 As recounted in the introduction to his book "Shattered Images" (1987), he was led to examine the oral traditions and cosmology of the Tsimshianic-speaking peoples—the Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga'a—in 1973 when work on a computer simulation of the traditional Northwest Coast salmon harvest led him to search mythological references to famine.Around the same time, he became influenced by the structuralist approaches of Claude Lévi-Strauss and, through the help of George F. MacDonald, began an intensive study of the Tsimshianic narratives collected by Marius Barbeau and William Beynon.In 1978 he attempted to begin a sabbatical year of fieldwork with the Gitksan, ostensibly studying the relationship between mythology and masks.