CHAPTER XI: BEHIND THE SCENES
The Franz Boas/George Hunt
1897 Critical Edition Project
“A large part of our history wouldn’t be there… if it wasn’t for George Hunt and Franz Boas”
—Chief William T. Cranmer, 2018
This exhibition contributes to an international collaboration, the purpose of which is to produce a new annotated edition of the 1897 book in both print and digital media. The Critical Edition will reunite widely distributed collections with the original text and with the Kwakwaka’wakw families whose cultural heritage they represent. It will provide critical insight into the history of anthropology and recover long dormant ethnographic records for Indigenous use in the present and future. At both levels, the Critical Edition will help fulfill Boas and Hunt’s vision for their own life-long efforts.
The 1897 Critical Edition Project Team
Since 2012, the 1897 Critical Edition project team has been scouring global museums, libraries, and archives for materials that went into producing the book or were subsequently connected to it (see map). The project is based at Bard Graduate Center, University of Victoria, and U’mista Cultural Centre, and has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the School for Advanced Research.