Totem Shame Poles

There are several types of ‘totem’ poles (i have a totem pole book)

One is often called a ‘shame pole.’ Think of the possibilities.

Example:https://alaskahistoricalsociety.org/about-ahs/150treaty/150th-resource-library/new-articles/the-seward-shame-pole-countering-alaskas-sesquicentennial/

“….In April 2017, a small crowd gathered in the totem park at Saxman, Alaska to dedicate a new version of a Tlingit totem pole known as the “Seward Pole.” The new pole, carved by Tlingit artist Stephen Jackson, replaced an older, deteriorated version, which was itself a replica of a nineteenth-century pole from Tongass Village. The original pole at Tongass was a shame pole, erected in the 1880s to ridicule Secretary of State William H. Seward for failing to repay the gifts he had received from Chief Ebbits, clan leader of the Taant’a kwáan Teikweidí and one of the most high-ranking men at Tongass Village. According to oral histories among the Taant’a kwáan Tlingit, Seward stopped at Tongass Village on a trip to Alaska in 1869 and was welcomed by Chief Ebbits with all the gravitas and gifts befitting a fellow high-ranking leader. But after several years went by and Seward “did not repay either the courtesy or the generosity of his hosts, the Seward shame pole [was erected] to remind the Tongass people of this fact.”

Renewing Seward’s shame pole in 2017 is significant, as it is the same year that the State of Alaska celebrates the 150th anniversary of the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867—a purchase largely orchestrated by William Seward. A few months after Tlingits dedicated the Seward shame pole in Saxman, a private party in Juneau dedicated a new bronze monument to Seward in the front of the State Capitol building. The speeches at the Juneau dedication hailed Seward’s vision for establishing an American territory in the North Pacific, even as they acknowledged that Seward ignored the claims of Indigenous people to the lands he claimed to buy. But there was no mention of the Seward shame pole that had been erected a few months earlier in Saxman, a pole that protested Seward’s lack of recognition of Indigenous peoples at an early point in Alaska’s U.S. history.

The original version of the pole was erected at Tongass sometime in the 1880s, more than a decade after Seward had visited the Taant’a kwáan village, and after it was clear that he was not coming back to reciprocate the honors of the 1869 potlatch. The original pole depicted Seward at the top of a plain shaft; he wore a hat carved to look like a spruce root potlatch hat (perhaps a symbol of his attendance at the potlatch) and sat on a bentwood box (perhaps a pointed reference to the many gifts he had received as Ebbits’s guest of honor). According to most accounts, Seward’s face on the totem pole was painted white, and his ears and nostrils red as a mark of shame….see link…”