SHI book documents the fraught origins of three Juneau totem poles

A new book from Sealaska Heritage Institute traces an uncomfortable overlap in Southeast Alaska history: the U.S. Forest Service hired Tlingit and Haida carvers to create totem poles in Juneau at the very moment the same agency held millions of acres of Native land as the Tongass National Forest — land Tlingit and Haida people were then suing to reclaim.

"The Juneau CCC Poles," by Moore, examines three poles carved through the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1938 and 1942: the Governor's Mansion Pole, put up as a tourist attraction with no cultural relevance to local Tlingit; the Yax̱té Pole at Auke Bay; and the downtown Sa'wan and First Halibut Hook pole. Some carried real cultural significance, Moore writes, but their meanings were misread for years.

The Sa'wan pole's story is the most layered. Carved by Kaigani Haida artist John Wallace to tell the story of a Tlingit shaman, it was bought by the Juneau Chamber of Commerce in July 1962 — weeks after the city's fire department burned the Douglas Indian Village to make way for a harbor. Moore draws no direct line between the two events, but names the pattern: "non-Native support for Native art but not for Native land."

The carvers themselves, Moore argues, were never passive instruments of the program; the care they took to honor cultural protocol within government commissions shows in the poles, giving them what the book calls an "emergent authenticity." "The Juneau CCC Poles" is part of SHI's Box of Knowledge series, available through the Sealaska Heritage Store.