at the time, married to David Hunt, George’s eldest son; later married to Mungo Martin] Mrs. George Walkus (Gwikilaokwa; from Smith Inlet) [she also played the daughter of the sorcerer] “Yaklus” and “Waket” = Bulóotsa (possibly a Brotchie?; from Blunden Harbour) “Kenada” = Paddy Maleed (Kimgidi; from Blunden Harbour) [relative of Johnny Malidi] “Sorcerer” = Kwa’kwaano or Haéytlulas, also known as “Long Harry” (a song composer; from Blunden Harbour and Ft. Rupert) Others featured: Francine Hunt (Tsukwani; George Hunt’s second wife; from Blunden Harbour) [she prepared many of the costumes; in the film, she dances, digs for clams, and is one of the captives] Bob Wilson (son of Charlie Wilson; brother of Maggie Wilson and Helen Knox) [he worked on the set; in the film, he drops a paddle in a scene on the rocks] Helen Knox [a young girl at the time] Jonathan Hunt [an assistant on set]   Controversy Over the Curtis Photographs and Film Curtis, today, is both a revered and controversial figure. His photographs of Native Americans remain extremely popular, as attested to by the ubiquity of his work in newly minted catalogues, coffee-table books, and picture post cards of the kind available in museum gift shops across the globe. But he has come under intense criticism, as well, for the manner in which he consciously erased all signs of modernity from his Indian pictures. A most telling example comes in his image “At Piegan Lodge,” where Curtis etched out an alarm clock sitting between two chiefs, effectively freezing them in a pre-modern, timeless past. Such images give sense to the manner in which Curtis has sometimes been criticized as the most well-known promoter of false stereotypes about Indians. One of his most well known photographs is titled “Vanishing Race-Navaho,” which has come to stand for the larger misguided presumptions underlying that infamous phrase and the cultural salvage agenda that it implied.  But, as evidenced by the current vibrancy of indigenous life across North America, any news of “vanishing” was wildly premature if not implicitly racist in overtone. In the Land of the Head Hunters is similarly vexed. On the one hand, its emphasis on “head hunting” was clearly sensationalistic, as was the implication that the film represented “primitive life on the northwest coast” as if that was still the life being lived in 1914. Nothing, of course, could have been further from the truth. But on the other hand, the film was quite unlike the hundreds of other Indian pictures that had been made in the preceding twenty years (see next Film sections). Those films almost invariably used the conflict between whites and Indians as an easily recognizable plot device, so when Head Hunters took out all of the whites, it was charting unfamiliar terrain. Perhaps the boldest move was to entwine Kwakwaka’wakw ceremonies into the fictional plot, making them a central part of the motion picture. While one might read this as Curtis’s shot at ethnographic pretension, it is also of great significance that Head Hunters presents such scenes at a time when agents of the Canadian government were actively trying to suppress ceremonies under the potlatch prohibition (in fact, arrests were made under this law in 1914, the same year that the prohibition was extended to even further limit ceremonial dancing). In choosing to stage themselves for Curtis’s camera, the Kwakwaka’wakw helped ensure that the resulting film would be more than a simple colonial document of stereotyped, celluloid “Indians.” In the end, In the Land of the Head Hunters cannot be judged as simply another instance of Curtis’s efforts to document the “vanishing race.” The film was a joint project from the beginning, a meeting of Edward Curtis and the Kwakwaka’wakw in the shared enterprise of making a motion picture. As such, Head Hunters not only throws new light on the development of the motion picture industry. It also documents the extensive and complex engagement of the Kwakwaka’wakw—and by implication other First Nations—with the most modern of twentieth-century representational forms: the movies.

