A pioneering anthropologist of the late 1930s, Philip Drucker observed Kwakiutl ceremonies during the winter of 1936-1937 and provided descriptions of Heiltsuk, Xaihais and Haisla secret society dances. As corroborated by Helen Codere, he suggested in his 1939 paper Rank, Wealth and Kinship in Northwest Coast Society that most tribal groups were not simply divided into a tri-level system of slaves, commoners and nobles. His landmark study of Nuu-chah-nulth culture is The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes (1951). Drucker is also renowned for his comprehensive Indians of the Northwest Coast (1955), a follow-up to Pliny Earle Goodard's 1924 handbook. Other Drucker titles are The Native Brotherhoods: Modern Intertribal Organization on the Northwest Coast (1958), Cultures of the North Pacific Coast (1965) and To Make My Name Good: A Reexamination of the Southern Kwakiutl Potlatch (1967). Born in 1911, Drucker was trained in anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley under Alfred L. Kroeber. He mainly divided his field research between Mexico, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska while teaching at Kentucky, Colorado and Baylor Universities. He saw duty as a naval officer between 1942 and 1945 and was recalled to serve as a staff anthropologist with the United States Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands from 1948 to 1952. Drucker resigned from the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1955 and died in 1982.

BOOKS:

Drucker, Philip. The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes (United States Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 144, Washington D.C: Government Printing Office, 1951). Based on field research conducted 1935-36.

Drucker, Philip. Indians of the Northwest Coast (Garden City, New York: Natural History Press, 1955, 1963).

Drucker, Philip. The Native Brotherhoods: Modern Intertribal Organization on the Northwest Coast (Washington D.C: Government Printing Office United States Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 168, 1958).

Drucker, Philip. Cultures of the North Pacific Coast (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing, 1965).

Drucker, Philip & Robert F. Heizer. To Make My Name Good: A Reexamination of the Southern Kwakiutl Potlatch (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).

[BCBW 2005] "Anthropology" "First Nations"