First Nation Totem Poles of the North American
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TOTEM POLES
Totem Poles of the North American Northwest Coast Indians
The North American Northwest Coast Indians of the past had no
written language. How can we know about them or their past culture
if they left no books? All they left behind was their material
culture, their artifacts, their things. Yet these artifacts are a
great legacy for they tell us as much about the culture as a written
record. As Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi stated in his book
The Meaning of Things
: “Things embody goals, make skills manifest and shape the
identities of their users.” Through the study and analysis of
artifacts, students can gain valuable knowledge and insight into
the, creators and their culture. Objects are visual records of what
their makers considered important or significant, and learning
occurs through looking at and analyzing the concrete object.
Reciprocally, our own culture speaks or expresses itself through our
own objects. It is important that students understand that learning
and communicating are not limited to reading and writing. Visual
perception and awareness also play a part in the learning process.
Totem Poles
are monumental sculptures carved from great trees, typically Western
Redcedar, by a number of Native American cultures along the Pacific
northwest coast of North America. the center of pole construction
was centered around the
Haida
people of the Queen Charlotte Islands, from whence it spread outward
to the
Tsimshian
and
Tlingit
and then down the coast to the tribes of British Columbia and
northern Washington. The designs themselves are generally considered
the property of a particular clan or family group, and this
ownership may not be transferred to the owner of a pole (See also
Heraldry). As such, pictures, paintings, and other copies of the
designs may be an infringement of posessory rights of a certain
family or cultural group. Thus it is important that the ownership of
the artistic designs represented on a pole are respected as private
property to the same extent that the pole itself is property. Public
display and sale of pictures and other representations of totem pole
designs should be cleared with both the owners of the pole and the
cultural group or tribal government associated with the designs on
the pole.
Shame Poles
The poles used for public ridicule are usually called "shame poles",
and were erected to shame individuals or groups for unpaid debts.
Shame poles are today rarely discussed, and their meanings have in
many places been forgotten. However they formed an important subset
of poles carved throughout the 19th century.
One famous shame pole is the Lincoln Pole in Saxman, Alaska; it was
apparently created to shame the U.S. government into repaying the
Tlingit people for the value of slaves which were freed after the
Emancipation Proclamation
. Other explanations for it have arisen as the original reason was
forgotten or suppressed, however this meaning is still clearly
recounted by a number of Tlingit elders today.
10/29/14 A Totem Pole History: The Work of Lummi Carver Joe
Hillaire
.
By Pauline Hillaire. Edited by Gregory P. Fields. 2013. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press. 360 pages. ISBN: 978-0-8032-4097-1
(hard cover).
Reviewed by Bruce Granville Miller, University of British Columbia
bgmiller@mail.ubc.ca. [Word count: 1078 words]
This is a book the editor and senior author struggled to title. It
concerns the late Joe Hillaire, a member of the Lummi Nation, a
Coast Salish people in northern Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands
of Washington state, who is described as an "artist-diplomat."
Hillaire, who died in 1967, was a master carver who brought his
tribe's work to the national and world stage while advocating for
reconciliation between Aboriginal people and the mainstream. Several
chapters by contemporary carvers describe Hillaire's influence on
their own work and thinking. The book is also by and about his
daughter, Pauline Hillaire, now a senior elder, who took the
political fight for Lummi rights a step farther. But the book, in
addition, is an engaging look at Coast Salish culture, with
descriptions of spiritual, artistic, and healing practices. Pauline
Hillaire contributed the bulk of the chapters, in particular the
detailed readings of Joe Hillaire's story totem poles and chapters
on Lummi oral history and tradition.
It's a peculiar fact that the Lummi and other Coast Salish peoples
did not historically carve totem poles. Instead, they carved
interior house posts and exterior greeting, speaker, and shame
poles. But as several authors insist, Aboriginal culture has never
been static and the carving of totem poles follows from prior
carving practices. Joe Hillaire rebutted critics of his use of steel
tools in his carving, saying "Yes, but a long time ago they used
common sense" (liii). And Michael Pavel, a Skokomish tribal member
and professor at the University of Oregon who learned carving from
his uncle Bruce Miller (not the author of this review) observes that
to follow the traditions of the Coast Salish requires "movement,
growth and evolution" (127), a reason that art changes. Miller told
Pavel that "artists were the first historians" (125), showing the
links between art, spiritual life, and the histories of families and
communities.
