(gentle music)
- [Steve] I'm in the Bard Graduate Center
at the Story Box Exhibition with Aaron Glass,
the curator of the exhibition, looking at a ceremonial belt.
- [Aaron] This belt, made in the late 19th century
by a Kwakwaka'wakw artist,
people who were formerly known as Kwakiutl,
was worn ceremonially in dance or in potlatch ceremonies.
- [Steven] The potlatch was an extremely important complex
of ceremonies that is central to life
in the northwest coast.
- [Aaron] Just the wearing of belts like this
would have signaled the privileges
that the dancer would have inherited
from either their parents or through marriage exchange.
Both the two serpent heads and the human head are signaled
by these spiraling horns on the top of their heads,
common on sisiutl motifs.
And the sisiutl is a two-headed sea monster.
In stories of the sisiutl,
contact with its blood would turn a person to stone.
One of the contexts in which you see sisiutl motifs danced
are in the Hawinallal, a warrior's dance.
For warriors, the fact that the sisiutl turns you to stone
protects the warrior from arrows of his enemies.
- [Steven] You said that the face in the center was human,
and it does not immediately strike me as fully human,
in part because of the horns,
but also because of the blue spots, the blue eyes.
That face, along with the serpent's, feel terrifying.
- [Aaron] You do often see both the humanoid face
and the serpent heads in sisiutl motifs,
with rows of sharp teeth, with grimacing faces.
The menacing quality may be tied
both to the supernatural powers of the sisiutl,
they were powerful and dangerous,
and to the military prowess of the warriors.
it's hard to interpret what the middle humanoid face
on sisiutl representations indicates:
possibly a relationship with the human wearer
of this particular belt, possibly with humanoid ancestors
who had encounters with actual sisiutl in the sea.
We don't know.
- [Steven] There are three units of wood,
each attached together by cloth, which wrap around,
and the colors are gorgeous.
There's that vibrant blue, the blacks and the reds,
all highlighted against the natural tones of the wood
that really offsets the added color.
- [Aaron] The treatment of this belt is characteristic
of similar kinds of objects we see in the late 19th century,
many of which were painted with black, red, and blue.
In this case, I believe all of these pigments
were commercially manufactured.
- [Steven] I think that we have this prejudice
to want pre-industrial when we look at Native American art,
but of course, Native American art,
like every other people's art,
is transformed and evolves constantly.
The belt is surrounded
by a small black-and-white photograph.
- [Aaron] This photograph was published in 1897
in Franz Boas's groundbreaking ethnographic volume,
"The Social Organization, and the Secret Societies
of the Kwawiutl Indians."
The Story Box exhibition is the story of that book
and the work that Franz Boas did
with his indigenous collaborator, George Hunt,
to write that book.
In the book, we see what's captioned
as a dance of the chief of the Hun'a'lino clan.
We now know that this man's name was Gwayutalas.
This dance occurred in 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair.
- [Steven] And that's quite a distance
from where this man lived.
He lived in Fort Rupert, which is on Vancouver Island
in British Columbia in Canada,
but here he is displaying the ceremonial bow,
and behind that in the photograph, you can see the belt,
but you don't see the context
in which this was photographed.
It looks as if this man is standing on a hill
with a sky in back of him.
- The original photograph showed the immediate context.
We clearly see Gwayutalas performing
in front of his Kwakwaka'wakw compatriots
in front of the leather and shoe trades building
at the Chicago World's Fair.
Gwayutalas was one member of about 20 Kwakwaka'wakw
who were hired to perform at the Chicago World's Fair
by Franz Boas.
Boas in turn hired his collaborator, George Hunt.
Hunt assembled the troupe
primarily from his own family and social contacts
in and around Fort Rupert.
The troupe members were paid to be at the fair.
They demonstrated dances, sang songs, made crafts,
which they sold to fairgoers.
They lived on the fairgrounds for about seven months,
and while they were there,
they worked closely with both Franz Boas and George Hunt
to record a lot of their traditional culture.
- [Steven] That seems so deeply uncomfortable to me.
I hope we would never do such a thing again,
that is, put people on display as if they were objects.
- [Aaron] One of the things our exhibition raises
is how much agency did they have in their exhibition.
We know they were paid, they went voluntarily,
but at that time, the potlatch and the ceremonial dances
that they were doing at the fair were outlawed in Canada
as part of the Canadian government's prohibition
of the potlatch and part of federal efforts
to assimilate indigenous peoples
into modern Canadian society.
- [Steven] Imagine having the central features
of your culture outlawed.
- [Aaron] By the end of the 19th century,
when this group of 20 Kwakwaka'wakw decided to live
at the Chicago World's Fair for 1893,
the potlatch ban had already been in effect
for over a decade,
and people were starting to be arrested for participating
in dances and ceremonies.
- [Steven] So performing in the United States,
where the potlatch was not illegal,
could be seen as a form of resistance.
- [Aaron] They found ways to do it despite the prohibition
and making artwork and performing dances
at the Chicago World's Fair was one of those strategies.
By 1951, when the potlatch ban was dropped,
the Kwakwaka'wakw were among the first first nations
of the northwest coast to bring the potlatch
back out into the public.
- [Steven] And as Corrine Hunt has put so beautifully,
the work that Boas did with her great grandfather,
George Hunt, became a repository of knowledge, imperfect,
but nevertheless important,
that helped people overcome the disruption
that was a result of the prohibitions
that had been imposed by Canada.
- [Aaron] Part of the story of the Story Box is the role
of that book for Kwakwaka'wakw today.
Our team of anthropologists is working
with community members to do the work
of cultural and linguistic revitalization.
- [Steven] And to give a careful, more nuanced context
for objects like this.
- [Aaron] In the book, Boas does not mention
the Chicago World's Fair as the context for dances,
for the display of this regalia,
for the production of the photograph
that became the book plate.
- [Steven] It's interesting to think about
what Franz Boaz's motivation was
in literally erasing everything around it
so that the illusion is maintained
this was shot in British Columbia.
- [Aaron] The photographic documentation
becomes a kind of authentic ethnographic illustration
for Boas that belies a very complicated history
of photographic production of performance for money
outside of ceremonial contexts, of art display and use
that's much more complicated
than we would imagine just reading Boas's book.
- [Steven] It seems to me that Boas was intent
on making sure that these people were represented
in a preindustrial context,
ignoring the fact that they were members
of the modern world.
They were using industrial pigments.
They were in Chicago.
But all of that had to be erased in order to satisfy
our appetite for the authentic.
- [Aaron] Despite his efforts to physically erase
the fairground context from this plate,
a close examination reveals that under his regalia,
Gwayutalas is wearing Western trousers and a Western shirt,
even at the same time
as they were keeping their cultural traditions alive.
- [Steven] First nations in the northwest
had come into contact with Europeans centuries before.
The Russians and the British had made contact
as early as the late 18th century,
but what this really reveals is how fragile the illusions
that we try to maintain really are.
(gentle music)