The Curtain Within explores the management of social roles and symbols to achieve various goals by people living in a modern Haida community. Moiety and lineage, social rank, the rules of entitlement to inherited property, and the mode of thought encoded in mythology still have force in Haida society. Political action did not and does not take place within the context of formal political institutions; instead it exists through the management of the symbols of social relationships and of entitlement to tangible and intangible property.

Marianne Boelscher's profile page

Marianne Boelscher is a researcher with the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council and visiting assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Simon Fraser University.

Presents some interesting information about the relevance of cultural categories of the past for today's Haida people.

American Anthropologist

The various tables of kin terms, calendars, and names are excellent and the conclusions intriguing. Readers, moreover, will never be able to read or listen to a Haida story without questioning its meaning or the message it conveys.

BC Studies