How are totem poles made? Where do they come from? Who made them? Are new ones being added today? And what are their meanings? In the earlier days a totem pole maker sometimes had to pay with his life. A hundred years ago, even five hundred years ago, the first thing visitors noticed as they approached a village in southeast Alaska was the line of totem poles facing the sea. In one glimpse they could immediately see who lived in this village, what clans were there, and most importantly they discovered something about the people and their history. Totem poles have never been religious objects, they told stories and kept the past alive. It was also true that the people who made totem poles were welcome in every village, they also worked very hard for the honor. Familiar with people’s memories, totem pole makers received much the same training as a shaman. When a village hired a totem pole maker, they first had him take an entrance exam on local mythology. Making a large totem pole could take up to a year, but at the end if the maker had done something wrong that changed the story, his life was in the hands of the villagers.
De totemrenaissance
These are of course a bygone era. Meanwhile, there is a new generation, a new wave of makers. Today they work in almost every city of some size in Alaska, combining innovative styles with revered tools, finding ways to tell stories about an area that has changed dramatically and very quickly. They add extra words to the language of the totem pole and thus discover how flexible this language actually is. Today they produce totem poles that are relevant to everyone who sets out their city surrounded by the world.
The revival of the totem pole came just in time, as its manufacture was almost completely extinguished in the early 20th century. The poles have a natural lifespan of almost 60 years, previously when that period had expired they were simply left to rot and decay. Several poles reached this point just as another problem arose. In Canada, the government was suppressing indigenous traditions.
But around 1950 the tide turned, there were renewed interests in local customs and indigenous rights. Today the new generation of totem makers reaches out to a new audience. Tlinglit Norman Jackson of Ketchikan says he makes totem poles so everyone can understand us, which is also why he learned to share the art.
The first step was to bring back the old poles. Most contemporary makers learned their trade by faithfully making reproductions of dying poles. Warn er Price, a Tlinglit from Haines and Steve Brown from Seattle created five replicas for the Wrangells Kik-Setti Totem Park. Tlinglit Nathan Jackson of Ketchikan, the Southeast’s first totem pole maker, creates a replica of a totem pole brought back in 1899 by expeditioners heading to the North Pole before the turn of the century. This was of course the time when museums and private collectors from all over the world scrounged up totem poles wherever they could.
Craftsmanly handy
Totem poles are always made of red cedar and most poles are two or three feet in diameter. To find that smooth interior wood, the maker must hunt for the right tree in an old-growth forest to find a tree perhaps three times larger. Such a tree was young in the late 1800s. After about a century of felling the forests, it has become quite a challenge to find a suitable tree.
Before they start carving, the block is cut in half and hollowed out to prevent the wood from breaking. Of course the makers could use modern tools, but they don’t because they hate them. Most poles are still made with a small ax and a set of tension knives. Even the paintings are done conventionally, with pigments extracted from plants, charcoal and oxygen compounds. But it is not because the makers work in an ancestral way that they stick to the old styles. The new totem poles spark new discussions: a mirror represents the sun and a teddy bear to please the daughter of a totem pole maker. At the streetcar station in Juneau there is a masterpiece, a mother holding a baby.
The current generation mixes and ensures that the old and new elements fit together. The story is more important than the way it is told and yet still adheres to a tradition that tells stories about everything today. These can be about either a hunting trip or a wonderful holiday. There are many new poles that are mainly about the making of the pole itself, who designed it and who is behind it, the community thought this was the best way to merge the two worlds.
Installing a post has always been an expensive affair. In 1879, you paid about $2,000 per foot of mine cutting. But money is available, cities order it, private collectors have it installed in their homes. There is no place in Alaska that is considered important if it does not have a few totem poles, but museums worldwide also want totem poles in their possession, both replicas and originals!
Setting up a totem pole still draws everyone outside. It may take up to a hundred people or more to carry a large pole . In the past, the maker danced with his tools attached to him while someone else told the story of the pole. Nowadays you probably won’t get a dance, but the telling of the story still remains and is the highlight of the all-night ceremony and celebration.
No matter what the reasons are for erecting a totem pole, it doesn’t matter if the reasons change, it’s the thought behind the pole that still remains the same! Here too it was Nathan Jackson who explained in a radio interview that the totem poles explain who we are, who we belong to and what we are born with. The poles are the face of the coast, they are the stories of the past and the present given to the future!
Decoding the story
Each totem pole tells its own story, but that does not mean that they are easy to read. In fact, unless one remembers the story of when the pole was erected, it is almost impossible to read it correctly.
Each pole has symbols of its clan so that one can see who built it. The community in the southeast is divided into two groups, the ravens and the eagles. Each group has many subgroups, each with its own symbol. The subclans of ravens are represented by a mammal, the subclans of eagles, by fish, birds and amphibians. Almost any symbol can be an emblem of a clan or part of a story.
At first glance the dimensions and shapes seem difficult to make. The geometric style sends out shapes that all look pretty much the same. Yet there are ways to recognize the differences. In their mythology
the raven has a straight beak. That makes it different from the eagle which has a crooked beak. Bears have big ears and their tongues stick out. Beavers have long toes, wolves have gigantic canines. A living creature must be depicted on each pole. They are usually at the top of the pole.