Totem Poles in the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver BC, Siberia, Alaska, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Japan before 1700

© Patty Inglish, 2011, 2012; all rights reserved.

Major Research References:

1) Totem Poles, written & illustrated by Hilary Stewart. Published 1990. Seattle : University of Washington Press.

2) Anthropology curriculum, current course titles, The Ohio State University: Native North America, World Prehistory, Peoples and Cultures, Indians of North America, Human Origins, Human Variation, Cultural Ecology, Fundamentals of Archaeology, Prehistoric Indians Eastern North America, Hunters and Gatherers, Culture and Ideas; Culture, Development and Globalizaton; Human Population Biology, Migration and Transationalism, Bioarchaeology, Forensics.

3) Additional references and resources are indicated throughout this Hub.

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NOTE:

In the Pacific Northwest, the totem pole is considered to be a person (Norman Tait, Master Carver, 1993). This person is a member of the family of the owner and the pole is the storyteller of the family. In traditional carving lineages, the carver prays to the spirit of the chosen cedar tree before felling it and carving it. Poles at the front of dwellings tell the stories and histories of the owner.

I was fortunate to see the World's Largest Totem Pole raised in 1992, at a time just before it was cut down in Victoria BC, Canada in 2000. Tall totem poles in recorded history have caused arguments among native groups; specifically, the owner of the tallest pole is usually criticized for it. This points to bullying - for achievement - as an ancient problem and a reason for the oldest poles to have been destroyed. This is what occurred in Victoria and the 186-foot pole was cut down and divided into smaller sections after I saw it at full height on a memorable visit.

Totem poles have become highly coveted over the course of their modern major development (19th C. - 21th C). However, they were carved much before this time and an early drawing by a white settler, James Barlett, in 1792 shows clearly a totem pole at the front of a dwelling. The Indigenous Peoples related that these poles were a long-term (centuries-old) tradition with their group.

These poles now appear everywhere in pop culture: museums and exhibitions, films, amusement parks, jewelry, knick knacks, and as corporate art installations. Unfortunately, some originals have even been stolen from native lands, to turn up later in European museums, much like the Nazi inspired art thefts of WWII (see reference link further below).

Ms. Pat Kramer, in a reference guide for hard core tourists called Totem Poles , found her "oldest in the world" on Anthony Island, Ninstints, among BC's Queen Charlotte Islands. However, she was incorrect, given the James Bartlett discovery in 1792 and the oral tradition of the natives of the poles having a much longer history.

Ms. Kramer's discovery was in lands considered Haida Nation land and an official UN World Heritage site. These poles are felt to be from as early as the 1840s, with some believed definitely from 1880, the last year that people lived in the village located on the island. Ms. Kramer moved to BC to study totem poles and to write about them and the Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian and American Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Her books have been published since the early 1990s.

Researchers of The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History (pub.2010) state that the traditions of the totem pole began as far back as the 1700s in the New World. I think they began as soon as Indigenous Peoples developed tools and arts in their cultures, hundreds of years before the 1700's - but cedar trees once cut, decay and we have found no petrified totem poles as yet.

The researchers of The Totem Pole are Ms. Aldona Jonaitis, Director Emerita of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks; and Mr. Aaron Glass, a Professor at the Bard Graduate Center NYC in anthropology of art, museums, and material culture - he has fllmed at least one documentary concerning the Pacific Northwest's First Nations (Canadian).

• Totemism as artistic expression of traditional cultural ecology: comparative analysis of the use of ritual and totem poles among the peoples of northwest Siberia and the Pacific Northwest
  - Jordan, Bella Bychkova. Papers from the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers; 2009.

My summary: The Sakha people of Siberia bred/breed cattle and horses, so these animals are vital to their society and appear on Sakhan ritual totem poles. Counterpart peoples in the Pacific Northwest, Haida and Kwaguitl nations pursued a wider range of totem pole designs, with numerously greater totem animals and human characters, and these poles have been used specifically for certain functions - storytelling, mortuary poles and others.

