Table of Contents

U'mista Cultural Society Statement of Participation / William T. CranmerForeword / Bill HolmPreface / Brad Evans and Aaron GlassAcknowledgmentsIntroduction PART ONE. Mediating Indians / Complicating Curtis1. Edward Curtis and In the Land of the Head Hunters: Four Contexts / Micky Gidley2. Images of Time: Portraiture in The North American Indian / Shamoon Zamir3. Indian Landscapes: Pauline Johnson and Edward Curtis / Kate Flint4. A Chamber of Echoing Songs: Edward Curtis as a Musical Ethnographer / Ira JacknisPhoto Essay 1. "At the Kitchen Table with Edward Curtis"/ Jeff Thomas PART TWO. Head Hunters Across Two Centuries5. Consuming the Head Hunters: A Century of Film REception / Aaron Glass and Brad Evans6. Unmasking the Documentary: Notes on the Anxiety of Edward Curtis / Colin Browne7. Indian Movies and the Vernacular of Modernism / Brad Evans8. Musical Intertextuality in Indigenous Film: Making and Remaking In the Land of the Head Hunters / Klisala Harrison9. 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 Today10. In the Land of the Head Hunters: Reconstruction, not Restoration . Jere Guldin11. In the Land of the Head Hunters and the History of Silent Film Music / David Gilbert12. Performing Braham, Interpreting Curtis: A Conversation on Conducting / Neal Stulberg, Owen Underhill, Timothy Long, and Laura Ortman13. "What the Creator Gave to Us": An Interview with William Wasden Jr. (Waxawidi)14. Cultural Interpretation / Dave Hunsaker15. 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 SmithAppendix 1. Promotional Images for In the Land of the Head HuntersAppendix 2. The Kwakwaka'wakw Cast and Crew of In the Land of the Head HuntersAppendix 3. Curtis Film Props in the Collection of the Burke Musem of Natural History and CultureAppendix 4. Title Cards from the 2008 Reconstruction of In the Land of the Head HuntersReferencesContributorsIndex

Promotional Information

Return to the Land of the Head Hunters brings together leading anthropologists, Native American authorities, artists, musicians, literary scholars, and film historians to reassess Edward S. Curtis's film In the Land of the Head Hunters and its lasting legacy.

About the Author

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

Reviews

"Lively and inspiring ... a comprehensive and completely original cross-disciplinary collection that offers a model of how new work on older cultural materials can take place." - Faye Ginsburg, director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History, New York University "A highly original collection of essays that offers a theoretically sophisticated understanding ... Exemplifies collaboration between indigenous communities, scholars, and artists." - Pauline Turner Strong, author of American Indians and the American Imaginary: Cultural Representation Across the Centuries "Curtis's epic melodrama of the precontact Kwakwaka'wakw world has been given a new life, with the advantages of the discovery of a surviving bit of original film, the revival of the orchestral score originally composed for the motion picture, the expertise of film historians and musicians, the use of advanced film-reconstruction technology and modern concepts of restoration. It is a new chapter in the story of Edward S. Curtis in the land of the head hunters." - From the foreword by Bill Holm