The government banned their most sacred ceremony. They danced anyway.
Presents the history of the conflict between the Canadian government and the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Pacific over the ritual of the Potlatch. Archival photographs and films, wax roll sound recordings, police reports, the original potlatch files, and correspondence of agents form the basis of the reconstruction of period events, while the film centres on a Potlatch given today by the Cranmer family of Alert Bay.
Direction
Wheeler lets silence do what narration cannot.
Editing
Jarring cuts between 1920s surveillance footage and 1975 ceremony.
Director
Dennis Wheeler
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The title quotes a Kwakiutl declaration to anthropologist Franz Boas: the obligation to give and receive is law itself.
Director Dennis Wheeler died by suicide in 1977; this remains his most politically urgent work, made with Cranmer Webster's essential collaboration rather than extraction.
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