Poles vary in size, but house front poles can be over one metre in width at the base, reaching heights of over 20 m and generally facing the shores of rivers or the ocean. Animal images on totem poles depict creatures from family crests. These crests are considered the property of specific family lineages and reflect the history of that lineage. Animals commonly represented on the crests include the beaver , bear , wolf , shark , killer whale , raven , eagle , frog and mosquito.
Some poles also feature supernatural beings or humans, each with their own particular importance and significance to the nation or individual who commissioned it and to the person who carved it. The cultural appropriation of totem poles by Europeans over the years has created and popularized the false idea that poles display social hierarchy, with the chief at the top and the commoners at the bottom. In fact, depictions of people are not usually found at the top of a totem pole and in some cases, the most important figure or crest is at the bottom.
There are various types of poles, each with their own purpose and function. Some, for example, are specific to death and burial practices. Memorial poles are erected in memory of a deceased chief or high-ranking member. Mortuary poles also honour the deceased. Haida mortuary poles include a box at the top where the ashes of the chief or high-ranking member are placed. Some poles are used to depict families and lineages. House posts, placed along the rear or front walls of a house, are poles that, on the one hand, help to support the roof beams and, on the other hand, tell about family lineages.
Similarly, house front or portal poles are monuments at the entrance of a home that describe family history. Welcoming poles do what their name suggests — welcome visitors. First Nations sometimes erect poles as a means of greeting important arriving guests during a feast or potlatch. The Hupacasath First Nation has well-known welcome figures on its territory. With arms outstretched, the figures carved into the poles welcome and guide the guests during their travels.
An appointed speaker announces the names of visitors from behind the post. In a sense, this allows the ancestors, speaking through the appointed speaker, to also welcome the guests.
Legacy poles commemorate important and historic events. Only families who had accumulated large surpluses of wealth could afford to pay for the transport and carving of a pole and the feast required to raise it, so poles were also symbols of prestige and status. Indigenous people eager to acquire metal, fabrics, and decorative items traded with sailors eager to have mementos of their visits to the remote Northwest Coast.
From the s, Haida were selling elaborate three-dimensional carvings in argillite — a black slate unique to Haida Gwaii — to this small but important market of commercial fur traders and explorers. The advent of regular steamer service from San Francisco to Alaska in created an opportunity to capitalize on the unique totem poles still visible from the waters off British Columbia and Alaska.
The earliest known example was carved from argillite and acquired in Victoria by the photographer Frederick Dally in the mids. Some miniatures were carved by professional artists such as Haida Charles Edenshaw, who was active between and British Columbia was slower to recognize the tourist appeal of the totem pole.
In Vancouver, the city had expelled actual Coast Salish Indigenous people from their historic village site in what had become Stanley Park, while a group of citizens in the Art Historical and Scientific Association of Vancouver were attempting to create a mock northern Indian village on the same site to attract tourists. In , the association added three new poles, and in Victoria opened Thunderbird Park, its version of an outdoor totem pole museum, which was also located on a former village site.
Today, the carved wooden totems sold in tourist shops are imported from Indonesia, and resin or plastic poles, cast in standard molds, are sold at almost every tourist shop in Canada, alongside their miniature northern cousin, the inuksuk. Prime minister Mackenzie King attended the opening in Ottawa in The show travelled to Montreal and Toronto in and introduced both the totem pole and the as yet unknown Emily Carr — whose work frequently featured totem poles — to the national scene alongside the artifacts of West Coast Indigenous people.
At the same time, Mackenzie King and his colleagues in Parliament were doing their part to erase First Nations from Canada. Having earlier banned the potlatch needed to raise totems, in Parliament prohibited Indigenous people from hiring lawyers to reclaim their land. Yet the totem had caught the national imagination. Within a year, the first totem pole to grace a Canadian postage stamp appeared.
But Barbeau was not done. In the end, the artist and the anthropologist were elated but the politician disgusted. The opening of the Jasper Tea Room coincided with the onset of the Great Depression and the attendant, and dramatic, drop in tourism. Bennett, by then prime minister, created a Senate Committee in to promote tourism.
Within months the Canadian Government Travel Bureau was born and in , 50 years since the potlatch had been banned, it published its first promotional booklet. Two years later, when Canada created its pavilion for the Paris International Exhibition, a totem pole stood beside the main door. While this had largely been a male pursuit, Neel began carving model poles in in Vancouver after her husband had a stroke. She did so for a year, but preferring to create her own, she introduced her uncle Mungo Martin to the museum.
Martin worked at the museum from to , when he was hired by Wilson Duff of the British Columbia Provincial Museum in Victoria to restore its poles and to carve replicas.
During the decade that he was chief carver at the BC Provincial Museum, he also carved numerous new poles for the museum, as well as for provincial and federal celebrations. He trained a new generation of carvers, who formed the basis for a renaissance of totem pole carving in the s and s. Andrew Todd cleaning the totem. Andrew Todd consolidating the totem with red cedar. Thomas Wamiss painting the totem.
Andrew Todd with the restored totem. The Ambassador, Sara Hradecky, giving her speech during the ceremony of re-inauguration of the totem. The Ambassador surrounded by representatives of the Embassy, the city, Foreign Affairs Mexico and sponsor companies. Sponsors of the totem restoration project.
Totem at the Chapultepec Park before the restoration process. Totem after the restoration. Memorial poles tend to be the tallest type of pole, particularly among the Tsimshian of the Nass and Skeena Rivers in central British Columbia. Shame poles were more common in the nineteenth century, but today, some First Nations erect these poles as a form of protest against the loss of Aboriginal territory or for other political grievances.
One well-known shame pole, which stands in Cordova, Alaska, was carved by Tlingit fisherman Mike Webber to protest the environmental disaster and political mishandling of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound. The totem pole designs that most people recognize today were, for the most part, developed in the last years.
During this time, coastal First Nations acquired new tools that enabled them to construct more elaborate poles. Most poles, even though they are made from rot-resistant cedar, last only about a hundred years before they begin to disintegrate. Carving a totem pole requires not only artistic skill, but an intimate understanding of cultural histories and forest ecology. Most totem poles are made from Western red cedar, a rot-resistant tree that is straight-grained and easy to carve.
Several trees may be inspected before a particular tree is chosen for its beauty and character. Traditionally, totem pole carving was done by men, although today both men and women have become skilled carvers.
Many totem pole carvers have honed their skills since childhood, typically from watching their fathers and uncles carve from cedar wood. After a tree is felled, the wood is debarked and shaped using implements such as adzes, axes, chisels, carving knives, and chainsaws. Other artists argue that technological innovation is an important part of cultural transformation and growth. After the wood is carved, some artists paint their poles, or choose to leave the pole unpainted.
Many poles are coloured using synthetic paints, and some are painted with natural pigments derived from ground charcoal and ochre. For a good visual reference of different totem pole styles, please refer to this photographic collection [PDF] produced by the Royal B. The cultural variations of totem pole styles are complex and go beyond the purview of this section, but a few generalizations can be made about regional characteristics.
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