| Summary: | Many silent films about indigenous Canadians, including a number about Northwest Coast First Nations, have staged or been accompanied by indigenous music, but In the Land of the Head Hunters is unique for having done so differently on numerous occasions over the course of its history. Music for Head Hunters has been revived, rewritten, and reframed each time the film has come back into public attention. Made in 1914 by the renowned photographer and ethnographer Edward Curtis, and the first feature film to depict Northwest Coast First Nations, Head Hunters contains at least eighteen scenes showing Kwakwaka’wakw music and dance performance. This article focuses on intertextuality as a means of analyzing struggles for cultural authority by Kwakwaka’wakw singers who engaged, through music, with the film footage over the past three-and-a-half decades.
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