The editor, Gregory Fields, gathered a fascinating group of eleven
contributors, most of whom wrote very short, but pithy, chapters.
Bill Holm, born in 1925 and the author of the seminal book on
Northwest Coast design, writes about what he calls Coast Salish
sculpture and the beginnings of the carving of story poles, which he
attributes to Snohomish artist William Shelton (1869-1938). Art
historian Barbara Brotherton contributes a valuable scholarly
discussion of "monumental sculpture" of the Coast Salish and a
concise statement of Joe Hillaire's twofold aim to perpetuate
tradition and push for social advancement in a period starting with
the granting of Native citizenship (1924) and the establishment of
tribal governments under the Indian Reorganization Act (1934).
Brotherton notes that Coast Salish carving shifted from the creation
of work for largely private spiritual use to a "monumental public
form of carving meant to appeal to a wide range of viewers,
including non-Natives" (54). Carvers Felix Solomon and Scott Jensen
contribute discussions of the importance of mentorship of young
carvers. Jensen observes that despite successes, in Joe Hillaire's
time poles were thought of as primitive. In rebuttal, Jensen
describes carving as an "art of skillful action" (83), similar to
dressing a deer. Solomon points to the need to conserve older totem
poles, including those by Joe Hillaire, except for sacred work,
which must return to the earth. He notes that of the hundreds of
pieces of Northwest Coast art in the Smithsonian, there are only
seventeen Coast Salish items, a fact that reflects the privacy of
much of earlier Coast Salish carving, but also, one might add, the
relative lack of interest in Coast Salish work which appeared to
nineteenth and early-twentieth century collectors to be contaminated
by contact with whites. Melonie Ancheta's chapter on pigments and
paint technology is a gem, and builds on archaeological, cultural,
geological, and other evidence to show how Coast Salish people have
created and conceived of the colors used in their art. She reveals
that they, in common with other peoples of the north coast, used
three colors, black, red, and blue or green. But the Coast Salish,
more than the others, resisted using other colors that became
available with contact with outsiders.
Gregory Fields, the editor, is also the author of an introduction
and two other chapters. He recorded Pauline Hillaire telling stories
in 2008 at Southern Illinois University, a sign of a useful
collaboration. But his chapter on "Archetypes from Cedar: Myth and
Coast Salish Story Poles," the longest in the book, relies entirely
on thinking foreign to the Coast Salish historical world. He
provides a primer on Jungian theory (archetypes and collective
unconscious) and evokes Joseph Campbell's work on the hero's
journey. But he doesn't show familiarity with Coast Salish modes of
thought. Fields provides a discussion of types of stories, but not
those advanced by noted Coast Salish intellectuals themselves, such
as Sonny McHalsie, Stó:l? Nation, or the late Vi Hilbert, Upper
Skagit, who has written three pages in the beginning of this volume.
Sally Snyder, an anthropologist who worked for many years with Coast
Salish communities immediately adjacent to the Lummi, wrote
powerfully about storytelling, showing the links between people and
the land and waterscapes.
Now a personal note: in his interest in universalizing and comparing
storytelling traditions, Fields has missed out entirely on the local
specificity of mythology. In the 1980s I served as an Early
Childhood Educator at the Upper Skagit (a Coast Salish people next
door to the Lummi) tribal reservation, going home to home to work
with three and four year olds. At the request of the community, I
told Skagit myths to the children. To my surprise, I found that they
often enacted the myths with blocks and dolls, substituting the
names of myth characters (coyote, raven, and so on) with the names
of relatives. They intuitively understood that these myths were
about them and their families. As Snyder showed, these myths concern
irresolvable contradictions in the social fabric of Skagit
communities. These myths had direct meaning in the lives of three
and four year olds; in effect, they "worked" for these children.
There is a long history of overlooking Aboriginal thought and
displacing it with Western ideas, but now is not the time for this.
It is possible that these might work together in productive ways, as
many have suggested recently, including Nuu-chah-nulth leader and
educator Richard Atleo. This volume, unfortunately, doesn't do that
and Fields's primary chapter remains out of step with the rest of
the contributions, which are written from within Coast Salish
perspectives.
http://www.jfr.indiana.edu/review.php?id=1726