File mainly contains historical images of Haida and Tlingit villages and totem poles located on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia and Alaska. There are also images of Haida and Tlingit peoples dressed in regalia. Other photos include images of Haida and Tlingit artifacts, such as bentwood boxes and carvings, housed in various museums around the world. There are also images of a modern day ceremony in front of some totem poles and long houses. The textual records include photocopies of images of totem poles and Haida and Tlingit villages.

The file contains images of Northwest Coast artifacts located in unidentified First Nation villages, and in various museums in North America. The artifacts include masks, paddles, carvings, rattles, fishing equipment, and household items such as bowls and spoons. The majority of images from various museums include information about the artifact such as what it is, the museum it's housed in, and the artifact's catalogue number.

Subseries consists of material produced by museum staff, among them Wilson Duff, Harry and Audrey Hawthorn, Marjorie Halpin, and Gloria Cranmer Webster. There is extensive material on Audrey Hawthorn’s Art of the Kwakiutl Indians. Included in this subseries are ca. 2000 photographs which were collected for possible use in this book. Photographs are numbered A38-A17206 with many numbers missing throughout. The majority of photographs are of wooden masks, but they are also of bowls, bentwood boxes, paddles, rattles, totem poles, talking sticks, headdresses and frontlets, wooden figures and miniatures, whistles, spoons, silver bracelets, argillite carvings, button blankets, chilkat blankets, cedar head and neck rings, woodworking tools, stone tools, and fish hooks. Other record forms included in this subseries include correspondence, notes and published materials.