Photoessay #2093 - Native american and Europeans - bad match

In my class today, the topic was Native American religious practices and how the interaction between Europeans and Native american was just disastrous especially for the native peoples.

The teacher featured a similar picture, even crazier than this one.  I asked him why he had used it, seemed so sensationalist, maybe mocking Native American practice.  He didn't think so, he just wanted to illustrate some of the differences.

After the class, one of the 'regular' students handed me a piece of folded piece of paper saying he thought this might help.  Given and received in good spirit.  He hand-wrote:

The 'mocking' photo was actually of a dancer in the first phase of a multi-stage dance complex called the Cannibal Dance (Haida, I believe).  It was a coming of age and civilizing ritual.  Initiates would first dress in foliage and act "wild" (howling, crawling, pretending to eat human flesh) and over the course of the ritual (which could last days) the initiate would go through stages of finally ending up wearing woven cloth and walking and dancing upright.  It, of course, was misunderstood by missionaries and was banned for many years by the Canadian government.

I love this class.  I appreciated knowing this.

But when I went to look for a similar picture, I found this one, the only difference was that the picture my teacher had showed the whole guy.  I don't think there could be could be more than one even on the internet. The person implied that this was part of a true cannibal tribe as part of Anasazi (southwest).

I will ask him tomorrow.