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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 maritime fur trade, a ship-based fur trade system, focused largely on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska Natives. Entrepreneurs also exploited fur-bearing skins from the wider Pacific (from, for example, the Juan Fernández fur seal) and from the Southern Ocean.
The totem poles carved normally tell a story, and Tlingit artists carve subjects like animals into the totem poles. These pictures are aligned in a column down the pole, in order from top to bottom. The poles are put on outside corners of "traditional dwellings", used to structurally support their interiors, or placed on shores.
The Pioneer Square totem pole, also referred to as the Seattle totem pole and historically as the Chief-of-All-Women pole, is a Tlingit totem pole located in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, Washington. The original totem pole was carved in 1790 and raised in the Tlingit village on Tongass Island, Alaska to honor the Tlingit woman Chief-of ...
It is frequently depicted in the art, songs, and oral histories of many Pacific Northwest Coast cultures, [citation needed] but is also found in various forms among some peoples of the American Southwest, [citation needed] US East Coast, [citation needed] Great Lakes, [1] and Great Plains.
The reputation of a pole's maker depended on the quality of his work. The Kwakwaka'wakw style of totem uses more protruding elements than other Northwest coast totems, such as stretching limbs, beaks jutting out, and wings thrust away from the body of the pole. [24] Painting followed a scheme of alternating dark and light colors for contrast.
As "helpers," they were paid only for their labour, and not for the sale of their resources". [8] The salmon is also presented as a cultural symbol for Coast Salish people in Totem poles, canoes and oars. In Totem Poles it is present as a symbol of life, abundance, prosperity and nourishment. [9]