Wrangell Totem Pole Raising

Shakes Island has always felt like sort of the heart of Wrangell, to me anyway. I remember dancing there when I was maybe 4 years old. I remember totem poles being there, and I'm really, really happy that the younger generation is going to see that again, like what we got to experience. And talking with elders, they talk about how wonderful it is to see those poles up again. [SINGING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE] Being on Shakes Island and seeing the poles go up and seeing the ceremonies happen, I think a lot about my great-great-great-grandfather William Ucas.

His Tlingit name was Yee Kaas, and he was a carver and was from the Nanyaaay people on Shakes Island. And so I would think a lot about him and how he would see things and what he would want to be seeing or doing or how he would want the Poles to look.

And so I thought a lot about him when we were at those ceremonies and thought a lot about his son, Octatseen, and what he would have thought as well. Oehehia! Oehehia! Oehehia! Oehehia!

My Auntie Marge once described Wrangell as a sleeping giant and that we were starting to wake up. You know, culturally, I think for a long time other communities kind of looked at Wrangell as a non-native town in a way. You know, we're one of the landless communities, for example. And so some folks don't really think of Wrangell as being a native community. And I think sometimes Wrangell feels left out by some of that and also kind of feels like, oh, well, maybe we're not a native community.

And so seeing these things, I think, helps people to remember, like, yeah, this is a Native town. Owehia, owehia, owehia. My brother Joe and I were, ever since we were in high school, we were really into carving. We knew about our artists like Robert Davidson and Jim Hart and Reggie Davidson and all these guys. The Alaskan artists like David Boxley, Nathan Jackson, Israel Shotridge.

We knew about these guys and we wanted— at some point we decided we really want to be like these guys. We started small and just started working our way up, and now we're carving big totem poles. Now it's our responsibility to kind of pass it on, to pass it on to apprentices. So that's what we've been doing lately is getting dropped into these little communities and teaching them as much as we could in the time that we have. So that's basically been our goal the last couple years is just to share what we know, share our knowledge.

When I left Robert Davidson's, the apprenticeship there, when I left his studio, that's one major thing he said was don't be stingy. Woo-hoo! Ha! Woo-hoo! Ha!

By having master carvers come into Wrangell and apprentices working under them, The goal was for apprentices to learn how to be able to do that themselves so that we have Wrangell carvers again. You know, I think the last Wrangell carver that put totem poles up was probably my great-great-grandfather. [SPEAKING WRANGELL LANGUAGE] And so I went to the council and asked them if I could do that specific grave marker as part of that process of saying, like, you know, I've worked on these poles. By the time I'm working on this one, I'll have worked on 4 totem poles. [SPEAKING OJIBWE] It was a smaller project and one that I felt I could take on.

And I think in some ways that was one of the more, on a personal level, more significant moments of the weekend where seeing it actually get placed and knowing that it was going to stand and everything was falling into place like it was supposed to and knowing that it was in the same lawn where my great-great-grandfather's totem was. All of those things just felt really significant. I want you to know that when we put this here, we put coins in before they put the cement down, and we said the names of those ancestors: Xk'akwu, Istin, Shawan. We remember the two, the mother and the child that were killed during that bombardment. We wanted them to be honored with this.

And so that would hold this totem grounded here for you. On 3, up slow. 1, 2, 3. It's been 38 years since there's been a pole raising in Wrangell.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] For us, there was a little bit of nervous energy. We knew how heavy this pole was. It's a little bit different. It's almost carved all the way around, so there was no hollow out in it. We knew it was going to be extra heavy.

It was close to 2 tons, I'm guessing, somewhere around there. When we're moving the totem pole, there's kind of a process where we need to get enough people to comfortably carry it, pick it up and carry it. And then you have a little cribbing for every 5, 6 minutes. You have to give them a break. So we had people manning the cribbing to have the totem pole set down on.

And then you have the carriers, which we had to substitute here and there because it's a lot of work on your arms and your back. It's a lot to ask, You know, the people in the crowd, and so we're pretty grateful for all the support. Everybody's willing to help. Oe eia, oe eia, oe eia, oe eia. 3, 2, 1, Up!

Hold, hold, hold! We actually needed a lot more people than I thought. If you have 2 arms and 2 legs, just can you please help? Man, woman, or child. So we really needed the whole community on this one.

So, and even that was, that's special too, when everybody feels like they can pitch in or help out. And that's how we get big things done anyways, you know, through unity.

A little bit nerve-wracking there for a minute, but yeah, it looks good. We're here for Kata Shan. He was the one that had this pole erected originally. Kata Shan was a man who loved his people and fought for his people in so many ways. He was a historian.

He was a storyteller. He was a peacemaker. We know that totem poles are a community thing. A lot of focus kind of goes on the carvers for parts of it, but it really is a community thing. And that kind of stuff where you have a community community carrying it down, joined by other communities around us, everybody pulling on the ropes to raise, like, how can you see that and not realize that it's an entire village has to come together for that, you know?

And so to me, that was really special. [SPEAKING O'ODHAM] I think it's extremely important for people to see reminders of the culture of the land and the history of the land, and totem poles are a great representation of that. [Speaker:WOMAN] Oweheya, oweheya, oweheya.