IN THE LAND OF THE WAR CANOES is an edited ver­sion of Curtis’s fea­ture film THE LAND OF THE HEADHUNTERS, a dra­ma­tized doc­u­men­tary about the Kwak­i­utl Indi­ans of British Colum­bia before the arrival of Euro-peans. In 1972 the mate­r­i­al was re-edited and a sound­track of Kwak­i­utl music and chant­i­ng was added after con­sul­ta­tion with Kwak­i­utl consultants.