House of Tears Carvers new totem pole to raise awareness

Jul 16, 2021

A totem pole created by Lummi Nations carvers is shown en route to Washington, D.C. The symbolic work, crafted from a cedar tree, was designed to draw attention to threats facing Indigenous communities and sacred sites.

Why is this totem pole traveling across America?

In an effort to protect sacred sites and Indigenous rights, the Lummi Nation is taking a carved cedar pole on a cross-country journey to Washington, D.C.

Indigenous people along North America’s Pacific Northwest coast have been carving and erecting totem poles for hundreds of years. But the poles—long used to commemorate ancestry, relay cultural values, or tell stories—rarely go on road trips.

That’s what happening this summer, as a 25-foot-long, 4,900-pound length of cedar travels from Washington State to Washington, D.C., aboard a jumbo tractor-trailer. Created by the Lummi people, who live near Bellingham, Washington, the richly decorated pole is meant to raise awareness about Indigenous issues and the need to protect sacred sites.

Lummi Nation lead carver Jewell James works on sacred totem pole.

Lummi Nation lead carver Jewell James works on the final details of a nearly 25-foot totem pole to be gifted to the Biden administration, Monday, April 12, 2021, on the Lummi Reservation, near Bellingham, Wash. The pole, carved from a 400-year old red cedar, will make a journey from the reservation past sacred indigenous sites, before arriving in Washington, D.C. in early June. Organizers said that the totem pole is a reminder to leaders to honor the rights of Indigenous people and their sacred sites. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

The two-week tour, dubbed the Red Road to D.C., will stop at endangered Indigenous sites including the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Standing Rock Reservation in the Dakotas. The totem pole will arrive in D.C. on July 29 and will be displayed in front of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) for two days; organizers hope to attract the attention of President Joseph Biden and find a permanent home for it in the nation’s capital.

Along the way, a team of about a dozen volunteers traveling with the pole will facilitate education sessions, blessings, and other outreach activities. “The pole is an active use of art,” says Jewell Se Sealth James, a Lummi master carver who helped to create it. “Not only do people come out to see it, we travel to them. It’s not to just entertain but to make you aware.”

Lummi Nation lead carver Jewell James works on the final details of a nearly 25-foot totem pole to be gifted to the Biden administration at the end of July 2021.

Head carver and Lummi tribal member Jewell Praying Wolf James said he and a team ranging in age from 4 to 70 carved the pole. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Totem pole diplomacy like this is a relatively new phenomenon: the Lummi House of Tears Carvers, of which James the co-founder, has only been making poles and taking them on tour for about 30 years. The group brought a pole to New York City just after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a sign of mourning and solidarity. But totem poles, and the symbolism and cultural richness they represent, have impressed people, both Indigenous and not, for generations.

Totem poles mean something different to each tribal nation, says Doug “Yaa nak.ch” Chilton, a master carver from Alaska’s Tlingit of the Raven moiety, Beaver Clan, House of the Raven. All of them tell stories or offer up messages. “Some poles document notable events or celebrate a person’s achievements,” Chilton says. “Others contain remains of the dead.”

Generally made of cedar, they soar from about 10 feet tall to more than 60 feet tall. Historians believe the golden era of totem carving was the 19th century, when money from trading with trappers and other colonists enabled Indigenous people to invest in finer tools and displays of wealth.

Totem poles are customarily displayed outside Indigenous homes or settlements. You generally won’t see antique ones outdoors, though; it’s considered part of the pole’s life cycle for it to rot away over time. But travelers can find newer ones at Pacific Northwest greenspaces such as Stanley Park, in Vancouver, Canada (however, the appropriateness of the totem poles here have been much debated) and the Klawock Totem Park in Klawock, Alaska. Older examples and artistic totem poles can be seen at museums including NMAI, Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology, and Seattle’s Burke Museum.

Although many Northwest clans have worked to reclaim the totem poles of their ancestors, in the 19th and early-20th century, totem poles were burned, stolen, chopped down, or generally disrespected by colonizers and non-Indigenous people. “Missionaries and government officials opposed them as part of spiritual traditions antithetical to Christianity, or as part of political systems inimical to their interests,” says Linc Kesler, professor of First Nations Studies at the University of British Columbia.

What do those symbols mean?

The animal figures commonly used on totems—wide-eyed eagles, toothy bears—function like family crests, representing aspects of a given clan’s history or status. Contemporary carvers often riff on these tradition with so-called story poles that mesh traditional and modern symbols to make political statements or highlight Indigenous issues.

The “Red Road” pole currently on its way to D.C. is designed to spotlight current crises faced by Indigenous communities. A baby locked inside a cage represents children whose human rights are violated; red handprints symbolize missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Beka Economopoulos, the founding director of the Natural History Museum, a pop-up cultural organization, assisted with the “Red Road” project. In a partnership with the Lummi carvers, she put together an exhibit about the journey and totem poles, Kwel’ Hoy: We Draw the Line, on display at the National Museum of the American Indian through September 9.

“Poles are a beacon or a call to all of us to safeguard what it is that we need to pass down to future generations,” says Economopoulos. “They are a monument to a way of relating to land that predates colonialism and capitalism, and that is the only path forward in this time of environmental crisis.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/lummi-nation-brings-totem-pole-to-washington-dc-on-cross-country-tour

Writer Leslie Hsu Gunakadeit Seedi Shaawat Oh, Tlingit (Łingit) of the Raven moiety, Copper River Clan, House of the Owl and Navajo of the Red Running into Water People Clan, contributed research to this story.