TITLE: Tsimshian Asdi-wâl Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: North America
COUNTRY: Canada
SUBREGION: British Columbia
ETHNICITY: Tsimshian
DESCRIPTION: Asdi-wâl (Ice), Son of the North Wind Mask
CATALOG ID: NACA010
MAKER: Gerry Dudoward (Lax Kwa- alaams/Port Simpson, British Columbia, 1950-98)
CEREMONY: Potlatch
FUNCTION: celebration; entertainment; protection/purification; spirit invocation; status
AGE: 1996
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: mineral-based paints; leather; cowrie shells; mother of pearl; adhesive; leather strap
The Tsimshian people inhabit northwest British Columbia and southeast Alaska, along the Skeena and Nass rivers. They are traditionally a seafaring and fishing people who are divided into four matrilineal groups: Eagle (Laxgiik), Wolf (Laxgibuu), Raven (Ganhada) and Killer Whale (Gispwudwada). Among their traditions are the potlatch (yaawk), a community feast to mark important events, name-givings, and funerary memorials. At potlatches, both masked and unmasked dances may be performed. The masked dances perform a sacred protective function by invoking divine spirits, recount stories or histories for the instruction and entertainment of the group, and reinforce the clan’s identity.
This mask represents the central figure of a culturally significant Tsimshian hero legend, the Epic of Asdi-wâl. In the story, Asdi-wâl is the son of a Tsimshian woman who met a spirit being (neknok) embodying the North Wind. Due to his supernatural father, Asdi-wâl grows to be a master hunter with magic snowshoes and protective gems of eternal ice. He uses the snowshoes to hunt a supernatural white bear, chasing it straight up a cliff. When Asdi-wâl wishes to marry the daughter of a powerful celestial chief, the chief tests Asdi-wâl’s mortality by trying to burn him alive in a massive oven. Asdi-wâl survives by using his father’s protective ice. For the Tsimshian, this is not merely a story for entertainment; it is an adaox, or sacred clan history, that helps define control over hunting territories and seasonal migration routes.
For more on masks of the coastal peoples of western Canada, see Peter MacNair, Robert Joseph & Bruce Grenville, Down from the Shimmering Sky: Masks of the Northwest Coast (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1998) and Edward Malin, A World of Faces: Masks of the Northwest Coast Indians (Portland: Timber Press, 1978).
