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The Editors:
I am writing to you concerning the article "`That's My Dinner on Display"A First Nations Reflection on Museum Culture" by Gloria Jean Frank, which was published in the Spring/Summer issue of BC Studies. My concerns are not about the author's legitimate personal reactions to this thirty-year-old exhibit. I am concerned, however, by the absence of research and an apparent willingness to distort museum history to critique "museum culture." The paper was written while Frank was a student and under the supervision of University of Victoria faculty. While it is not my purpose to reflect on academic culture, I do find the standards of critical editorship somewhat weak.
One of Frank's criticisms concerns the use of Edward S. Curtis's photographic images at certain points in the exhibit, such as in the smallpox gallery. I hope that this letter will help your readers through Ms. Frank's puzzlement with the Curtis materials and describe the lengths taken by the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) to avoid presenting First Nations as "anthropological specimens" - a most unfortunate term that was recycled in the article. One of the things that Frank questions is the use in the exhibit of a short sequence from the 1914 Curtis film, In the Land of the Head Hunters. She makes no mention of the place of the film in the exhibit and the narration that goes with it but, rather, concentrates on the assumption that Kwakwaka'wakw people who participated in the film were coerced by Curtis and his assistant, George Hunt. It is important to note that the film was re-released in 1974 with Kwak'wala dialogue and songs to accompany the surviving silent film footage and that Kwakwaka'wakw people, some of whom appeared in the film in 1914, participated in the soundtrack project in 1972, which took place at the RBCM. This is discussed by Bill Holm and George Quimby (1980, 16-17) as well as by Ira Jacknis (2000, 101). Frank is also concerned that the names of people who posed for the Curtis photographs that are used at certain points throughout the gallery are not on the exhibit labels, which, in keeping with the style of the time, are minimal. She is also concerned that the people are wearing old-style clothing...