One of the totem poles in Vancouver’s Stanley Park was moved to the University of B.C.’s Museum of Anthropology on Wednesday.
The Kakaso’las totem pole has been on loan to Vancouver’s largest park since 1985, according to the city’s park board. Now that loan has expired, and it returned to the Museum of Anthropology (MOA).
It is six metres tall, and features many important figures in Kwakwaka’wakw culture: the thunderbird, a sea-bear holding an orca, a man holding a frog, Bak’was (the wild man of the woods), Dzunuk’wa (giant of the woods) and a raven.
Kakaso’las was carved by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Ellen Neel in 1955. The Alert Bay-born artist made waves at the time for being one of the first female carvers to find success in a traditionally male-dominated space.
Neel passed away in 1966.
Her family say it’s best that the totem pole be moved to an indoor location at the MOA in order to preserve it for decades to come.
Lou-ann Neel, Ellen’s granddaughter, is an artist herself. She says the pole is actually named after her grandmother’s traditional name.
“There may have been an assumption that that was what the the pole was named, and it just came to be called that after a while,” she told Gloria Macarenko, host of CBC’s On The Coast.
“We didn’t have a problem with it because it still associated the pole with my grandmother.”
Neel says her grandmother challenged colonial narratives that “women don’t carve,” and she was very strong in her cultural ways.
The Kakaso’las pole will now be moving to UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. Lou-ann Neel, the granddaughter of the totem pole’s carver Ellen Neel, spoke about how significant the pole is to her family.
Carved for department store
The Vancouver Park Board says Kakaso’las was carved in Ellen Neel’s Ferguson Point studio in Stanley Park, as part of a commission for Woodward’s department store.
It was initially placed at the Westmount Shopping Centre in Edmonton, before being donated to the MOA in 1984. Ellen’s son Robert Neel helped restore the pole, according to the park board, before it was placed at Brockton Point in Stanley Park.
“She was really a visionary for the future of contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw art,” Lou-ann said of her grandmother. “She was prepared to try any material any time … so she made quite a few things.”
Lou-ann says that spending time with her grandmother’s vast body of work helped her to understand her own artistic style, and she recently has taken up carving herself.
In response to questions about why the pole was going to the MOA — and not being repatriated to Neel’s home territory, Lou-ann said she wanted to honour her grandmother’s business affairs as the pole was originally a commission.
In addition, she says that there just wasn’t room to put a large number of totem poles in her home community, and it took time and money to house returned treasures — something she says a lot of First Nations communities are working on now.
“Maybe someday this pole will make its way back into our territory. I hope that I get to see that if it does happen,” she said. “In the meantime, we have a lot of confidence and good friendships with the people at the Museum of Anthropology.”