-
There are accounts from the 1700s which describe and illustrate carved poles and timber homes along the coast of the Pacific Northwest of Canada.
-
The totem pole is a a structure typically carved out of cedar wood. They were created by six West Coast First Nations : “the Haida, the Nuxalk, the Kwakwaka'wakw, the Tlingit, the Tsimshian and the Coast Salish”. Archaeological evidence suggests that the creation of totem poles occurred before the arrival of Europeans.
-
The practice of creating totem poles to represent myths, legends, and as communication tools spread along the coast south where it became a common tradition in the rest of British Columbia and Washington State. Carvers tended to use tools made of stone, shells, or animal teeth
-
In the 1890s, there were many tourists, scientists, collectors and naturalist who were interested in native culture. They collected and photographed totem poles a well as other Indigenous artifacts. Many of these were then put on display at expositions and some can be found today in museums.
-
New materials and building tools that came with European settlers altered the construction of contemporary poles. “Colonization also threatened the very existence of totem poles” as the federal government attempted to assimilate First Nations into their life styes. In the Indian Act they banned many cultural practices, one of which was the ceremony at which totem poles were put up.
-
In the United States, The U S Forest Service began a program to reconstruct and preserve old totem poles, salvaging about two hundred. About one-third of those continued to be standing at the end of the 19th century
-
The ban was lifted and totem poles were displaced to museums and parks around the world.
-
The passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978 allowed Natives to continue religious practices such as totem pole caving.
-
The Haisla successfully repatriated a pole that was appropriated to a Swedish museum in 1929.