1914: The World Film Corporation In the Land of the Head Hunters opened simultaneously at the Casino Theatre in New York and the Moore Theatre in Seattle on December 7, 1914 (Curtis was present in New York). Seattle newspapers spoke of subsequent San Francisco and Los Angeles engagements, though no evidence of these has yet surfaced. Despite gala events and positive reviews, the film’s reception clearly did not live up to Curtis’s expectations. It has long been thought that after running twice daily at each location for a week, the film then disappeared from sight. We now know that its failure was not quite so immediate. The World Film Corporation distributed it throughout 1915 and 1916. Newspaper searches reveal that, at the very least, it showed again in New York, in Lima, Ohio; Lowell, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; Placerville, California; Fairbanks, Alaska; and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. World Film Corporation receipts from the first year of distribution, up to and including December 25, 1915, have Head Hunters making a paltry $3,269.18, near the bottom of their list.  Disappointed in its box office failure, Curtis abandoned the film as a fund-raising enterprise.     1924: The American Museum of Natural History In 1923, when Curtis was in Los Angeles working for Cecile B. DeMille on The Ten Commandments, P. E. Goddard of the American Museum of Natural History began a correspondence with him concerning the purchase of In the Land of the Head Hunters, which Goddard acknowledged as having “a good deal of ethnological interest” (August 17, 1923). These inquiries led to the sale of Curtis’s sole remaining negative copy of the film (which he edited down according to the museum’s wishes), as well as his relinquishing of the copyright to it, for the sum of $1,000. In a letter dated October 16, 1924, Curtis writes of having shipped the six reels of film and signed over the rights to the museum. Though the correspondence remains, little is known of what happened to the film itself. Because of the highly flammable character of early 35mm nitrate film, it may have been destroyed for safety reasons. The museum has no current record of it.   1947: Hugo Zeiter and The Field Museum  The next time the film surfaced was in 1947, when a 35mm nitrate copy was donated to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History by an eccentric collector from Danville, Illinois, named Hugo Zeiter. By then, it had been largely forgotten. Zeiter, who passed away in December 2007 at the age of ninety-two, had three great loves: Indians, circuses, and old films. When he died, he still had a collection of over 900 old movies—even after having given away most of his valuable 35mm nitrate films in the 1940s. He recalled having received his copy of In the Land of the Head Hunters from a friend who used to pull film out of an old dumpster outside a movie house in Chicago. Zeiter did not, at the time, realize that his film was actually Curtis’s In the Land of the Head Hunters. In his correspondence with the Field, he referred to the work as “The Vigil of Motana,” the title on the cue card from the opening frame of the first extant reel. By the time it got to Zeiter, only four of the original six reels remained. He sent these four to the Field via Railway Express on March 5, 1947, asking in return only for a 16mm copy, if one were made. In the correspondence, mention is made of the film’s extensive coloring, which greatly interested the film buff Zeiter. By contrast, the Field’s interest was ethnographic. Its anthropological staff quickly determined that portions of the film had “great merit as scientific record,” for its representation of “characters, costumes, utensils and weapons, houses and scenes are authentic, and could no longer be duplicated” (Miller to Gregg, March 18, 1947). Clifford Gregg, Director of the Field, wrote personally to Zeiter, explaining that “[q]ualified anthropologists of the museum staff viewed the pictures [stills taken from the film] and are of the opinion that portions of the sequence are irreplaceable photographic records of sufficient importance to warrant making a copy.” But at the same time, he noted that the friable nature of the 35mm nitrate made it “best to dispose of the nitrate base print immediately instead of wasting time in a fruitless effort to save it” (Gregg to Zeiter, March 20, 1947). The transfer copy they planned to make of the film would no longer have the “dyed parts” that interested Zeiter. At the end of March, Zeiter was leaving for Okinawa, where he was to work for the Civil Service, Department of the Army. He wrote to the Field asking if they could keep the 35mm nitrate print in storage instead of destroying it, and Gregg assured him that it would be preserved. One record indicates that the nitrate print once caught fire while being projected; perhaps for this reason, it was eventually destroyed.   1973: In the Land of the War Canoes The version of Curtis’s motion picture familiar to viewers today is called In the Land of the War Canoes. It was restored by art historian Bill Holm and museum anthropologist George Quimby in the late 1960s. Quimby had been a curator at The Field Museum in the 1940s, when Zeiter donated his copy to the museum. He brought a copy of the Field’s 16mm duplicate with him when he moved to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in 1965, and he and Holm began setting the grounds for restoration work in the summer of 1967. The restoration was undertaken with extensive support from the Kwakwaka’wakw, with whom Holm had been working. It was released in 1973 through the University of Washington Press. Holm and Quimby published a seminal volume describing the film and their project, Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes: A Pioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest (University of Washington Press, 1980). Around 1990, War Canoes was picked up by Milestone Film, its current distributor (since 2004, it has received additional distribution by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the UK and Europe). As Holm and Quimby make clear in their volume, a number of significant changes were made to the film in the process of their restoration. Foremost among these were the change in title, the replacement of the original silent film intertitles (many of which contained character dialogue), the rearrangement of the opening sequence and some subsequent scenes, and—in the absence of the original musical score—the addition of a soundtrack of sound effects and Kwak’wala-language dialogue and songs recorded by Kwakwaka’wakw community members. In an innovative move, the newly recorded soundtrack literally gave “voice” back to the Kwakwaka’wakw of the time, who imagined the dialogue of their silent actor/ancestors (much like the actors had imagined the past practices of theirs). These changes were undertaken to make the film less objectionable to modern viewers and more narratively coherent—recall, the film at that point was missing two of the original six reels. But they also had the effect of shifting the focus of the film from Curtis’s melodramatic sensationalism to the ethnographic significance of Kwakwaka’wakw traditions—from “head hunting” to “war canoes.” Playing up its status as a visual record of (re-enacted) nineteenth-century cultural forms, and building on the interest declared by past museum curators, Holm and Quimby suggested that Curtis’s was the first feature length documentary film. For film historians, however, such changes present obvious problems. Even with these limitations, the film was still recognized as a landmark of early cinema. In 1999, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/programs/static/national-film-preservation-board/documents/land_head_hunters.pdf

