I'm working on a commissioned art project for the Swedish National Museum of Antiquities that has led me to the discovery of an amazing man. Boas once summed up his approach to anthropology and folklore by saying: "In the course of time I became convinced that a materialistic point of view, for a physicist a very real one, was untenable. This gave me a new point of view and I recognized the importance of studying the interaction between the organic and inorganic, above all the relation between the life of a people and their physical environment." -Franz Boas
"Franz Boas posing for figure in US Natural History Museum exhibit entitled
"Hamats'a coming out of secret room" 1895 or before. Courtesy of National Anthropology Archives.
The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians (1897).
Wooden skulls hang from below the mask, which represents one of the
cannibal bird helpers of Bakbakwalinooksiwey.
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