Description

Across the Northwest Coast, native people engaged in renewal rites during the winter ceremonial season. This mask, with a beak that opens and head panels that move, may have been used during such celebrations. In 1998, Robert Joseph, a Northwest Coast chief, recalled that when he donned dance masks like this one as a youth, "all the world is somewhere else . . . I am the mask . . . the bird . . . the animal . . . the spirit. I transcend into the being of the mask."