Totem Poles

This guide to the totem poles at Brockton Point in Vancouver's Stanley Park traces the story behind the Thunderbird House Post, carved by Kwakwaka'wakw artist Charlie James and now reproduced on souvenirs worldwide without his name attached. It follows his great-great-granddaughter Lou-ann Neel's account of that design, and the nine poles gathered here starting in the 1920s from Alert Bay and Haida Gwaii for a tourist-ready Indigenous village. Carving totem poles was celebrated even as Canada outlawed the potlatch ceremony that gave them their meaning.