Preservation or Exploitation?

From the early 1880s until the middle of the 20th century, while many Indigenous children were taken from their tribes and imprisoned in residential schools, another First Nations population—totem poles themselves—were locked up in museums. One impressive collection is held at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, where Karen Duffek serves as Curator of Contemporary Visual Arts. Although the museum was closed for renovations, Duffek admitted me into temperature-controlled rooms where enormous totem and house poles, many of them very old, are being preserved.

The practice demands keen cultural awareness. “Museums,” Duffek points out, “are artificial places, where we’re doing things that were never really done in First Nations communities. Taking down a pole, for example, is a non-traditional act. Old poles would fall to the earth and—in a healthy society—new poles would be raised.” The old poles would decompose, completing a natural cycle. “Today, we work with First Nation communities to ask: ‘Is there a process that needs to be followed, to put the poles to rest?’ Because you don’t simply raise or move a pole without a lot of ceremony, a lot of protocol.”

The museum’s collection includes many beautiful carvings, including relatively contemporary work by Bill Reid, a renowned Haida artist who died in 1998. But a great many of the museum’s historical poles and house posts were collected in the 1950s, as part of the Totem Pole Preservation Project—an initiative of the provincial government, the university, and the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. Many of the villages where the poles had fallen are now uninhabited–caused in part by the Europeans’ campaigns, starting in the 15th century, to eradicate Native populations.

“There was this prevailing view that the First Nations cultures of the [Northwest Pacific] coast were dying. And those poles needed to be salvaged,” said Duffek. “Was it a good thing? Was it not a good thing? It’s not black and white, and a lot of debate still circulates around that kind of ‘preservation.’”

There remain some historic village sites where there are poles on the ground, and some where poles are still standing. These are managed by the Haida Gwaii Watchmen Society of Parks Canada, and there are others at some of Western Canada’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites. “So there’s an ongoing caring for some of the pieces that are still on-site.”

And it’s not just totem poles. Duffek led me through a forest of long, intricately carved columns that served as house posts: traditional architectural elements of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation’s huge cedar-plank longhouses. “They would support the main roof beams of the structures, while at the same time reminding everybody about the history of their family—their ancestors, lineage, and ancestral origin stories.” They are also, of course, a reminder of how critical cedar was to the Indigenous people of the region.

Wandering through the Museum’s cavernous storerooms, I fell under a sort of spell. My ears began ringing; my neck tingled. It felt like all the power objects around me were stirring, restless, eager to tell stories long silenced. Duffek nodded, familiar with the feeling. “Some people think that the objects and regalia—when they’re in a museum—are sleeping,” she said. “They awaken when they are actually brought into use; brought into relation again with community.”

It’s a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, you have the bleak history of colonization, and the mixed blessing of pole salvage and preservation. On the other, you have the benefits of bringing many First Nations artworks together under one roof.

“The poles were meant to eventually disappear,” wrote revered Haida artist James Hart, hereditary Chief of the Eagle Clan, on one of the museum’s descriptive panels. “But because they’re here in the museum, I get a chance to look at them and feel them.”

Dangeli would later echo Hart’s sentiments. “Our belief system is set up where everything has a birth, everything has a life, then a retirement, and eventually goes back to the ancestors. So for us, when we see a totem pole fall, it’s not a bad thing.” Still, every time Dangeli visits these artworks, he sings to them. “They’re not getting the songs and dances they need to accompany them in doing the work in the spirit world.” he says. “They need to hear us; they need us to speak the language to them.”

“That’s why going into a museum is a love-hate relationship: Because everything’s on life support,” Dangeli says. “It’d be like one of our family being put into a hospital, and not really being alive. But if I didn’t have those things in the Museum to study and learn from, my learning curve would’ve been a lot steeper.”