The current restoration project began as the result of a number of discoveries by project co-coordinators Brad Evans and Aaron Glass. First, attention was brought to the film’s original silent film intertitles, still held by the Field Museum and the Burke Museum. The original musical score, composed in 1914 by John Braham, was discovered in the archive at the Getty Research Library. Additional reel fragments of an original 35mm nitrate print were found at the UCLA Film & Television Archive; these had been donated sometime in the 1970s by the film collector David Shepard but remained unidentified in the nitrate storage vaults. These additional reels confirm the original length of the film to be six reels, and indicate the nature of the missing scenes from reels four and five. They also contain the original color tinting and toning that so many viewers prior to 1947 had commented upon. To as great an extent as currently possible, this restoration will give us access to the motion picture as viewers would have seen it in 1914. The original title, intertitles, shot sequences, color process, orchestral score, and publicity material have all been reactivated. Film Restoration Process None of the two sources for surviving footage from IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS was even close to being complete.  Only an approximate total of three reels of scenes from the original six reels was represented by the Field Museum footage.  The UCLA material added the better part of another reel of missing footage, primarily from the final reel.  The UCLA footage was copied wetgate to 35mm negative, yielding an image vastly superior in quality to the Field Museum footage (copied "dry" to the lower-gauge 16mm sixty years ago). Prior to its being copied, few repairs were made to the Field nitrate, which was splicey, fragile, water-damaged, and decomposing.  This resulted in numerous onscreen jumps and misregistrations, some of which were adjusted on-the-fly during printing by the optical printer operator.  Extensive repairs and the benefit of improved printing techniques during the intervening years yielded a cleaner and steadier image from the UCLA nitrate, which also is in pretty much the same poor condition as was the Field’s.  However, even if a perfect condition nitrate print of HEAD HUNTERS had survived the years, evidence suggests it never originally looked all that good, due to ragged editing and poor camerawork that resulted in frequent image pull-down and second framelines. For this restoration, a few short shots were lengthened, some out-of-frame shots re-framed optically, and when Field and UCLA footage overlapped, intercutting of portions of shots from each was performed to secure as complete a final product as possible.  Even so, many frames were removed to eliminate the worst jumps and splices for a smoother overall presentation. Because many of the intertitles were short or badly degraded, all titles were re-created digitally.  Missing main and end titles were re-created in the manner of other World Film Corporation releases of the time.  Missing intertitles were derived from plot synopses and other sources.  Images from approximately fifty missing shots were obtained from single frames submitted to the Library of Congress for copyright purposes.  A tinting scheme for the entire film was derived from the UCLA nitrate.  Tinting of the screening print was effected through dye-bath immersion.  Toned and combined tinted-and-toned shots were replicated through flash-printing onto color stock. Even with lengthened titles and frame representations of missing shots, the restoration/reconstruction of IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS remains at only approximately two-thirds of its presumed original length.  The restoration was undertaken by UCLA Film & Television Archive.  Optical work, printing, and tinting was performed by The Stanford Theatre Film Laboratory; processing and color printing by YCM Laboratories; and titles by Title House Digital. Jere Guldin, film restorerUCLA Film & Television Archive

Since its re-release in the 1970s, In the Land of the Head Hunters has most frequently been understood as an example of documentary realism, a predecessor to later ethnographic travel films like Robert F. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) and Martin and Osa Johnson’s Simba, The King of Beasts (1928). While it certainly makes sense to establish this connection—we know, for example, that Flaherty and his wife were treated to a private screening of Head Hunters at Curtis’s New York studio in 1915—our restoration of Curtis’s film brings to light its significance in the context of the then emerging feature film industry. Very much an original work, In the Land of the Head Hunters was an attempt to combine high art and anthropology, to turn ethnographic spectacle into mass entertainment. Curtis intended his film to attract large audiences in an effort to raise much-needed funds for his “serious” life’s work—the North American Indian book series (his major patron, J. P. Morgan, had passed away in 1913 leaving Curtis strapped for cash). Neither like the many Indian-themed movies of its time, nor like the famous ethnographic documentaries that would follow it, Head Hunters is rightly understood as the meeting of two dramatic traditions, the emergent Hollywood film industry and the longstanding Kwakwaka’wakw tradition of dramatic public as well as ritual performance. It reminds us that from a very early date, neither was impervious to the other.   Curtis and Hollywood In the Land of the Head Hunters opened at a time of rapid change in the motion picture industry—a period marked both by technical innovations and by a transition towards longer feature films with more coherent fictional narratives. Film historians point to D. W. Griffith’s landmark The Birth of a Nation (1915) as the first major Hollywood film to realize cinema’s popular and artistic potential. Though Curtis’s film was undertaken on a much more modest scale, its significance can best be understood by keeping the mass cultural appeal of Hollywood movies like Griffith’s in mind. Later in his career, Curtis actually ended up in Hollywood as an employee of Cecil B. DeMille, where he worked in 1923 as a cameraman and still-photographer for the blockbuster production of DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. His foray into filmmaking had ambitions to reach the same kind of mass audience, but at the same time it held itself aloof as a work of high art.   “Indian Pictures” When it was first screened in 1914, In the Land of the Head Hunters entered into a field crowded with “Indian pictures.” From the beginning, Native Americans were not merely represented by the motion picture industry, but played a central role in its emergence. One of the first studio short films was the Edison Company’s twenty-second Sioux Ghost Dance (1894). Filmed at Edison’s studio in West Orange, New Jersey, it featured Oglala and Brulé Sioux who were touring in Brooklyn at the time with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. This short was followed by hundreds of others featuring Native American actors, many of whom had been involved with Buffalo Bill while others were brought in specially for the occasion.   Learn about the early filmography   The Innovation of Head Hunters What Head Hunters brought to this mix was a desire to elevate the Indian movie to a new level of artistry, as well as a desire to portray Native American life outside the stereotypes established for it by the prior two decades of filmic representation—not to mention the even longer history of Native American representation since the 1830s in dime novels and Wild West shows. The mere fact that Curtis chose a picturesque but not stereotypical First Nations group—lacking the ready-made Indian icons of feathered headdresses, horses, tomahawks, and tipis—suggests his desire to avoid those clichés, even as he indulged in others (head hunting, sorcery, vision quests). Perhaps this denial of audience familiarity also in part explains its box-office failure. Technically, Curtis’s film is remarkable not only for the quality and originality of its production, but also for the hyperbole of the advertising for it, which was clearly aimed at distinguishing it from other films in the market. Everything about the film—from the identity of its actors to the source for its musical score—were vigorously claimed to be “authentic.” It was a six-reel film, which was fairly long for the time, and it was shot entirely on location in British Columbia. It featured innovative moving camera shots. Its sequencing demonstrated Curtis’s basic understanding of principles of narrative continuity. The original advertising for the film stressed the significance of what was called “the Hochstetter process,” supposedly a natural color process that had been used in the making of the film. Although technical analysis indicates that it had, in fact, been tinted and toned in the standard way in the studio, the coloring of the Kwakwaka’wakw costumes and homes, as well as of the pacific coast landscape, is quite complex for the time. In terms of its portrayal of indigenous life, In the Land of the Head Hunters differs significantly from previous examples of the genre because of its combination of fictional and non-fictional elements. Whereas “Indian pictures” followed standard plot lines—ranging from cowboy and Indian spectacles in the mold of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, to more delicately framed interracial love stories (known as “squaw romances”)— Head Hunters withdrew all traces of contact with whites or modernity. There is still a love story; only it is between the Native Americans themselves. And there is warfare, but not the standard fare with frontiersmen or cowboys. Moreover, at a time when the Canadian government had prohibited the performance of many ceremonial rituals in an attempt to force assimilation, the film portrays most such rituals in accordance with Kwakwaka’wakw protocols. It might be argued that by removing the film’s narrative from the historical moment of its production, Curtis denied the modernity of its actor/participants. However, in asking them to be movie actors in the first place, Curtis complicated his other claims to documentary realism and proved that Native people could perform their past as a way of imagining a cultural future. There is no clearer hallmark of modern consciousness. Curtis brought to his film his own aesthetic proclivities, commercial ambitions, and racialized cultural imagination. For their part, the Kwakwaka’wakw contributed their significant artistic and dramatic talents as well as editorial input. Although Curtis retained control over its initial structure and shape, the film is best appreciated as an intercultural co-production, the first of its kind at this scale and in the cinematic medium. The peculiar history of In the Land of the Head Hunters suggests its potential for contemporary relevance and continual re-imagining by film historians, students of cultural and colonial representation, and Kwakwaka’wakw communities alike.

