The agency of yearning on the Northwest Coast of Canada: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the salvage of autochthonous culture

In this article, I consider the ethnographic research undertaken by the anthropologist, Franz Boas, and his researcher, George Hunt, among the Kwakwaka’wakw people of British Columbia, Canada, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I show some of the ways in which the Kwakwaka’wakw use that material today. In doing this, I argue for the positive agency of nostalgia in practice for minority groups such as the Kwakwaka’wakw.