Editing Totem pole (section)

==History==
[[Image:'Ksan Historical Village 2010.jpg|thumb|right|Totem poles and houses at [[ʼKsan]], near [[Hazelton, British Columbia]].]]
Totem poles serve as important illustrations of family lineage and the cultural heritage of the Indigenous peoples in the islands and coastal areas of North America's Pacific Northwest, especially British Columbia, Canada, and coastal areas of Washington and southeastern Alaska in the United States. Families of traditional carvers come from the [[Haida people|Haida]], [[Tlingit]], [[Tsimshian]], [[Kwakwaka'wakw|Kwakwaka’wakw]] (Kwakiutl), [[Nuxalk]] (Bella Coola), and [[Nuu-chah-nulth]] (Nootka), among others.<ref>{{cite book | author=Richard D. Feldman| title =Home Before the Raven Caws: The Mystery of a Totem Pole | publisher =[[Indiana Historical Society]] in association with The [[Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art]] | edition =Rev. 2012| year =2012 | location =Indianapolis | page =4 | isbn =978-0-87195-306-3}}</ref><ref name=G-F1>{{cite book|author=Viola E. Garfield and Linn A. Forrest|year=1961|title=The Wolf and the Raven: Totem Poles of Southeastern Alaska|page=[https://archive.org/details/wolfraven00garf/page/1 1]|location=Seattle|publisher=University of Washington Press|isbn=0-295-73998-3|url=https://archive.org/details/wolfraven00garf/page/1}}</ref> The poles are typically carved from the highly rot-resistant trunks of ''[[Thuja plicata]]'' trees (popularly known as giant cedar or western red cedar), which eventually decay in the moist, rainy climate of the coastal Pacific Northwest. Because of the region's climate and the nature of the materials used to make the poles, few examples carved before 1900 remain. Noteworthy examples, some dating as far back as 1880, include those at the [[Royal British Columbia Museum]] in [[Victoria, British Columbia|Victoria]], the Museum of Anthropology at [[University of British Columbia|UBC]] in [[Vancouver]], the [[Canadian Museum of History]] in [[Gatineau]], and the [[Totem Heritage Center]] in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Totem poles are the largest, but not the only, objects that coastal Pacific Northwest natives use to depict spiritual reverence, family legends, sacred beings and culturally important animals, people, or historical events. The freestanding poles seen by the region's first European explorers were likely preceded by a long history of decorative carving. Stylistic features of these poles were borrowed from earlier, smaller prototypes, or from the interior support posts of house beams.<ref name=GF1-2/><ref>{{cite journal | author= Marius Barbeau| title =Totem Poles: According to Crests and Topics | journal = National Museum of Canada Bulletin | volume =119 | issue =1 | page =9 | publisher = Dept. of Resources and Development, National Museum of Canada | location = Ottawa | date =1950  | url = http://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/barbeau/mbp0502e.shtml| access-date =24 November 2014}}</ref>

Although 18th-century accounts of European explorers traveling along the coast indicate that decorated interior and exterior house posts existed prior to 1800, the posts were smaller and fewer in number than in subsequent decades. Prior to the 19th century, the lack of efficient carving tools, along with sufficient wealth and leisure time to devote to the craft, delayed the development of elaborately carved, freestanding poles.<ref name=Barbeau5>Barbeau, "Totem Poles: According to Crests and Topics", p. 5.</ref> Before iron and steel arrived in the area, artists used tools made of stone, shells, or beaver teeth for carving. The process was slow and laborious; axes were unknown. By the late eighteenth century, the use of metal cutting tools enabled more complex carvings and increased production of totem poles.<ref name=GF1-2>Garfield and Forrest, pp. 1&ndash;2.</ref> The tall monumental poles appearing in front of homes in coastal villages probably did not appear until after the beginning of the nineteenth century.<ref name=Barbeau5/>

Eddie Malin has proposed that totem poles progressed from house posts, funerary containers, and memorial markers into symbols of [[clan]] and family wealth and prestige. He argues that the [[Haida people|Haida]] people of the islands of [[Haida Gwaii]] originated carving of the poles, and that the practice spread outward to the [[Tsimshian]] and [[Tlingit people|Tlingit]], and then down the coast to the Indigenous people of British Columbia and northern [[Washington (state)|Washington]].<ref name=Malin>{{Cite book | author = Edward Malin | title = Totem Poles of the Pacific Northwest Coast | publisher = Timber Press  | year = 1986 | location = Portland, Oregon  | isbn = 0-88192-295-1}}</ref> Malin's theory is supported by the photographic documentation of the Pacific Northwest coast's cultural history and the more sophisticated designs of the Haida poles.