In the Land of the Head Hunters was the first feature-length film to be made in British Columbia, and the first to exclusively star Native North Americans (eight years before Flaherty's Nanook of the North). It is highly significant that both of these films—considered the first ethnographic “documentaries”—were made in Canada with Indigenous peoples; in fact, Flaherty had seen “Head Hunters,” which clearly informed (positively or otherwise) his own approach, and both films directly influenced John Grierson and his vision for the National Film Board of Canada. In BC, Curtis worked with non-professional actors and models from Kwakwaka’wakw communities between 1910 and 1914. The Kwakwaka’wakw were already famous then for spectacular visual culture and dramatic dance performances, and Curtis produced both Volume 10 of his North American Indian book series as well as this landmark—but often overlooked—film based on his experience with them.  Curtis took considerable artistic license in representing Kwakwaka’wakw culture. However, unlike many of the Hollywood Westerns and "Indian pictures" of the day, the film he crafted with First Nations collaboration eschewed the already stale representational convention seen in motion pictures since the 1890s.  At the same time, the participants told stories of enjoying the film’s production, especially since they were being paid to do dances that colonial agents were otherwise arresting them for (as the ceremonial potlatch was prohibited under the Canadian Indian Act from 1884-1951). Moreover, they had input into the cultural content selected for filming. Strict hereditary protocols limit public display in Kwakwaka’wakw communities, and Curtis could only have staged his scenes with the cooperation and input of his Native cast and crew. Presenting the film today with current Kwakwaka’wakw performers reframes the film from being a document of the “vanishing races” to being visual evidence of First Nations cultural survival during the potlatch prohibition.

Edward Curtis (1868-1952) is America’s most well known photographer of Native Americans. Chances are that you have seen one of his iconic, sepia-toned photographs of what he understood to be “the vanishing race” even if you do not know his name, as they are among the most frequently reproduced of all photographs from the early twentieth century. Most Curtis photographs circulating today were taken from his monumental work, The North American Indian (1907-1930), a twenty-volume photographic record and ethnography of many tribes of the western continent. With each volume accompanied by a portfolio of poster-size prints, these were among the most expensive books ever produced in the United States; indeed, they came in second at the time only to Audubon’s spectacular Birds of America. Fittingly, Curtis’s work was supported by some of the wealthiest and most influential men of his time, including George Bird Grinnell, J. P. Morgan, and Theodore Roosevelt. Curtis was more than just a photographer and ethnographer. As demonstrated by In the Land of the Head Hunters, he was also a showman. Prior to making the film, he had put on an elaborate “musicale,” combining magic-lantern slides, a lecture, and an original musical score. Referred to in the press as a “picture opera,” it too filled the seats at Carnegie Hall, as Head Hunters would do a few years later. His experience with the musicale clearly influenced his decision to make a film, which he undertook on the same grand scale. Then, after producing In the Land of the Head Hunters and continuing for some years with further work on the photography project, Curtis made what seems to be a natural progression to Hollywood, where he worked for Cecil B. DeMille taking stills. Curtis sold his copyright for In the Land of the Head Hunters to the American Museum of Natural History in 1924. In the 1930s, he liquidated all assets and materials of the North American Indian Corporation, selling them to a rare book dealer in Boston. Toward the end of his life, he explored the California hinterlands in search of gold. He died in Los Angeles in 1952 at the home of his daughter. Links: The Library of Congress Curtis Collection The Northwestern University Digital Library Collections of Curtis University of Virginia PBS Smithsonian Institution Libraries Flury and Company, Ltd. Christopher Cardoza Fine Art Makepeace Productions

The following four documents were located at the Getty Research Institute Research Library, Special Collections and Visual Resources Division, among the “Edward Curtis Papers” (accession #850111, Box 1, Folder 33, Series II). They appear to be preliminary scenarios for the film, and lists of both planned and executed scenes. In some cases, these scenarios were used to recreate missing title cards in the restored film (see Appendix 4 in our book). While the documents are undated, we have included them here in a likely sequence based on their content. In all cases we present direct, uncorrected transcriptions of the original typescripts with editorial introductions and occasional annotations in italics and square brackets. Document 1. Long Scenario Entitled “In the Days of Vancouver” Document 2. Film Synopsis and Shooting Schedule Document 3. Revised Scenario Document 4. List of Scenes Made in 1913

