Under those auspices, Barbeau began fieldwork in 1911–1912 with the Huron-Wyandot people around Quebec City, in southern Ontario, and on their reservation in Oklahoma of the United States, collecting mostly stories and songs.

Beginning in December 1914, Barbeau carried out three months' fieldwork in Lax Kw'alaams (Port Simpson), British Columbia, the largest Tsimshian village in Canada.

[2] The anthropologist Wilson Duff (who in the late 1950s was entrusted by Barbeau with organizing the information) has called these three months "one of the most productive field seasons in the history of [North] American anthropology.

[7] Barbeau eventually trained Beynon in phonetic transcription, and the Tsimshian chief became an ethnological field worker in his own right.

Barbeau and Beynon conducted field work in 1923–1924 with the Kitselas and Kitsumkalum Tsimshians and the Gitksan, who lived along the middle Skeena River.

The Nisga’a nation says the pole was taken by Barbeau without its consent while members were away from their villages for the annual hunting and food harvesting season, and it was later sold it to the museum in Scotland.

Chris Breward, the director of National Museums Scotland, said in a statement the institution is pleased to reach an agreement allowing the pole to be transferred to its people and the place where its spiritual significance is most keenly understood.

In his anthropological work among the Tsimshian and Huron-Wyandot, for instance, Barbeau was solely looking for what he defined as "authentic" stories that were without political implications.

[2] This narrative, while recognized as largely accurate by modern anthropologists and geneticists,[10] is still strongly disputed by many Indigenous nations who claim origin in North America.

In works such as the unpublished Migration Series manuscripts, the book Alaska Beckons, and numerous articles with such titles as "How Asia Used to Drip at the Spout into America"[11] and "Buddhist Dirges on the North Pacific Coast",[12] he eventually antagonized many of his contemporaries on this question.

Under Beynon's influence, Barbeau promoted the idea among western academics that the region's oral histories of migration have real historiographic value.

Barbeau and Beynon's theory has been proven to have some merit, when taken with evidence-based data such as climate, astronomical and geological events.

[14] Barbeau was a prolific writer, producing both scholarly articles and monographs, and books that presented Québecois and First Nations oral traditions for a mass audience.

Examples include The Downfall of Temlaham, which weaves ancient Gitksan oral traditions with contemporary contact history.

From his fieldwork and writings on all aspects of French-Canadian creative expression, numerous popular and scholarly publications were produced.

[3] In 2005, Marius Barbeau's broadcasts and ethnological recordings were honoured as a MasterWork by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada.

[20] An authorized bronze portrait bust of Barbeau was created by Russian-Canadian artist Eugenia Berlin; it is installed in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.