The Tribal Eye is a seven-part BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 documentary series on the subject of Tribal art

Tribal art

Tribal art is an umbrella term used to describe visual arts and material culture of indigenous peoples. Also known as Ethnographic art, or, controversially, Primitive Art, tribal arts have historically been collected by Western anthropologists, private collectors, and museums, particularly...

, written and presented by David Attenborough

David Attenborough

Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...

. It was first transmitted in 1975.

1. "Behind the Mask"

This episode centers on the life and customs of the Dogon people

Dogon people

The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. The population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000 The Dogon are best known for their religious traditions, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and...

 in Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

, concentrating primarily on their masks and mask rituals. After a brief introduction to the Dogon culture, the link between African and European art is elaborated upon, using works by Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 and Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...

 as examples. Dogon blacksmiths are shown working on a sculpture and a monkey mask for an old woman's funeral; the funeral rites, which include masked performances and a staged mock battle, are shown in great detail.

2. "Crooked Beak of Heaven"

In "Crooked Beak of Heaven", Attenborough discusses the art and cultures of the First Nations

First Nations

First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...

 peoples of the Pacific Northwest

Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...

 of North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

: The Haida

Haida

The Haida are an indigenous nation of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Haida territories lie in both Canada and the United States, as do those of the Tlingit and Tsimshian. The Haida territories comprise the archipelago of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia...

 of present-day British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

 and Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

; the Gitxsan of Skeena Country

Skeena Country

The Skeena Country is an historic geographic region comprising areas of both the British Columbia Coast and the British Columbia Interior in northwestern British Columbia, Canada.- See also :* Skeena Crossing* Skeena Mountains* Skeena River...

; and the Kwakwaka'wakw

Kwakwaka'wakw

The Kwakwaka'wakw are an Indigenous group of First Nations peoples, numbering about 5,500, who live in British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the adjoining mainland and islands.Kwakwaka'wakw translates as "Those who speak Kwak'wala", describing the collective nations within the area that...

 ("Kwakiutl

Kwakiutl

The term Kwakiutl, historically applied to the entire Kwakwaka'wakw ethno-linguistic group of originally 28 tribes, comes from one of the Kwakwaka'wakw tribes, the Kwagu'ł or Kwagyeulth, at Fort Rupert, with whom Franz Boas did most of his anthropological work and whose Indian Act Band government...

") of present-day British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

.

4. "Kingdom of Bronze"

On the ancient African kingdom of Dahomey

Dahomey

Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...

.
The bronze artifacts from the Benin Kingdom in modern day Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

.

History:
Vice-consul Phillips of UK came to Benin in 1897 to punish the King of Benin for not holding his part of the deal in a trading agreement. But at the time a ritual ceremony was being held to renew the strength of the King, so no visitors were allowed. After several warnings from both the King's and the British messengers, vice-consul Phillips still decided to go on with his journey. The result was an ambush of one of the King's chiefs. As the news of the massacre in Benin reached England, a punitive expedition was mounted. 1,500 marines marched onto Benin. After 4 days of sporadic fighting they took Benin City. Here they found the Bronze sculptures.

5. "Woven Gardens"

On the nomadic Qashqai

Qashqai

Qashqai are the largest group of nomadic pastoralists people of Azeri descent who mainly live in the provinces of Fars, Khuzestan and southern Isfahan on the territory of modern Iran, especially around the city of Shiraz in Fars. They speak the Qashqai language which is a member of the Turkic...

 tribe of Iran. The tribal art of carpet-making in Persia and the distinctive patterns of the different clans and tribes.

7. "Across the Frontiers"

This program revisits several of the locations of the previous programs to look more deeply at the relationships contemporary artists and collectors have with the art and artists of those societies, and how they may be compromising or enhancing the older traditions.