The first clip (courtesy The Field Museum) is from the unrestored version of the film. It is taken from the copy made by The Field Museum on 16mm safety film shortly after receiving the donation of Hugo Zeiter’s original 35mm copy in 1947. This copy, catalogued for many years by The Field as The Vigil of Motana after the first title card in the film, was the one used by Holm and Quimby for their version of the film, In the Land of the War Canoes, in 1973. For the current restoration, The Vigil of Motana copy enabled recovery of the melodramatic intertitles; however, it retains no trace of the original color tinting and toning and is devoid of any references to Curtis. Unrestored version of the film The second set of clips is from the 1973 version of the film, In the Land of the War Canoes (courtesy University of Washington Press and Milestone Films), notable for the addition of the Kwak'wala-language soundtrack and new intertitles. 1973 version of the film (clip 1) 1973 version of the film (clip 2) 1973 version of the film (clip 3) The final set of clips is from the newly restored 2014 version of In the Land of the Head Hunters (courtesy Milestone Films, UCLA Film & Television Archives, and The Field Museum). As described in detail elsewhere on this website, the new version is drawn from both the Field Museum copy of the film and the remains of a 35mm nitrate copy of the film discovered at UCLA. The fourth clip in the series shows one sequence from the original nitrate, which was used to reconstruct the coloring from 1914, and from which one can begin to imagine the definitional quality of the original. Newly restored 2014 version (clip 1) Newly restored 2014 version (clip 2) Newly restored 2014 version (clip 3) Newly restored 2014 version (clip 4)

In preparation for the gala release of In the Land of the Head Hunters in 1914, Edward Curtis commissioned an original orchestral score, which we now believe to be the earliest surviving complete score for a silent feature film. The project to restore the film was driven in large measure by the discovery of this score at the Getty Research Institute. As part of his larger ethnological salvage project, Curtis routinely made wax cylinder recordings of Native American music with his photographic subjects (a large number of these are preserved today at the Archive of Traditional Music at Indiana University, Bloomington). The volumes of his North American Indian book series frequently include transcriptions of these, many produced by the ethnomusicologist and composer Henry Gilbert. Around 1910, Curtis made a number of recordings of Kwakwaka’wakw songs (see "Music Samples" section), some of which are transcribed in Volume Ten, The Kwakiutl.  In 1911-1912, Curtis produced and toured “The Vanishing Race”—what he called a “Picture Opera” or “Musicale”—a commercial entertainment featuring an in-person lecture by Curtis set to a dissolving slide show enhanced by short motion pictures, elaborate stage sets, and fancy lighting effects. To accompany his show, Curtis commissioned Henry Gilbert to write a musical score based on the wax cylinder recordings he had made among various groups; these included a series of pieces based on Northwest Coast music. Though intended to raise funds for the book project, the Musicale was a financial failure, and Curtis and Gilbert had a falling out over long unpaid bills.  Thus, in 1914, Curtis could not rely on Gilbert to compose an ambitious score for Head Hunters. Instead, he turned to John J. Braham, a New York-based conductor and arranger long associated with American Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions (see “Braham bio” below). Braham was also a composer who had, in fact, just completed a score for a 1913 film version of Hiawatha, a story that directly influenced the narrative of Head Hunters. Perhaps based on exposure to this film, Curtis commissioned Braham to score his own film, and it is likely that Curtis maintained his practice of supplying Braham with the wax cylinder recordings of Kwakwaka’wakw songs to “inspire” the film score. The film’s premiere screenings were heavily advertised at the time as featuring “Native music symphonized,” one component of the larger claim to cultural authenticity based on the use of an all-Native cast and on-location shooting. However, it seems as if this particular pronouncement was a hollow promotional tool, as there is little if any trace of the Kwakwaka’wakw sources in Braham’s final score for Head Hunters. Nonetheless, Braham’s score clearly embodies Curtis’s ambitions for his film in its blending of melodramatic, pop-culture musical clichés—the familiar thrum of the “tom-toms”—with “high-art” aspirations.  Though the film may have received limited distribution in 1915, we do not know if the score traveled with it. By the time the film was located and re-edited into In the Land of the War Canoes in the 1970s, the score was presumed lost. Within the two decades after Curtis’s death in Los Angeles in 1952, various area archives obtained portions of his estate. The Getty Research Institute acquired many boxes of sheet music composed by Henry Gilbert for the Musicales. In amongst these were a couple of files labeled “The Head Hunters,” containing Braham’s score for the film, which Aaron Glass discovered during his dissertation research. This project marks their restoration and public presentation for the first time since 1914. Both John Braham's original 1914 manuscript score for Head Hunters and David Gilbert's 2008 transcription are available in complete form through the Getty Research Institute's online library.

