Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis the Kwakwaka'wakw and the Making of Modern Cinema (Native Art of the Pacific Northwest: A Bill Holm Center)
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About this book
Photographer Edward Curtiss 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 Curtiss collaboration with the Kwakwkwakw of British Columbiameant like Curtiss 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 films 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 Kwakwkwakw 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 Kwakwkwakw participation and response the movie offers dynamic evidence of ongoing cultural survival and transformation under shared conditions of modernity.