As the USSR began to clamp down on religion after the October Revolition, shamanism (inherently Siberian) and Sakha ritual poles were markedly changed into more secular pieces. At the same time, Pacific Northwest poles have become commericalized in the disaspora and the non-native public decries any religious significance.

The US Forest Service began to round up abandoned Alaskan totem poles beginning in 1938. The project is recorded and discussed in a 1961 research book called The Wolf and the Raven: Totem Poles of Southeastern Alaska by Viola Garfield and Linn Forrest, specialists in ethnography and anthropology of Indigenous Peoples.

Totem poles are not province solely of the North American Pacific Northwest.

They have been found in older cultures and both the older and the Pacific Northwest varieties have been discussed at length since the 1960s and previously in anthropology courses at The Ohio State University. Statements from tourist-guidebook writers that have not examined the older carvings on the realistic-style Ainu totem poles are incorrect in stating that totem poles originated in the Pacific Northwest. All of these totem poles are real: Ainu, Maori, Alaskan, and Pacific Northwest. The peoples of the Old Work are ancestors of those in the New World and the Old World poles occurred first. Related art and religious carvings and sculptures seen in the Easter Island (and other) stone heads, tall Tiki gods, and others are similar types of items. South American carvings and stonework items are sometimes mistaken for those of these latter groups of people by individuals that have not read about all the groups involved.

Totem poles and very similar carved pieces of tall artwork - or chiseled pieces of stone where trees were not available - have been constructed by Indigenous Peoples in Alaska where they first arrived in the New World, British Columbia (including Vancouver Island), Washington State, New Zealand, and Northern Japan's Hokkaido where the Ainu group carved them. There may yet be other locations. Ainu totem poles have been carved for many centuries and some of them are done in a highly realistic manner, depicting three-dimensional bears, whales, and owls without folded tails and wings seen in the Pacific Northwest type.

See a more realistic-style Ainu totem pole here and another type here.

All this makes sense in that related cultures often present related art forms and traditions in their arts, oral, and religious traditions; and it is accepted that the New World peoples came originally from Northern Europe, European and Asian Russia, and Northern Asia. For that matter, evidence suggests part of the Iroquois Confederacy's link to the Zulu in Africa and other DNA links reveal themselves among the worlds' populations as research and migration tracking continue.

This is the City of Gangneung, South Korea at the eastern end of the Yeongdong Expressway out of Seoul. The two poles having faces, located at the entrance way to the city, stand guard over all from this place called Ojukheon. In the background are a myriad of kimchee jars. The photographer skinnylawyer states that one of the guardians is the Great General Under the Heavens and the other is the Female General of the Underground. (This seems to be in keeping with the Um-Yang philosophy - Yin-Yang elsewhere in Asia.)

The totem pole pictured at right is reported in a selection of news publications as having been carved and presented to New Zealand by the well-known artist and Master Carver Chief Tony Hunt of Vancouver Island. British Columbia. Regardless, it features striking similarities to a aboriginal Maori pole presented in the link below the photo.

A link to views of Maori poles that are not similar to the one at Northcote, along with an announcement re:Chief Hunt is here. In addition, still other Maori poles appear similar to Easter Island heads, stacked tiki images, and unique images found nowhere else to date.

Chief Hunt operates a thriving business in BC, named Tony Hunt Clothing, in which he offers shirts, T-shirts, vests, shawls, toques (Canadian knitted caps), all in keeping with the Kwagulth people's traditions.

Chief Hunt is one of the top award-winning carvers of totem poles in the 21st C. Readers may examine his arts and designs at www.tonyhunt.com. Chief Hunt's firm also offeres creative embroidery and apparel for corporate events.

Instances of arts and culture gifts made between Indigenous Peoples such as Australian Aboriginals, New Zealand Maori, Pacific Northwest Nations and others are important in preserving and sharing both the unique and similar aspects of ancient and for some, endangered heritage.