Selections from the wax cylinder recordings made by Curtis in 1910 in Fort Rupert, BC (courtesy Archive of Traditional Music at Indiana University, Bloomington): Selection 1: “Hamatsa song of Motana.” (2.7MB) This is a very old song originally belonging to a famous 19th century Hamat’sa (“Cannibal”) dancer named Mudana, from the Awikinuxw people of Rivers Inlet. It was this man whose name inspired that of the hero of Curtis’s film, “Motana.” Songs such as this are often composed for new dance initiates, and then travel with the prerogative as it is handed down to subsequent generations. This song was still remembered and performed in Ft Rupert into the 1950s, and is known by a few song leaders today in essentially the same form as it was recoded in 1910. (See notation and transcription published in Curtis’s The North American Indian Volume 10 [“The Kwakiutl”], page 311)     Selection 2: “Wild Man of the Woods—Paqusilahl song.” (1.1MB)This is a song that once accompanied a Bak’was (or Wild Man of the Woods) dancer (such as the one pictured in this Curtis photo). The dancer, embodying the reclusive forest spirit, moves slowly over the ground, pausing to pick up cockle shells—his favorite food. Dances and songs such as this are the hereditary wealth of specific families, and ceremonial performance of them in a potlatch is limited to those with genealogical rights. (See notation and transcription published in Curtis’s The North American Indian Volume 10 [“The Kwakiutl”], page 319)     Selection 3: “Bear Song, Winter Dance—Nane song.” (1.1MB)This Nan (Grizzly Bear) Song would have accompanied a single dancer dressed most likely in a full-body bear-skin with a carved mask and claw gauntlets (such as the one pictured in this Curtis photo). Hereditary song and dance privileges such as this (called dlugwe’ or “treasures”) are displayed by families at their potlatches in order to publicly establish their cultural wealth. The wedding scene adapted by Curtis in his film, in which a Bear dances on a canoe prow along with other figures, would have been one context in which families displayed such a prerogative (perhaps as part of a marriage dowry for the groom’s family). (See notation and transcription published in Curtis’s The North American Indian Volume 10 [“The Kwakiutl”], page 320)     A recording of the “prelude” of John Braham’s score for Head Hunters (recorded by the Turning Point Ensemble in Vancouver, BC on August 8, 2007 at the University of British Columbia; score courtesy Getty Research Library): Selection: Braham’s “prelude” (8.3MB)In silent movie days, the orchestra or accompanist would have played such a “prelude” after the house lights dimmed but before the film screening began. Like an symphony overture, it contains musical themes that recur throughout the entire film score, and functions as a preview of sorts.     Selections from Braham’s score (as prepared and synthesized by David Gilbert, UCLA; score courtesy Getty Research Library): Selection 1: "Warriors" (1.4MB)Selection 2: "Naida" (1.2MB)Selection 3: "Hunting Sea Lions" (1.1MB)Selection 4: "Dance and Wedding" (2.2MB)      Selection of songs recorded by the Gwa’wina Dancers and friends, Alert Bay, BC (courtesy Gwa’wina Dancers and U’mista Cultural Society): Selection 1: “Hamat’sa – Lawisala” (8.4MB)(From the compact disk “Rising from the Ashes”) This is an example of the third song in the cycle of four songs used to initiate Hamat’sa (“Cannibal”) dancers. The songs increasingly calm or tame the dancer, and the lyrics signal specific choreographic gestures unique to individual dance prerogatives. This particular song originally came from the Awikinuxw people and belongs to Kwaxsistala of the Dzawada’enuxw people from Kingcome Inlet.Selection 2: “Dzunuk’wak’ala” (3.4MB)(From the compact disk “Laxwe'gila (Gaining Strength)”) Dzunuk’wa, often known as the “Wild Woman of the Woods,” is a giant residing in the forest realm. Like Bak’was (the “Wild Man of the Woods”), she is occasionally represented by masked dancers embodying specific family rights, typically granted in an ancestral encounter with the spirit being. This particular song was composed by Chief Waxawidi around 1995 for Lalakanx’idi (Chief Peter Cook) of the ‘Namgis Band from Alert Bay. Selection 3: “Nan – Grizzly Bear song.” (3.7MB)(From the compact disk “Rising from the Ashes”) Though Grizzly Bear is a common family crest, often appearing on totem poles, it can also be represented through masked dance as a hereditary privilege and form of wealth. This Nan song is very old and belongs to T’lakwadzi (David Sawyer) of the Mamalilikala Band of Village Island.

Film music as such hardly existed in 1914 and special music composed for a particular film was rare. A sure method for matching a score to a projected moving image had yet to evolve. Furthermore, silent film was silent: each film screening with live music became a singular performance.   The music for In the Land of the Headhunters, composed by John J. Braham and preserved in the Curtis materials at the Getty Research Institute, includes a manuscript full score mostly in Braham’s hand and a set of instrumental parts made by a copyist at the Arthur Tams agency in New York. From his experience in the live vaudeville and operetta tradition, Braham wrote music in the way he was familiar, as a string of set musical numbers to accompany a series of scenes. The score consists of 62 musical numbers. Braham must have had access to a scenario or outline of the film narrative since several of the movements have titles or notations referring to the action. During rehearsals, seven of the numbers were deleted entirely while others were shortened and altered in other ways to fit the film. The members of the orchestra marked these changes into their parts thereby providing us with many unique keys to the action of the film and how the music accompanies it. Braham did not conduct the performances nor do we know if he was present, but his nephew, William Braham, played percussion in the orchestra for the New York premier. The instrumental parts do not match exactly the existing manuscript score and so intervening material may exist. For now, the instrumental parts represent the primary source for the music as performed at the Casino Theatre in December 1914.   Restoring the music for In the Land of the Headhunters began with assembling a full score from the separate instrumental parts and noting the clues in them to the film’s narrative. “Watch for fall,” for example, alerted the percussionist to the scene where the Sorcerer is thrown from a cliff, and “Girl in boat” to the appearances of Naida in her canoe. Although the restored score provides keys to the progression of the plot along with the repetitions and breaks the orchestra made during the Casino Theatre performances, it can only be an approximation. Some performance materials are obviously missing (the conductor’s score and the piano parts, for example), all of the changes made in 1914 may not have found their way into the existing documentation, we lack sure knowledge of performance practice of the era, and the film that survives is not totally complete. Today, matching the film’s music to the projected play will largely depend on the conductor, as it did in the era in which the film originated. Although the publicity material claimed the score was influenced by the Kwakwaka’wakw music recorded by Curtis and played to inspire Braham, one would be hard pressed to identify any relation between the two musics. Curtis’s cylinders are as authentic as any recording of a living tradition can be; Braham’s resulting music is set squarely in the self-conscious art music tradition, fitting the cultural importance of the event as envisioned by Curtis. Braham employs the musical signs of the Western cultural stereotype of the noble American Indian. Simple, regular dance rhythms contrast with the irregular beating and flexible tempo accompanying the singing on Curtis’s cylinders. Braham also imbued his score with the Western musical forms and compositional techniques with which he was most familiar. The opening seven notes of the overture provide a motif that reappears throughout the score and from which Braham develops other musical ideas. Some of these ideas he attempted to associate with characters and action in the film, although the scheme is not totally realized and was further disrupted by the realities faced during rehearsals and performance. Nevertheless, Braham produced music not lacking sophistication and reflecting his long experience as a figure, albeit minor, in the golden age of English and American operetta.   David Gilbert, Librarian, UCLA Music Library

