Marjorie Halpin (February 11, 1937-August 30, 2000) was a U.S.-Canadian anthropologist best known for her work on Northwest Coast art and culture, especially the Tsimshian and Gitksan peoples. February 11 is the 42nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... August 30 is the 242nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (243rd in leap years), with 123 days remaining. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... See Anthropology. ... Members of the Tsimshian tribe enjoying a tea party near Fort Simpson, British Columbia, c. ... (pronounced GIT-san) also spelled as Gitxsan pronounced the same. ...

She earned an M.A. from George Washington University in 1963. She worked for five years for the Smithsonian Institution and in 1968 moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to begin doctoral work at the University of British Columbia, where she worked closely under the anthropologist Wilson Duff.   The George Washington University (GWU) is a private, coeducational, non-sectarian university located in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1821 as The Columbian College on land provided by former President George Washington, the university has since developed into one of the worlds leading educational and research institutions. ... The Smithsonian Institution Building or Castle on the National Mall serves as the Institutions headquarters. ... This article refers to the city in British Columbia, Canada. ... The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university with its main campus located at Point Grey, in the University Endowment Lands adjacent to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and another smaller campus known as UBC Okanagan located in Kelowna, British Columbia. ... Wilson Duff was a Canadian anthropologist known for his research on Northwest Coast cultures, especially the Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Haida, and especially for his interest in their plastic arts, such as totem poles. ...

Her 1973 Ph.D. thesis, The Tsimshian Crest System: A Study Based on Museum Specimens and the Marius Barbeau and William Beynon Field Notes, is considered an important early structuralist study of Northwest Coast culture. It was also the first monograph based on systematic and theoretically engaged analysis of the unpublished Barbeau-Beynon treasure-trove of ethnographic data, for which Duff had compiled a voluminous set of summaries. Marius Barbeau Credit: J. Alex Castonguay/Library and Archives Canada/C-034447 Charles Marius Barbeau (March 5, 1883 – February 27, 1969), also known as C. Marius Barbeau, or more commonly simply Marius Barbeau, was a Canadian ethnographer and folklorist who is today considered a founder of Canadian anthropology. ... William Beynon (1888-1958) was a hereditary chief from the Tsimshian nation (British Columbia, Canada) and an oral historian who served as ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists. ... Structuralism is best known as school in humanities, but it is actually an approach in academic disciplines in general, that explores the relationships between some principal elements, seen to be fundamental for language, literature, etc, upon which some higher mental, linguistic, social, cultural etc. ...

Also in 1973, she was appointed to UBC's anthropology faculty, where she served for the remainder of her career, and eventually became curator of the Northwest Coast collection at UBC's Museum of Anthropology, a collection which she helped bring to international prominence. In that capacity she worked closely with Northwest Coast artists such as Bill Reid and Robert Davidson. Bill Reids sculpture The Raven and The New Men, showing part of a Haida creation myth. ...

In 1980 she did fieldwork on Tsimshian personal naming practices in Hartley Bay, B.C., working with descendants of some of Beynon's informants. Hartley Bay, B.C. 2003 Hartley Bay, B.C. ca 1980 Hartley Bay is a small First Nations community on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. ...

Her list of publications included a best-selling guide to totem poles, a well-known edited volume on the sasquatch, and an early study of Beynon's life and work. Totem poles are carved from great trees, most often Western Redcedar, along the Pacific coast of North America. ... Sasquatch can refer to different topics: A Sasquatch is another name for Bigfoot. ...

In 1997, Halpin, with her colleague Margaret Seguin Anderson, did fieldwork in the Gitksan village of Gitsegukla, B.C., as part of the process of realizing her long-term ambition to publish Beynon's four volumes of fieldnotes from a 1945 totem pole raising ceremony in that community. The resulting volume, with extensive commentary and new information, was published very shortly before Halpin's death in 2000.

Also in the last year of her life, Halpin participated in a major Northwest Coast studies conference in Paris in honor of Claude Lévi-Strauss, an event which recognized her pivotal role at the intersection of French structuralism and the study of Northwest Coast cultures. Claude Lévi Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (IPA pronunciation ) born November 28, 1908, is a French anthropologist who became one of the twentieth centurys greatest intellectuals by developing structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture. ...

Marjorie Myers Halpin died August 30, 2000, of cancer, at her home in White Rock, B.C., at the age of 63.

Works

• (1973) The Tsimshian Crest System: A Study Based on Museum Specimens and the Marius Barbeau and William Beynon Field Notes. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

• (1978) "William Beynon, Ethnographer, Tsimshian, 1888-1958." In American Indian Intellectuals: 1976 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, ed. by Margot Liberty, pp. 140-156. St. Paul: West Publishing Company.

• (1980) (ed.) (with Michael M. Ames) Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence. Vancouver: UBC Press. (Halpin's contributions: "Investigating the Goblin Universe," "The Tsimshian Monkey Mask and Sasquatch.")

• (1983) Totem Poles: An Illustrated Guide. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

• (1983) (ed.) (with N. Ross Crumrine) The Power of Symbols: Masks and Masquerade in the Americas. Vancouver: UBC Press. (Halpin's contributions: "The Mask of Tradition.")

• (1984) "Feast Names at Hartley Bay." Pp. 57-64 In The Tsimshian: Images of the Past: Views for the Present, ed. by Margaret Seguin, pp. 57-64. Vancouver: UBC Press.

• (1984) "'Seeing in Stone': Tsimshian Masking and the Twin Stone Masks." Pp. 281-307 In The Tsimshian: Images of the Past: Views for the Present, ed. by Margaret Seguin, pp. 57-64. Vancouver: UBC Press.

• (1984) "The Structure of Tsimshian Totemism." In The Tsimshian and Their Neighbors of the North Pacific Coast, ed. by Jay Miller and Carol M. Eastman, pp. 16-35. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

• (1990) (with Margaret Seguin) "Tsimshian Peoples: Southern Tsimshian, Coast Tsimshian, Nishga, and Gitksan." Pp. 267-284 In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 7: Northwest Coast, ed. by Wayne Suttles, pp. 267-284. Washington: Smithsonian Institution

• (2000) (ed.) (with Margaret Anderson) (2000) Potlatch at Gitsegukla: William Beynon’s 1945 Field Notebooks. Vancouver: UBC Press.

• (2004) "Lévi-Straussian Structuralism on the Northwest Coast." In Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions, ed. by Marie Mauzé, Michael E. Harkin, and Sergei Kan, pp. 91-105. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Nisgaa flag Mask with open eyes, worn during winter halait ceremonies, 18th–early 19th century The Nisaa (pronounced Nis-gah) are of the First Nations of Canada. ... A potlatch was a ceremony among certain American Indian tribes, including tribes on the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia. ...

Sources

• Obituary for Marjorie Myers Halpin, Anthropology News, vol. 42, no. 5 (2001), p. 29.