Amazing Photographs Capture Aboriginal Life in Western Canada From the Late 1920s and Early 1930s

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Paul Coze (1903–1974) was a French/Serbian-American anthropologist, artist, and writer, most notable as a French authority on Native Americans, and for his public art in the 1960s.

Between 1928 and 1934, Coze made four trips across western Canada collecting ethnographic objects for the Musée d’Ethnographie (Trocadero) in Paris and the Heye Foundation in New York. An ardent admirer of Native American cultures, Coze helped organize the Cercle Wakanda, a group of Parisian “Indian hobbyists” who staged theatrical productions on Aboriginal themes. Coze also assembled a substantial private collection of ethnographic material from the Canadian Plains and Subarctic.

One hundred and twenty two items from his personal collection, ranging from garments and horse gear to model canoes and games, now form part of the Ethnology collections at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton. They are accompanied by 58 photographs and 119 paintings, many of them portraits of individuals whom Coze met during his travels, as well as props used in Cercle Wakanda productions.

Together with Coze’s writings, published and unpublished, this assemblage of diverse objects offers a unique perspective on Aboriginal life of the early 20th century as well as European attitudes towards Aboriginal peoples and cultures.