John J. Braham(Born England c.1848, died Brooklyn, N.Y. 28 Oct 1919)  John Joseph Braham came to America from England in 1859, and in 1862 appeared as a violinist at the Canal Street Theatre in New York. After touring as a virtuoso, he accepted the post of musical director of Pike's Opera House in Manhattan, and later conducted the orchestra at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. He was in charge of music at several New York and New England theaters, and in 1878 conducted the first American production of H.M.S. Pinafore at the Boston Museum. He was closely associated with the Gilbert & Sullivan operas throughout his life, working primarily with the D’Oyly Opera Company. Braham also enjoyed some success as a composer, especially for vaudeville as well as popular and comic song. He collaborated with Edward Rice on the music for a Hiawatha play or pageant, and then wrote the score for the 1913 film, Hiawatha: the Indian Passion Play. Edward Curtis commissioned him to produce the score for In the Land of the Head Hunters in 1914. When Braham died in 1919, he was eulogized by Rice, who declared that the Gilbert & Sullivan operas would never have attained their huge popularity in America were it not for the judicious changes made by Braham before their presentation.   Links: This site, on the history of the D’Oyly Opera Company, includes a more detailed biography of Braham: http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/whowaswho/B/BrahamJohn.htm The following site has information on the historical significance of Boston’s Howard Athenaeum (AKA the “Old Howard”): Old Howard This Library of Congress site, “Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music,” contains scans of some Braham compositions and arrangements: Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885

UCLA PHILHARMONIA is UCLA's flagship orchestral ensemble. It rehearses Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:00 to 5:50 PM and presents a wide range of performances throughout the year, including symphonic concerts, opera and music theater. Philharmonia's programming focuses on the core symphonic and operatic repertoire. 2005-06 and 2006-07 featured performances of Prokofiev Symphony No. 5, Dvorak Cello Concerto, Copland Piano Concerto, Takemitsu Ceremonial: An Autumn Ode, Strauss Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Zappa Dupree's Paradise, Ravel Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, an annual "All-Star" concert featuring student soloists, Shostakovich Symphonies Nos. 9 and 10, a UCLA Opera production of Britten Midsummer Night's Dream and Puccini Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica, Janacek Sinfonietta, Messiaen Les Offrandes Oubliées, Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Rozsa Concerto for Strings, Brahms Symphony No. 4, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3, Lukas Foss Baroque Variations, J.S. Bach Orchestral Suite No. 4, four Royce Hall appearances and a live concert broadcast from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 2007-2008 highlights include Stravinsky Petrushka (1947), Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, Messiaen Oiseaux Exotiques, Haydn Symphony No. 103 (Drumroll), UCLA Opera productions of Verdi Falstaff and Weill Threepenny Opera, appearances at Royce Hall and the "Sundays Live" series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a special June 2008 revival of In the Land of the Head Hunters, a groundbreaking 1914 silent film with a restored original score by John Braham. For this gala event, UCLA Philharmonia has been invited to perform at the Harold Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center. Founded in 1936, the Philharmonia's music directors have included such distinguished musicians as Lukas Foss, Richard Dufallo, Mehli Mehta, Samuel Krachmalnick, Alexander Treger and Jon Robertson. 2007-2008 marks the third season of Philharmonia's dynamic music director and conductor Neal Stulberg.  Visit the UCLA Philharmonia website for more information

The Turning Point Ensemble was formed by its musician members in 2002 with the goal of presenting rarely-heard concert-music for a large-sized chamber ensemble. Our mandate is to increase the appreciation and understanding of music composed during the past hundred years. The Turning Point Ensemble’s players are among the region's most accomplished instrumentalists, and it has quickly earned a stellar reputation for outstanding programming and musicianship.   Since its debut program in the Music in the Morning series in January 2003, the ensemble has presented some fifteen concerts, and has been recorded on a number of occasions by the CBC. Our critically acclaimed debut CD on the Artifact label, Strange Sphere (the music of Rudolf Komorous) was released in 2004. The ensemble is also committed to building a new repertoire through working closely with outstanding composers. Currently the ensemble is collaborating with Vancouver based composers Bradshaw Pack, John Korsrud, and Jocelyn Morlock. In March 2006, the ensemble was again the featured ensemble for Vancouver Pro Musica's Sonic Boom Festival, premiering nine new works of emerging British Columbia composers.    The Turning Point Ensemble continues to seek out opportunities to be a musical partner in exciting interdisciplinary events. In 2004, the ensemble received international acclaim for their efforts in performing Hanns Eisler’s Vierzen Arten den Regen zu beschreiben (Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain) in synchronization with Joris Ivens’ 1929 film Regen (Rain). The 2005-06 season included a collaboration with SFU School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver’s first fully staged professional production of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale in over 20 years; a presentation cited by the Globe and Mail and Vancouver Courier as one of the season’s most exciting arts events. In January 2007, TPE joined forces with the Vancouver Art Gallery, CABINET, the Roundhouse Community Centre, and the PuSH Festival to present an evening of music and video featuring the Canadian premiere of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking 1954 composition Déserts set to video created in 1994 by Bill Viola. Our 2007-08 season includes an exciting collaboration with the Gamelan Gita Asmara ensemble celebrating the long history of Gamelan music and its inspiration to Canadian composers. The Turning Point Ensemble is pleased to have presented programs in collaboration with Heritage Vancouver, Festival Vancouver, CBC Radio, the Music in the Morning concert series, Vancouver Opera, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Taiwanese Economic and Cultural Bureau, the Egret School of Music, the Canadian Music Centre, Vancouver Voices, Groundswell, New Music Concerts Toronto, and the Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts. For more information, please visit: Turning Point Ensemble website

