Kwakiutl Mask

For millennia, human groups have settled along the North Pacific coast in British Columbia, Canada. These far-northern civilizations developed arts and cultures centered on fascinating cosmogonies. Belief and healing systems based on shamanism gave rise to art imbued with power and poetry. Figurative masks with naturalistic treatment are commonly referred to as "portrait masks" in North Pacific art.
The Tsimshian people wore masks during ceremonies, winter dances, and shamanic sessions. The first major Western discoverer of British Columbia art was Captain James Cook, who collected works on-site during his 1778 voyage. As noted by J. C. H. King in Portrait Masks from the Northwest Coast of America (Thames & Hudson, 1979), most portrait masks were collected before 1870. After this date, a period began marked by the gradual and definitive disintegration of the social structures and classical traditions within North Pacific Amerindian cultures. After initially selling or trading carved objects of daily life, native populations began parting with the masks and sculptures that played a central role in their ritual and shamanic practices.
Franz Boas, the great anthropologist of Northwest Coast cultures, visited the region in 1886 with photographs and drawings of masks, seeking to establish their ritual use. He soon realized that the exact role and meaning of each of these masks were, more often than not, already impossible to identify unless one visited the specific village where the mask had been carved. This is largely explained by the fact that these masks were created for a particular individual, who imbued them with personal and secret meaning and identity. Over time and distance, this knowledge was gradually lost.