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Bob Kingsmill is a professional potter and ceramics instructor who lives and works near Vernon, BC. Born in Vancouver, Kingsmill trained in ceramics under Muriel Guest in Winnipeg before returning to British Columbia and establishing his own pottery studio in Kelowna in 1967. Kingsmill later moved to Bowen Island, where he compiled his first book A Catalogue of British Columbia Potters (published 1978). In 1979, Kingsmill opened a studio on Granville Island in Vancouver, which he continues to operate alongside his studio near his current home in Vernon.

Bob Kingsmill produces a wide variety of stoneware and raku-fired ceramics, including wall murals, masks, and functional pottery. Besides his artistic endeavours, Kingsmill has led many pottery workshops throughout BC and has taught at Capilano College, Malaspina College, and for Emily Carr College of Art and Design’s Outreach Program.

Lieutenant Colonel Eric Parker was born on June 16, 1896, in London, England. He was a British military Commander with the Indian government who led a little known expedition of approximately 200 Punjabi soldiers from Calcutta to Tibet in November 1921. In addition, Lt. Col. Parker conducted basic and advanced infantry training of Tibetan soldiers from January to March 1923 at the request of the Tibetan military. During his military career, Lt. Col. Parker corresponded with British diplomat, Sir Charles Bell, and various members of the Tibetan government, including the 13th Dalai Lama.

On January 2, 1923, Lt. Col Parker married in Calcutta and, with his wife, travelled back to Tibet on horseback where his training of Tibetan soldiers would begin. After his initial British disapproval, Lt. Col. Parker became accepting of the Tibetan culture and during this period of his life learned to speak in Tibetan, Urdu, Tamil, and Punjabi. The Parkers adapted to Tibet, living in both Yutang and Ganze. After Lt. Col. Parker was released from the military, the couple tried to stay on and establish a trading station, but lasted only one year. During their stay in Tibet the Parkers collected numerous objects, letters, and photographs that provide rare documentation of this period in Tibet’s history (i.e., before the Chinese invasion in 1950). Lt. Col. Parker died in 1988.

Lt. Col. Parker was in the Indian military at a significant time in Tibetan history. From 1918-1921, evidence suggests the Dalai Lama continued to forge closer ties to the British. Since the Simla Convention in 1914, Britain and Tibet had agreed to Chinese ‘suzerainty’ over Tibet, but China refused to ratify the pact and agree to the territorial divisions established. In 1918, fighting broke out between British-trained Tibetan troops and the Chinese, and was later followed by British attempts to mediate and discuss a Tibetan autonomy settlement. In 1920 to 1921, Sir Charles Bell went to Lhasa to urge better relations between Tibet and Britain. Despite Tibetan reluctance to accept further British influence, Charles Bell suggested increasing military aid to Tibet, and it was in 1923 that Lt. Col. Parker arrived to train the soldiers. In 1924-25, pressure from the monks caused the Dalai Lama to dismiss his British-trained officers. Tibetan independence lasted until the overthrow of the Republic of China by the Communists in 1949, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

In 2005, photographs and textual records, along with several objects, were donated to the Museum of Anthropology by Lt. Col. Parker’s daughter, Mrs. Mary Noble. Lt. Col. Parker’s grandson, Father Harry Donald, provided valuable contextual information and is currently preparing to write a history of his grandfather’s time in Tibet.

Anthony A. Kingscote was a photographer.

Charles S. Brant was born in Portland, Oregon in 1919. A life-long anthropologist, Brant began his academic career at Reed College where he obtained a B.A. 1941. In 1943, Brant completed his M.A. requirements at Yale University, where he was also University Scholar from 1941-1943. From 1943-1946 Brant served in the U.S. Army as part of the Medical Administration in India and China. With the support of Wenner-Gren and Fulbright awards, Brant undertook pre-doctoral research in the United States and Burma before completing his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1951.

In the early years of his career, Brant taught at University of Michigan (1947-1948), Colgate University (1951-1952), University of California (1952-1953), and Sarah Lawrence College (1954-1956). Brant was also resident anthropologist at Albert Einstein College from 1956-1957. In 1957, Brant joined Portland State University as Assistant Professor. Brant moved to Canada in 1961 to take the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, and obtained Canadian citizenship six years later. Brant became head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in 1963, and also directed the University’s Boreal Institute for Northern Studies from 1964-1967. In 1970, Brant left Alberta for Montreal to join the faculty at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) as professor. Brant spent the last 12 years of his career there, retiring from teaching in 1982.

Brant is best known for his work on the Kiowa Apache through his book Jim Whitewolf: The Life of a Kiowa Apache Indian, originally published in 1969. In addition to his work on North American Native peoples and cultures, Brant had research interests in social organization and change in India and China; social change in Arctic regions (especially as it applied to Canada and Greenland); and in the problems of developing countries. During his career, Brant completed fieldwork in Burma, Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, and in Native American communities in California and Oklahoma.

