Chief Henry Speck (U’dzistalis)

Chief Henry Speck (U’dzistalis, 1908-1971) was a painter, carver, dancer, and hereditary chief of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations. He was born on Turnour Island, British Columbia on August 12, 1908. At the age of 14, he was initiated as a Hamat’sa dancer, the highest of Kwakwaka’wakw secret societies. Following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather Henry Speck was made Chief and named U’dzistalis (The Greatest).

Chief Henry Speck was crucial in the revitalisation of Kwakwaka’wakw art and culture. He was a songwriter as well as a composer of dances and spent much of his life dedicated to renewing the potlatch, which had been outlawed by the Government of Canada between 1885-1951. Chief Speck was instrumental in the formation of the Kwakwala Arts and Crafts Organisation in 1964, and became the artistic director of Chief James Sewid's community Big House project in Alert Bay in 1965. He was also among the first generation of First Nations artists to employ Northwest Coast artistic conventions of two-dimensional representation on paper and in print for sale in commercial galleries, paving the way for a future generation of artists. Under the guidance of art dealer Gyula Mayer, his work came to the attention of a wider audience through a series of exhibitions and interviews in local newspapers, resulting in the publication of Kwakiutl Art by Henry Speck written by Audrey Hawthorn, curator of the University of British Columbia’s Anthropology Museum in 1963. In 1964 Chief Speck had his first solo exhibition at the New Design Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia. His drawings were collected, among others, by Surrealist artist Wolfgang Paalen, who featured Chief Speck’s depiction of an orca on the cover of his internationally circulating art magazine DYN in 1943.

Largely rendering Kwakwaka'wakw mythological subject matter, Chief Speck’s work is characterised by a distinctly modern sensibility of colour, space, and minimalist abstraction. His drawings speak directly to the crucial role he played within his own community: many render dance masks, versions of which would have been performed during potlatches. Recurring motifs include Thunderbirds, Killerwhales, Lady Giant, and Sea Monsters. This representational quality sets Chief Speck’s work apart from the Indigenous modernism of his contemporaries. Rather than developing a highly individualistic style, Chief Speck’s drawings bring the ancient form language and iconography of Northwest Coast First Nations into the present, betraying his life-long dedication to reviving Kwakwaka’wakw art and culture in ways that are relevant for his own time.

Chief Henry Speck’s work is now held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, and the Glenbow Museum.