Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« I Have a Joke | Stupid, Stupid Jon Huntsman »

Monday, January 16, 2012

Visual Art Currently Hanging: Raymond Boisjoly's Pioneer Square Totem Pole

Posted by Jen Graves on Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 11:06 AM

Courtesy of the artist and Lawrimore Project
Expanding Fields by Raymond Boisjoly

At the turn of the 20th century, the identity of the barely formed city of Seattle depended on a single visual symbol: the totem pole. Postcards bearing the image of the Alaskan totem pole that was erected in Pioneer Square in 1899 traveled the world, expressing "Seattleness" for all to see.

A totem pole still stands in Pioneer Square. It's not the first edition, which contained the cremains of a revered Tlingit woman; it had been chopped down and stolen from an Alaskan village, then was set ablaze by arsonists, who were never caught, one night in 1938. Seattle was not Seattle without the pole, so city fathers sought Tlingit carvers to do a remake. They happened upon the best-known local carvers in the tradition playing baseball, which seemed too American, not native enough, so the work was outsourced to some Tlingits still living in Alaska—to whom many relocated Tlingits would send money they earned from doing tourist-based work like carving in Seattle. None of the Salish tribes—the tribes of this land—carve totem poles at all. The symbol that meant Seattle was imported, burned, then reimported, until finally it was replaced by a flying saucer on legs.