Brant and his wife Jane were both photographers and life-long social activists. They had two sons. After his retirement in 1982, Brant moved to Gabriola Island, British Columbia. Brant passed away in 1991 at age 71 in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

In 1974 and 1975, Dan Jorgensen traveled in Papua New Guinea’s Sanduan Province where he studied the initiation cult and mythology of the Telefolmin people. In 1981 Dan Jorgensen received his PhD in anthropology from UBC, writing a thesis about his travels and studies in Papua New Guinea. Since 1977 he has been a faculty member of University of Western Ontario in the Anthropology department. He specializes in the anthropology of religion

Deborah Taylor, on graduating from the University of British Columbia, went to Nigeria in the early 1970s for her MA in primitive arts.

Diane Elizabeth Barwick (née MacEachern) was a renowned political and historical anthropologist. Born in Canada in 1936, she remained a Canadian citizen until 1960, at which time she moved to Australia. Leading up to her departure from Canada, she studied at UBC in the school of Anthropology, from which she obtained her BA in 1959. She worked under Audrey Hawthorn at the Museum of Anthropology for many years leading up to her graduation. Before leaving for Australia, Barwick worked for nine months with Wilson Duff at the Provincial Museum of British Columbia. Her exposure to northwest coast First Nations communities would directly influence her later studies and work at the Australian National University. In pursuit of a Ph.D. there, she researched kin networks among Aboriginal Victorians. She was an active member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and was a co-founder of the Aboriginal History journal.

Douglas & McIntyre was founded in 1971. It has since established itself as one of Canada’s largest independent book publishing houses with offices in Toronto and Vancouver. It consists of three publishing units, Douglas & McIntyre, Greystone Books and Groundwood Books. Douglas & McIntyre publishes books about many different subjects, including First Nations art and culture, food and wine, Canadian issues and politics, and the environment.

Biographical information unavailable.

Edward Meade was born in Winnipeg and moved in 1930 to Vancouver Island, where he began studying the First Nations of the Pacific Coast. After serving overseas as a platoon commander during the Second World War, Meade returned to British Columbia to settle in Campbell River. There he founded the Campbell River Historical Museum in 1949, and volunteered as the Museum’s Curator for many years. Also while living in Campbell River, Meade became a reporter for the Comox District Free Press.

Although Meade was not a professional anthropologist, he did spend a significant amount of time traveling up and down the Pacific coast studying the history of various First Nations and collecting artifacts, and was considered something of an expert in the field. The UBC Museum of Anthropology purchased several artifact collections from him. He developed a particular interest in petroglyphs, and spent approximately ten years accumulating as much information as he could about petroglyph sites from Puget Sound to the Alaskan coast. This study resulted in his book Indian Rock Carving of the Pacific Northwest, published in [ca. 1971]. In addition to this book, Meade also published numerous articles on Pacific Northwest First Nations, and a war novel entitled Remember Me. In 1965, Remember Me was published as a paperback for the New Canadian Library series by McClelland & Stewart. In 1980, Meade self-published a biography entitled Biography of Dr. Samuel Campbell, R.N., Surgeon and Surveyer: Including the Naming and Early History of the Campbell River.

Edward Sheriff Curtis was born near White Water, Wisconsin, in February 1868. The Curtis family moved soon thereafter to Minnesota, and he grew up near the Chipewa, Menomini, and Winnebago native tribes. He was 19 (1887) when his family moved to the pioneer villages of Puget Sound, Seattle, where his father, Johnson Curtis, died of pneumonia. Edward had to support the family. He farmed, fished, dug clams and did chores for neighbors, but nonetheless managed to buy his first camera.

With only grade school education, Edward Curtis taught himself photography from self-help guides and built his own camera. He was keenly interested in the Puget Sound natives’ way of life. He made his first Native Americans’ photographs in 1896. Among them was the photograph of Angeline, the daughter of Chief Seattle, whom he photographed at Seattle waterfront.

He spent a season with the Blackfoot natives of Montana. A selection of his photographs, "Evening on Puget Sound," "The Clam Digger," and "The Mussel Gatherer", won first place in the Genre Class at the National Photographic Convention and won again the next year.

Curtis was later invited to join the famous Harriman Expedition to Alaska the Bering Sea, which was the last great nineteenth century survey to ascertain the economic potential of America's frontier. On May 30, 1899, Curtis set sail from Seattle with a crew of 129 among whom were some of the world’s leading scientists including Robert Grinnel, a leading ethnographic expert on Native Americans. Curtis was one of the only two official photographers on the two-month expedition. After a trip of nine thousand miles the party returned with five thousand pictures and over six hundred animal and plant species new to science. New glaciers were mapped and photographed and a new fjord was discovered. Curtis photographed many of the glaciers, but it was his pictures of the native peoples that established his artistic genius.