Accounts from the 1700s describe and illustrate carved poles and timber homes along the coast of the Pacific Northwest.<ref>{{cite book|author=Joseph H. Wherry|title=The Totem Pole Indians |pages=23&ndash;24 |year=1964|location= New York|publisher=W. Funk}}</ref><ref>Kramer, ''Alaska's Totem Poles'', p. 18.</ref> By the early nineteenth century, widespread importation of iron and steel tools from Great Britain, the United States, and elsewhere led to easier and more rapid production of carved wooden goods, including poles.<ref>Kramer, ''Alaska's Totem Poles'', p. 13.</ref>
[[File:Houses And Totem Poles Of Alaskan Indians — Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition — 89.jpg|thumb|left|Alaskan Totem Poles at 1893 Chicago World Columbian Exposition]]
[[Image:Alert Bay Totems.jpg|thumb|left|Totem poles in front of houses in [[Alert Bay]], British Columbia, in the 1900s]]
In the 19th century, American and European trade and settlement initially led to the growth of totem-pole carving, but United States and Canadian policies and practices of acculturation and assimilation caused a decline in the development of [[Alaska Native]] and [[First Nations in Canada|First Nations]] cultures and their crafts, and sharply reduced totem-pole production by the end of the century. Between 1830 and 1880, the [[maritime fur trade]], mining, and fisheries gave rise to an accumulation of wealth among the coastal peoples.<ref>Garfield and Forrest, pp. 2, 7.</ref><ref>Kramer, ''Alaska's Totem Poles'', p. 21.</ref> Much of it was spent and distributed in lavish [[potlatch]] celebrations, frequently associated with the construction and erection of totem poles.<ref>Garfield and Forrest, p. 7.</ref> The monumental poles commissioned by wealthy family leaders to represent their social status and the importance of their families and clans.<ref>Feldman, p. 4.</ref> In the 1880s and 1890s, tourists, collectors, scientists and naturalist interested in Indigenous culture collected and photographed totem poles and other artifacts, many of which were put on display at expositions such as the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.<ref name=Kramer25>Kramer, ''Alaska's Totem Poles'', p. 25.</ref>

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the passage of the [[American Indian Religious Freedom Act]] in 1978, the practice of Indigenous religion was outlawed, and traditional Indigenous cultural practices were also strongly discouraged by Christian [[missionaries]]. This included the carving of totem poles. Missionaries urged converts to cease production and destroy existing poles. Nearly all totem-pole-making had ceased by 1901.<ref>{{cite book|author=Pat Kramer| title=Totem Poles| page=22| publisher=Heritage House| year=2008| location=Vancouver, British Columbia|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=UmjSngEACAAJ&q=Totem+Poles+Kramer| isbn=978-1-89497-444-8}}</ref> Carving of monumental and mortuary poles continued in some, more remote villages as late as 1905; however, as the original sites were abandoned, the poles and timber homes were left to decay and vandalism.<ref name=G-F8>Garfield and Forrest, p. 8.</ref>

Beginning in the late 1930s, a combination of cultural, [[linguistic]], and artistic revivals, along with scholarly interest and the continuing fascination and support of an educated and empathetic public, led to a renewal and extension of this artistic tradition.<ref name=Kramer25/> In 1938 the United States Forest Service began a program to reconstruct and preserve the old poles, salvaging about 200, roughly one-third of those known to be standing at the end of the 19th century.<ref name=G-F8/> With renewed interest in Indigenous arts and traditions in the 1960s and 1970s, freshly carved totem poles were erected up and down the coast, while related artistic production was introduced in many new and traditional media, ranging from tourist trinkets to masterful works in wood, stone, [[Glassblowing|blown]] and etched glass, and other traditional and non-traditional media.<ref name=Kramer25/>

In June 2022 during the biennial [[Celebration (Alaska festival)|Celebration festival]] in Juneau, Alaska, the [[Sealaska Heritage Institute]] unveiled the first 360-degree totem pole in Alaska: the {{convert|22|ft||adj=mid|-tall|order=flip}} ''Sealaska Cultural Values Totem Pole''.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last1=Media |first1=Alaska Public |last2=Media |first2=Adelyn Baxter, Alaska Public |last3=Media |first3=Alaska Public |date=2022-06-08 |title=Celebration set to kick off in Juneau |url=http://www.ktoo.org/2022/06/07/celebration-2022-sealaska-heritage-institute-juneau/ |access-date=2023-01-22 |website=KTOO |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Unique 360-degree totem goes up at Sealaska Heritage in Juneau |url=https://www.wrangellsentinel.com/story/2022/06/08/news/unique-360-degree-totem-goes-up-at-sealaska-heritage-in-juneau/10420.html |access-date=2023-01-22 |website=Wrangell Sentinel |language=en}}</ref> The structure, carved out of a 600-year-old cedar tree, "represents all three tribes of Southeast Alaska — [[Tlingit|Lingít]], [[Haida people|Haida]] and [[Tsimshian]]."<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Beacon |first1=Alaska |last2=Beacon |first2=Lisa Phu, Alaska |last3=Beacon |first3=Alaska |date=2022-06-01 |title=First 360-degree totem pole in Alaska was recently installed in Juneau |url=http://www.ktoo.org/2022/06/01/first-360-degree-totem-pole-in-alaska-was-recently-installed-in-juneau/ |access-date=2023-01-22 |website=KTOO |language=en-US}}</ref>