Totems of the Haida
History
The Haida People
The people of Haida Gwaii come from a small archipelago off the coast of the Northern coast of British Columbia, Canada, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands (Peabody 1982). The tribe exists as two primary clans – the Ravens and the Eagles - which share resources and cross marry in a matrilineal society. Practically, this helped to maintain healthy lineages, but it also meant that the two clans with differing goals and leadership would always be symbiotically connected, and no doubt helped to maintain common interests which reduced the likelihood of inter-war and strife.
The Haida Totems
Some of the story of the Haida Totems is told through the red cedar in which they’re carved (Peabody 1982). The poles typically don’t stand for more than a hundred years, which gives room for their stories to be revised and revitalized with successive generations. Contemporary carvers have argued that “poles are living things, objects made, remade, and never completely finished” and that they are “just another person that is born into the family” (St. George 2012). It also suggests that their very nature is built with revision in mind as the wood weathers and decays over their lifetimes; paint fades, precisely carved lines soften and the wood cracks, splits and decays.
Totems tell stories, and they are component to Haida oral tradition (St. George 2012). Those stories serve multiple purposes, they are often public displays of wealth, prestige and political power. They can tell cautionary tales of civil unrest for those that might think to challenge their owners or any number of social cues and symbology that convey the owners’ intended meanings. They are also practical records of lineage, portraying animals and mythical creatures that make up Haida symbology and publicly declaring family rites to coveted crests.
Totems served a variety of uses but one of their most important uses was to inter Haida’s elite - important and prestigious members of the clan were encased in compartments carved into the highest points on a totem with sometimes multiple family members entombed therein (Blackman 1973). Haida society used vertical space to denote importance and prestige, so burial inside of a 60 ft totem necessarily portrayed that importance. What’s more, because of their size they could require significant time and resources to raise, requiring many members of a clan to harvest trees, carve, paint, and ultimately erect vertically in place.
