A 'Na'nalalał or weather mask, long red proboscis over a curved beak painted black with red edges, green patches around eyes, cloth head band
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'Na'nalalał

Weather Headdress

This Weather Dance headdress can be worn by a male or female. The dancer would cover and uncover their face to signify the break of dawn and twirl to mimic the wind. This dance is sometimes mistaken for the Swan Dance because of the similar words in Kwak´wala ('nala means day and 'nala means swan).

Owner

Iwakalas, Harry Hanuse, Mamalilikala (Village Island)

Catalogue Information

Provenance

Owned by Harry Hanuse until its forced surrender to Indian Agent William Halliday on March 25, 1922. Halliday later displayed and photographed the seized pieces at the Parish Hall in Alert Bay. After doing an inventory, he crated the items in June, and at the end of September he shipped some of them to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, on long-term loan from the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History). They remained in the possession of the ROM until the NMM pulled its loan and returned the pieces to the Nuyumbalees and U'mista cultural societies in 1988. In September 1993 Dan Hanuse Sr. requested that his father's pieces be transferred from Nuyumbalees to U'mista as per the wishes of the majority of Harry Hanuse's descendants.

Materials

Wood; Cloth; String; Metal, Nails

Dimensions

14.0 cm x 20.0 cm x 21.0 cm

Accession Number

94.09.002

Physical Description

This mask has a down-curved "beak" and a long projecting proboscis. The frontlet is nailed to a cedar bark band wrapped in cotton to serve as a support. The forehead of the mask was originally covered with a piece of bird skin. The two projecting pieces are painted red; the recessed eye sockets are green with carved tapering eyelids outlined with a thin black line. Red U-shapes decorate the cheeks of the masks. Thin cotton nailed to the top and the sides of the mask covered the wearer's head and shoulders (Mauzé, 1998). White, red, green, black.