Founded in 2008, the Coast Orchestra was created to perform the original score to Edward Curtis's 1914 silent film "In the Land of the War Canoes." The mission of the Coast Orchestra is to promote classically-trained Native American musicians to perform music about Native Americans. The score is based on romanticized ideas and Hollywood themes about Native Americans. The Coast Orchestra hopes to re-interpret this fantastical score in a meaningful and thought-provoking way. The Coast Orchestra members come from Alaska, Arizona, New York and Washington D.C. and represent twelve Indian nations. Click on the image for full poster

For the past decade, Washington State photographer Sharon Eva Grainger has been working closely with the U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, BC to document the daily and ceremonial lives of Kwakwaka’wakw community members. One of her projects has involved collaborating to re-stage historic photographs by Edward Curtis. For each photo-shoot, Grainger discusses the Curtis image with her models and asks them how they wish to be dressed and posed. This exhibit brings together twenty of Grainger’s images with the original Curtis photos. Beyond the clear visual and historical resonance, all of these portraits reveal the subtle social relations behind the photographic encounter. They suggest that we might re-view Curtis’s work as the result of similar processes of negotiation—as products of both colonial romanticism and Kwakwaka’wakw self-assertion. Organized by Sharon Eva Grainger, Aaron Glass, and the U’mista Cultural Centre for the public presentation of Curtis’s 1914 film, "In the Land of the Head Hunters." Click here for a Bio of Sharon Grainger

This exhibit features the reflections of twenty artists, scholars, and community leaders in the Pacific Northwest, each responding to an Edward Curtis photograph they selected. In the diversity of perspectives, we find nuance regarding Curtis’s images and their complex relationship to First Nations cultures. Developed by the Museum of Anthropology and the First Nations Studies Program at The University of British Columbia for the public presentation of Curtis’s 1914 film, In the Land of the Head Hunters. [Unless otherwise noted, all Curtis images are from his The North American Indian (NAI) book series] (A version of this exhibit was installed in the venues for the 2008 public event series that made up the core of the Head Hunters project, and a condensed version is published in our 2014 edited volume.)  

Sharon Eva Grainger, a professional photographer and naturalist, holds degrees in Psychology and Anthropology from Eastern Washington University. With five generations of artists behind her, she has developed a portfolio of images covering indigenous cultures, herbal medicine, and ethnobotany. During her 55 years in the Pacific Northwest, she has developed close ties to the Colville Confederated Tribes of northeastern Washington State, who have shared their culture and lore with her. In addition, she has recently been working in the remote valleys of Mexico’s Copper Canyon with the Tarahumara people as part of the Opening Hearts project, originally sponsored by Lindblad Expeditions (with whom she has traveled the west coast of North America, the Baltic States of Northern Europe, and the waters and lands of Scandinavia).  She is currently involved in long-term collaborative work with the Kwakwaka’wakw in Alert Bay, helping facilitate research through visual as well as audio recordings. Her photographs have become the subject of many exhibitions in the U’mista Cultural Centre.  In the past decade, Grainger has published photographs in the Time-Life book Indians of the Western Range, and the Smithsonian’s Handbook to North American Indians.

  * Click here to download the audience program (.PDF, 920KB)   June 5-6, 2008: The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (co-presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Autry National Center) June 5th world premiere screening/performance. Score performance by the UCLA Philharmonia (conducted by Neal Stulberg) Two-day public symposium, “Documents of an Encounter.” June 7th: additional dance performance at the Autry National Center June 10, 2008: The Moore Theatre, Seattle (co-presented by Seattle Theatre Group, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and the Seattle International Film Festival). June 22, 2008:  The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Vancouver, BC (co-presented by the UBC Museum of Anthropology, the UBC First Nations Studies Program, and the UBC Centenary 2008). June 22nd screening/performance. Score performance by the Turning Point Ensemble (conducted by Owen Underhill) June 24th panel discussion at the Museum of Anthropology. November 9, 2008: The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (co-presented by Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian) Score performance by the Coast Orchestra No Kwakwaka'waka performance November 13, 2008: Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ)  Symposium - "Moving Pictures: The Celluloid Archive, Indigenous Agency, and the Work of Edward S. Curtis." (Download the event poster). November 14, 2008: The American Museum of Natural History, New York City (co-presented by the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Rutgers University, and New York University). Score performance by the Coast Orchestra Limited Kwakwaka'waka performance only November 16-17, 2008: The Field Museum, Chicago Limited Kwakwaka'waka performance only No live score performance (recorded music by the Turning Point Ensemble) November 22, 2008: American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting (Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival), San Francisco Informal screening and discussion of the restored film and score (on DVD) with project co-producers Brad Evans and Aaron Glass Open to conference registrants only