Aging totem pole removed from B.C. museum

VICTORIA — Dancers circled an aging totem pole that tells the story of a murdered Haida woman before it was hooked to a crane and gently lowered to the ground on Wednesday.

The replica Haida mortuary totem stood at the Royal British Columbia Museum’s Thunderbird Park for almost 65 years, but engineers determined the pole suffered internal damage through exposure to the elements and was at risk of falling.

The ceremony was the second such gathering in recent days to bring down totems at the end of their life spans.

Haida chiefs stood next to the totem as Indigenous dancers and singers formed rings around the eight-metre tall pole, chanting and spreading eagle feathers.

“This piece can also be finally laid to rest,” said Haida Chief Allan Davidson.

“Historically, our poles, they weren’t carved to stand forever. This one is also going to finally go to its final resting place.”

Reg Young, a hereditary Haida chief, said the totem was carved to commemorate a woman who lived in the former village of Tanu in the late 1800s. The woman was shot while travelling on the San Juan Islands, located in Washington state waters near Vancouver Island.

Tanu, on Haida Gwaii, is a designated National Historic Site of Canada and is part of Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve.

Young said the amount of detail on the replica totem reveals the woman was highly regarded in the community.

“She must have been a very important person,” he said.

“The poles were like our literature. It showed who they were, where they came from and what crests belonged to them.”

Lucy Bell, head of the museum’s Indigenous collections and repatriation department, said mortuary poles have boxes at their tops to hold the deceased’s cremated remains. The Thunderbird Park totem had the mortuary box, a carved hawk, eagle, whale, beaver and crests of the deceased, and parts of hats, which are signs of wealth earned at potlatches, said Bell.