While undertaking research for my Leverhulme Fellowship project The Skullcracker Suite in 2016 I was invited by the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw First Nation artist Beau Dick to the inaugural potlatch of Chief Alan Hunt at the Tsaxis Big house in Fort Rupert, Vancouver Island. Alan is a descendant of George Hunt, the Tlingit-English ethnologist who was Franz Boas’ main consultant for his classic work Kwakiutl Ethnography. During the ceremony Alan received the name Hamasaḵa. Alan, who is also a master carver in the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw tradition, invited myself, Steve Calvert and Gregoire Dupond to document the ceremony.

Between 2016 and 2018 I edited the documentation into twenty three sequences and uploaded them to YouTube to be used for educational purposes amongst Kwakwaka’wakw communities in Alert Bay and Fort Rupert. A selection of the sequences can be found here.

Below is documentation of the Hamsamala Dance that took place during Alan’s ceremony. It forms the third part of the Hamatsa initiation ceremony, a highly sacred rite. The three birds you see dancing are  Qoaxqoaxualanuxsiwae (Raven-of-the-North-End-of-the-World), Gelogudzayae (Crooked-Beak-of-the-Sky) and Hoxhogwaxtewae (Hoxhok-of-the-Sky). They are the consorts of Baxbakwalanuksiwae, the Man-Eater at the North End of the World, whose body is covered in gaping, bloody mouths, and whose house billows red smoke. Their legend is closely associated with the Hamatsa secret society, members of which you can see directing the dancers with their rattles. The Hamatsa in the white shirt is Beau Dick, the great Kwakwaka’wakw artist, who sadly passed away in March 2017.

The sequence has had over 62,000 views since it was uploaded in 2018 and an excerpt of video was used in an augmented reality application for the exhibition More Than Masks at the Ethnological Museum of the State Museum in Berlin in 2022.