Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Totem poles, a type of Northwest Coast art. Northwest Coast art is the term commonly applied to a style of art created primarily by artists from Tlingit, Haida, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and other First Nations and Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast of North America, from pre-European-contact times up to the present.
The Pole of Sag̱aw̓een was carved by Oyee to commemorate Chief Sag̱aw̓een from the Eagle tribe (Gitlaxluuks clan). At 81 feet (25 m) tall, this pole is the tallest pole carved on the Nass River. It stood in the village of Gitiks alongside two other Eagle poles: first, the Eagle's Nest Pole, and later in 1885, joined by the Halibut Pole of Laay.
Poles are placed outside family houses where they display the family's crests, history, wealth, social rank, inheritance, and privilege. [22] The sequence of characters and symbols sculpted into a totem pole is indicative of past family events, ancestors, myths, and heraldic crests, with the bottom figure usually being the most prominent. [23]
Detail of a Tlingit totem pole, Ketchikan, Alaska. Alaska Native cultures are rich and diverse, and their art forms are representations of their history, skills, tradition, adaptation, and nearly twenty thousand years of continuous life in some of the most remote places on earth.
The Seattle Center Totem is a 1970 totem pole carved by Duane Pasco, Victor Mowatt, and Earl Muldon, installed at Seattle Center in the U.S. state of Washington. The 30-foot-tall totem depicts a hawk, a bear holding a salmon, a raven, and a killer whale. [1] The work was funded by the Seattle Arts Commission. [2]
Oliver and Bender designed the 50-foot (15 m) totem based on Haida imagery, and Bender carved the sculpture. [2] The top of the totem depicts a raven holding a Salish spinning whorl. Below the raven are human figures, a killer whale with a protruding dorsal fin, another smaller raven, and a bear holding a hawk.
Kwanusila is a 12.2 meter (40 foot) tall totem pole carved from red cedar. It stands in Lincoln Park at Addison Street just east of Lake Shore Drive in the Lake View neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The colorfully painted totems include a grimacing sea monster at the bottom, a man riding a whale above it, and Kwanusila the Thunderbird on top.