Totem Pole

04 Sep 2006

When I was growing up, 'indian' meant tee-pees, scalping and totem poles. So when I first went to British Columbia and heard the local ancestral natives were indians, it made sense that I'd see native art and totem poles around the place. It wasn't until later that I discovered that totem poles weren't used by all native american cultures, really only those along the Pacific northwest. Funny how one cultural reference becomes your impression for the whole. (They probably didn't all scalp people either.)

Anyway, this is a totem pole on the north shore in Vancouver. There were some more brightly coloured ones, including ones with outstretched wings, but they were all set too close together for me to get a clean shot of just one so I opted for this one off to the side by itself. - I love wood carvings, they always amaze me.

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