A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

known. But there remains, in the advocal text, a troubling multiplicity.Knowing and interpreting have already been inscribed into the advocal text,by the time it reaches its audience, in the gesture of advocacy. Who is it whospeaks in or through such a text? In what sense are the tacit "outsiders"given any legitimate voice, a voice which, in Boas's American context, mustbe rendered culturally acceptable or understandable in order to achieve itsmission of education and liberation? And if, in following his task, the advocateBoas renders these texts readable, how can he not violate the positiveestrangement, the liberating foreignness, which he aims so dearly to safeguardin the first place? The familiar and the strange, the Other, are by Boas'sdefinition incommensurable. How can Boas's advocacy possibly refrainfrom transgressing his own first principle, namely to maintain the sanctityof the other, not to lapse into an "imperialistic" American nationalism?Advocacy, by its very nature, runs dangerously close to appropriation.Anthologies of Kwakwaka'wakw texts and films of the Kwakwaka'wakwcompiled by Boas make no excuses as to their authorship; they are ownedby Boas himself. The title frames of his documentary footage The Kwakiutlof British Columbia, taken in the autumn of 1930, ascribe the contents offilm directly and immediately to him, in bold capital letters: "BY FRANZBOAS." His two series of Kwakiutl Tales, published as part of the ColumbiaUniversity Contributions to Anthropology which he himself edited, are similarlyascribed on their title pages: "By Franz Boas." Despite the internalcrediting of the tales to various native authors, it is Boas himself whoassumes the position, not of collector or translator or even editor alone, butof author. These are his tales, his films, his cultures. Boas adopts the proprietarystance of the field anthropologist obsessed either with safeguarding orwith shepherding "his" people, those whom he has discovered and to whomhe alone has the rights of access. One might recall here Boas's outrage overEdward S. Curtis's 1914 film on the Kwakwaka'wakw, In the Land of the WarCanoes, which he saw as distortional and subjective, or his repeated requeststo George Hunt not to offer information about Kwakwaka'wakw culture torival anthropologists. To get to the Kwakwaka'wakw, one must read throughBoas, look through Boas's lens.Boas's presence in his work, as photographer, editor, transcriber, collector,translator and writer, is articulated as a shadow. In his films of theKwakwaka'wakw, for instance, his subjects, positioned in obviously contrivedsituations, demonstrate certain aspects of their daily lives. They stare37