Totem poles

What Totem poles is and who made them?
Totem poles are marvellous sculptures caved in trees, usually cedar; they are mainly carved by the Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. The word “Totem” derived from the word odoodem, “his kind ship group.”
The Totem poles go back till the 1700s, as the Native people developed metal tools. The aboriginal Totem poles from South-eastern Alaska and Northwest Pacific coast carved larger and larger Totem poles. Before carved the Totem poles are the sizes of walking cane.
The key thing to think about the art on the Totem poles is the traditional faces, figures and stories which date back perhaps thousands of years ago. After contact with the Europeans, the tools improved meaning the size of the Totem poles will increase.
What do Totem poles mean?
Before contact, other Natives in this part of the world had a different kinship system than we have today. Each Totem pole severed as the emblem as a family or clan, its unity, the rights to which people in each clan were entitled to, as a reminder each clans are link to a spirit-ancestor.
Originally the Totem poles were usually carved as a Potlatch ceremony, a great and complex feast with deep to costal First Nation. There was a period between 1900 and 1950, for various reasons only a few Totem poles were carved. But still during the slow period the tradition was still kept alive and well.

In the past times Totem poles were raised for several reasons:
 To show the great number of rights a person had acquired over their life time.
 To record an encounter with a supernatural being.
To symbolize a person who sponsored the Potlatch ceremony.
Do Native people still make Totem Poles?
Totem poles are still carved till the present day. Today the Totem poles are created for both Natives and non Natives. The poles have come to represent more than kinship system. The Totem poles represents the Northwest pacific coast Native tradition and pride.
Where are Totem poles carved today?
Today the land of the Totem people are Known as:
 South-Eastern, Alaska U.S.A; 2) Coastal British Columbia [B.C] Canada, and North Washington State U.S.A. that’s were the Totem poles really came from.
 Since the 1930s, when Native crafts were considered a good way for Indigenous people to make money, other Native tribes have borrowed the tradition. But it is not original to them.
All of the art on the Totem poles are animals .E.g. eagle, fox, frog, owl, monkey etc.