For the most part, Curtis labored at his own expense. But in 1906, with Theodore Roosevelt’s connection, he was introduced to J. Pierpont Morgan who agreed to fund his “North American Indian” project.

Curtis lived among the native peoples and studied their ways in depth and by doing so gained their friendship and trust.

His health and family life suffered due to overwork and long absences. His wife, Clara, and their four children could not always accompany him. In 1919 Clara filed for divorce and received, as part of the settlement, Curtis’ studio with all of his negatives. The original filing was years earlier, but Curtis was always in the field and could not be made to come to court. She continued to manage the studio with her sister. Curtis was obliged to move, in 1920, from Seattle to Los Angeles with his daughter Beth from where he continued the Project and shoot films.

He began his involvement with the film industry by assisting Cecil B. Demille ("The Ten Commandments"). Throughout his career, Curtis would fight to be accepted by scholars of North American Natives, especially the approval of The Smithsonian Institute.

In 1930, Volumes 19 and 20 of "The North American Indian" were published. The project was finally completed. The work, initially expected to take 15 years, took 30 years during which time Curtis visited the Arctic and over 80 North American native tribes.

Frederich H. Maude was born in 1858 in England, and died in the mid 1940s in California. According to family legend, Maude was smuggled out of England in a frantic attempt to escape the police, although what crime he had committed is not known. Maude settled in California, where he became a beach photographer and eventually started his own business.

Genni Hennessy is a graduate of the MA program in the UBC Department of Anthropology.

Gillian Darling Kovanic began an undergraduate degree in anthropology in 1968 at Simon Fraser University. In August of that year, Kovanic left Simon Fraser University and spent most of 1969 – 1970 hitchhiking and travelling around the world, including stops in the United States, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, India, South East Asia and Japan. Upon her return to Canada in 1970, Kovanic transferred to the University of British Columbia where she began a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Anthropology, focusing on South Asia, and minors in Museology and Art History. She completed this degree in 1975.

Kovanic began her Master’s degree at the University of British Columbia in South Asian Anthropology in 1975, finishing in 1979. During this period she completed a year of field work (1976 – 1977) in the Hindi Kush (Kafiristan and Nuristan, Afghanistan) for her Master’s thesis titled, “Merit Feasting Amongst the Kalash of Northern Pakistan.” During this time in Afghanistan and Pakistan she collected ethnographic materials, which now reside with the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

In 1979, Kovanic returned to India as a Shastri Indo-Canadian scholar studying the Oriya language in Orissa state. She returned to Canada in 1981 and from 1983 – 1985 completed a diploma in Media Arts and Sciences in the Media Resources Department at Capilano College. Upon completion of this diploma, Kovanic joined Northern Lights Entertainment as a film producer and director. She worked as an independent film maker from 1985 – 1997 and joined the National Film Board of Canada from 1997 – 2001, before returning to her work as an independent film maker with her company Tamarin Productions Inc.

Kovanic’s film career has been widely successful, earning accolades at film festivals around the world for films such as Island of Whales (1990), Battle for the Trees (1993) Through a Blue Lens (2000) and Suspino: A Cry for Roma (2003). Her films have been nominated for many awards, including Gemini Awards, one of which she won for Island of Whales in 1992, the Golden Sheaf Awards and the British Columbia Leo Awards. On many of these projects Kovanic works as director, writer, producer and location sound editor.

From 1985-1987, Gordon and Louanne Houston lived with their young son Peter in the village of Bella Bella (Waglisla) on Campbell Island in British Columbia. Gordon was the village dentist and Louanne was employed as a nurse at W.R. Large Memorial Hospital during this period.

Helen Frances Codere was born on September 10, 1917, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but moved to Minnesota in 1919. In 1939, she received her BA from the University of Minnesota, and in 1950 she completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Columbia University, where she studied under Ruth Benedict, a protégé of Franz Boas. Codere held appointments at a variety of academic institutions including Vassar University (1946-1953) and Brandeis University (1964 1982), where she was also dean of the graduate school from 1974-1977. At other times she held appointments at the American Ethnological Society, the University of British Columbia, Northwestern University, Bennington College, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Codere’s early work focused on the Kwakwaka’wakw. She carried out field studies in 1951 and 1955 and, in 1950, published Fighting with Property: Study of the Kwakiutl Potlatching and Warfare, 1792-1930. In 1959, Codere traveled to Rwanda to study social structures and relationships between the Tutsis and Hutus, and in 1973 published The Biography of an African Society: Rwanda 1900-1960. In 1966, she edited Boas’s unpublished manuscript, Kwakiutl Ethnography.

Helen Codere died in 2009.

Helen Moore is a teacher who taught briefly in the Kitwanga and Prince George regions in 1964 and 1965.

Biographical information unavailable.