Renowned totem carver resurrected native traditions
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians.
In 1926, eminent anthropologist Marius Barbeau gave a lecture at the University of B.C. lamenting of First Nations that “their art, now, is dead forever.” He was expressing a popular view that traditional Northwest Coast art reflected a vanishing culture. In fact, it had only gone underground in response to repressive attempts to eradicate it, along with language, as a way of assimilating indigenous peoples.
The potlatch was outlawed. In 1921, Indian Agent William Halliday at Village Island arrested and charged 49 Kwakwaka’wakw. Their ceremonial art was sold to museums and private collectors while 26 people were jailed.
Mungo Martin (Naka’pankam) was born at Tsaxis on northern Vancouver Island in 1879. Charlie James, his stepfather, a famous carver, tutored him. Then in 1937, Ottawa decided “Native handicrafts” might have commercial value.
They meant hand-carved trinkets for tourists. To help advance this plan to market curios, Martin was asked to carve something for the Canadian Pavilion at the New York World Fair. He was given a diagram for a carved arch. Instead, he made two totem poles. They were a sensation. Critics saw a powerful, globally important artistic tradition.
Martin’s poles were not just stupendous — they became the most photographed exhibit — they were subversive. Two mighty thunderbirds spread their wings, standing on the heads of giant grizzly bears, his family crest. Squatting at the bottom of this exhibition of strength, Canada’s symbols, two beavers.
Furious Canadian officials gave the poles to a New York Boy Scout troop to decorate a campground. But the soul box had been opened.
Martin died in Victoria on Aug. 16, 1962, having presided over the rebirth of an artistic tradition once pronounced dead. He lay in state in a carved yellow cedar coffin in his own big house at Thunderbird Park. Hundreds filed past in tribute in a traditional Kwakwaka’wakw ceremony. His pallbearers included cabinet ministers. His body was carried home by the HMCS Ottawa.