From 1880 to 1956 (or 1951 or 1953, depending on the journal article), totem poles were banned in Canada, but the Kwakwaka'wakw (or Kwakiutl) Nation carved and erected them anyway.

In 1878, the Ainu language, customs, religions, art, and culture were all banned in Japan, including totem poles. Today, the Ainu language is an endangered language. Although the Ainu are a different ethnicity than the rest of Japan, the people have been largely assimilated. However, language preservation activities began in the 1980s, with some focus on renewing the associated arts and culture as well.

This is a studied, documentary painting of the Bella Coola Nation, otherwise called "Nuxálk" in the Pacific Northwest of Washington State and British Columbia. It was completed in 1897 in order to capture the long-time indigenous religious ceremonies that involved traditional, mystic totem animals depicted on totem poles. The painter was Wilhelm Sievers (b.1860 - d.1921).

The furthest distant foundations of totem poles in the native arts timeline of the Americas are found in totem animals that are representative of supernatural animals or animal-human combinations. These are entities that can shape shift between human and animal worlds. Carvings of them often depict an mammal, bird, or fish (of the three Realms of being) with a human face carved in a wing, a belly, or a fin - even as a blow whole in a whale - to show that these figures are the mystic, supernatural ancestors of the totem pole owner, his family, and his clan. These supernatural beings are preserved in an Indigenous People's Foundation Myths in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. For example, the supernatural wolf ancestor founded the Wolf Clan of certain groups, as did the supernatural raven ancestor of the Raven Clan.

Traditional carvers of totem poles prayed to the spirit of the tree they chose for the carving, as part of their beliefs of all things possessing a specific spirit. Prayers were said when using anything for personal and tribal/group purposes.

As shape shifters, the totem animal-humans are part of the mystic, supernatural, religious culture of the Indigenous Peoples. The founding member of each clan, and at times other members, are said to be able to transform between animal and human and back again, visiting the three Realms of Sky, Earth, and Underwater.

In the Disney film set in the north, Brother Bear, one human brother chooses to remain in bear form. In Pocahontas, the totem animals of Eastern North America are seen whirling around in the Northern Lights. Mohawk Nation groups in the East have no totem poles, but two similar clans: Wolf and Bear, the totem animals of these are still used as spiritual sources by some individuals.

The totem poles themselves serve as documents used to illustrate kinship, much like some paintings on walls of certain Egyptian pyramids, and like modern Family Trees. The totems on a pole represent an individual's place in his or her society. These North American people are related not only by blood, but by shared experience in war, and by adoption. An example of this is the monologue of a human reciting the lineage history of an extraterrestrial group as he is adopted into that group in the film Enemy Mine.

The first totem poles had no written information to accompany them and no schematics or drawings for their construction that have been preserved. Paper had not appeared in the Pacific Northwest yet, before 1700. Perhaps drawings were accomplished in the dirt or with paint on an animal hide or large rock. Everything was accomplished and preserved through the oral traditions of each nation, however.

The symbolic meanings of the totems carved and the stories that went with the pole were known between the carver and the owner of the pole and only those others that the owner wished to tell. As written language became more common. some stories were handwritten and passed along to children and upcoming generations, but many other totem pole stories were lost when villages were abandoned and families died out. Totem Poles by Hilary Stewart explains the stories of dozens of older totem poles and their replicas around British Columbia.

Mortuary poles are another testament to religious customs among Alaskan and Pacific Northwest totem poles. After death, the remains of an owner of a totem pole would by placed into a traditional box. After one year, his decayed, smaller remains would be placed into another box and placed into an opening in the back of his totem pole, his remains and his stories preserved for the next life and for his remaining family. Occasionally, a second family member would be added to the compartment at the back of the pole after death. However, ancestor worship did not appear to be a part of these customs as it was, more often, seen in Japan.