Writing the Hamat'sa: Ethnography, Colonialism, and the Cannibal Dance

Long known as the Cannibal Dance, the Hamat sa is among the most important hereditary prerogatives of the Kwakwa ka wakw of British Columbia. Drawing on published texts, extensive archival research, and fieldwork, Writing the Hamat sa offers a critical survey of attempts to record, interpret, and prohibit the ceremony. Such textual mediation and Indigenous response over four centuries helped transform the Hamat sa from a set of specific practices. into a generalized cultural icon. This meticulous work illuminates how Indigenous people contribute to, contest, and repurpose texts in the process of fashioning modern identities under settler colonialism.