This week, we venture deep into the mist-shrouded Pacific Northwest to unearth one of the region’s most haunting legends in Kwakwaka’wakw folklore — the story of Baxbakwalanuksiwe’, the Man-Eater at the North End of the World.

Once banned by colonial authorities and nearly lost to time, the Hamat’sa, or “Cannibal Dance,” is a ceremonial initiation that confronts humanity’s darkest impulses and the mythic hunger embodied by Baxbakwalanuksiwe’. Covered in gaping mouths and crying out “hap, hap, hap” — “eat, eat, eat” — this monstrous figure stalked not just the imagination of his people, but the very limits of what it means to be human.

Baxbakwalanuksiwe’ stands as both a monster and a mirror — a figure embodying survival, hunger, and the uneasy boundary between the spiritual and the human. Join us as we explore how this story survived suppression, what it reveals about cultural resilience, why it remains so powerful today, and what the “Ever-More-Perfect-Manifestation-of-the-Essence-of-Humanity” might truly mean.

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