Native Americans: Totem Pole Carvers and Their Work

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Who carved totem poles? What is their purpose? How were they constructed? Check your understanding by reading this web page.

Tasks:

1. Study the details in each of the photos below from the Everything Alaska site (http://www.everythingalaska.com).

2. Answer the questions next to the photo.

3. Click on the link to the site to learn about these specific poles. How did your observations match with the information provided? What questions do you have for the agency that designed this site?

4. Explore the link below both pictures called Totem Poles: First Nations in BC. The photos on these pages will show some of the original locations of the totem poles. Do these photos support your ideas about how totem poles and their importance? What new ideas can you add to your understanding of these works of art?

1. How would you describe the setting in which this totem pole is placed? Where in North America might you find this pole?

2. What do the details of the carving tell you about the artist and the culture?

3.Why do you think the carver designed this totem pole? Why were these figures selected?

4. Is this pole as tall as you might have expected it to be? Where or when might a pole this size have been used?

Thunderbird and Whale from the www.everythingalaska.com site.

1. Where do you think this building might be found? Why?

2. Why would the Native American's have constructed this building? Explain why you think the building was used for this purpose or these purposes?

3. What details of the design of the building seem important and why are they significant? What do they tell you about the people who used the building?

4. What do you think was the relationship between the people who used this building and nature?

Clan House from the www.everythingalaska.com site

More About Totem Poles

5. Totem poles are pieces of art as well as having cultural significance. Before you begin to study the carvings, learn about the tree that was used in these masterpieces. Western Red Cedar Trees were used for designing totem poles.

6. Watch a totem pole evolve from a tree to a wonderful work of art. In the following sections you will find a story told with photos of a totem pole being carved at Skidegate, Haida Gwaii. The pole is designed and carved by Guujaaw with assistance from Gwaii and Wayne Edenshaw. There are three main figures on the pole -- the bottom figure is a bear, the middle a killer whale, and the top is a thunderbird. Between the bears legs is a bear cub, in the whales mouth is a seal, and a frog sits atop the thunderbird. http://www.spruceroots.org/PoleSite/Haida.html

7. What does it mean to be "low man on the totem pole"? Is this a compliment or an insult? Find out!

8. Interested in Native American culture? Visit the Native American Website for Children designed by a third grade class in California. or The First Americans Project designed by Germantown Elementary School third grade students in Clinton, Illinois.

9. Visit the National Museum of the American Indian--it's part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.

Top Reviewed, 2003
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