Tales of Ghosts: First Nations Art in British Columbia, 1922–61

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

Visitors to museums and art galleries that include First Nations art
often head to this section first. Shrewd museum directors ensure a
prominent location for the totems and house posts that embody not only
an ancient culture but, symbolically, the hopes and fears of many
viewers. Vancouver has perhaps the finest collection of First Nation art
in the world. There are poles in Stanley Park as well as in the city’s
Museum of Anthropology on the campus of the University of British
Columbia.

Ronald Hawker’s text covers not only totem poles but also ceremonial
masks and what he terms the “artistic industry” that has grown up in
Canada’s West Coast area around these fierce, often emotionally
compelling artifacts.

In the concluding chapter, “Tales of Ghosts that Hover in the World
like Fading Smoke,” Hawker questions the “fatal impact” theories
found in European historiographies of Northwest Coast peoples. Reports
that so-called primitive peoples have been not only displaced but
extinguished have been published. Hawker’s research and that of fellow
experts in the area forcefully repudiate such claims. Appreciation of
both the cultural and artistic value of poles, paintings, and totemic
objects has grown steadily in the last half-century.

In addition to black-and-white illustrations, the book includes a
lengthy chronology of First Nations in British Columbia, substantial
notes, an eight-page bibliography, and an index. Tales of Ghosts is an
important and meticulously documented study that commands attention and
will interest general readers and scholarly researchers alike.