Totem poles are monumental carvings, a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia.
Chinook Jargon is a language originating as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest. It spread during the 19th century from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then British Columbia and parts of Alaska, Northern California, Idaho and Montana while sometimes taking on characteristics of a creole language. It is partly descended from the Chinook language, upon which much of its vocabulary is based. Approximately 15 percent of its lexicon is French, and it also makes use of English loanwords and those of other language systems. Its entire written form is in the Duployan shorthand developed by French priest Émile Duployé.
Robert Charles Davidson, OC, OBC, is a Canadian artist of Haida heritage. Davidson's Haida name is G̲uud San Glans, which means "Eagle of the Dawn". He is a leading figure in the renaissance of Haida art and culture. He lives in White Rock, British Columbia.
Viola E. Garfield was an American anthropologist best known for her work on the social organization and plastic arts of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia and Alaska.
Dempsey Bob, OC is a Northwest Coast woodcarver and sculptor from British Columbia, Canada, who is of Tahltan and Tlingit First Nations descent. He was born in the Tahltan village of Telegraph Creek on the Stikine River in northwestern B.C., and is of the Wolf clan.
Freda Diesing was a Haida woman of the Sadsugohilanes Clan, one of very few female carvers of Northwest Coast totem poles and a member of the Council of the Haida Nation of British Columbia, Canada. Her Haida name is Skil Kew Wat, meaning "magical little woman."
Oscar William Holm Jr. was an American art historian and author, focused on Indigenous Northwest Coast art. He created artworks and taught Northwest Coast style, including formline design. He was Professor Emeritus of Art History, and Curator Emeritus of Northwest Coast Indian Art at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and occasionally lectured at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Charles Edenshaw was a Haida artist from Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. He is known for his woodcarving, argillite carving, jewellery, and painting. His style was known for its originality and innovative narrative forms, created while adhering to the principles of Formline art characteristic of Haida art. In 1902, the ethnographer and collector Charles F. Newcombe called Edenshaw “the best carver in wood and stone now living.”
Walter Harris, also known as Simogyet Geel, was a Canadian artist and hereditary chief from the Gitxsan (Gitksan) First Nation in northwestern British Columbia.
Northwest Coast art is the term commonly applied to a style of art created primarily by artists from Tlingit, Haida, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and other First Nations and Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast of North America, from pre-European-contact times up to the present.
David A. Boxley is an American artist from the Tsimshian tribe in Alaska, most known for his prolific creation of Totem Poles and other Tsimshian artworks.
Joe David is a Nuu-chah-nulth artist, a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht Band of the Nuu-chah-nulth people, also formally "adopted" into the Haida people, whose work is identified with the contemporary Northwest Coast art movement; among his close associates are teacher and art historian Bill Holm, Duane Pasco, and his cousin Ron Hamilton. He is also a singer of traditional Nuu-chah-nulth songs, and has a strong interest in shamanic traditions, both those from his own culture and from others.
Alaska Native cultures are rich and diverse, and their art forms are representations of their history, skills, tradition, adaptation, and nearly twenty thousand years of continuous life in some of the most remote places on earth. These art forms are largely unseen and unknown outside the state of Alaska, due to distance from the art markets of the world.
Fort Tongass was a United States Army base on Tongass Island, in the southernmost Alaska Panhandle, located adjacent to the village of the group of Tlingit people on the east side of the island. Fort Tongass was the first US Army base established in Alaska following its purchase from the Russian Empire in 1867 and was garrisoned by the 2nd U.S. Artillery under the command of Captain Charles H. Peirce. Historian Hubert Howe Bancroft notes: "the site was well chosen, containing a plentiful supply of timber and pasture, while fish and game abound in the neighbourhood.
Chief William Jeffrey was a Canadian hereditary Tsimshian Chief, First Nations activist and carver. He attended residential school from 1914 to 1917. Though he desired to be a lawyer, his status as a First Nations person and government policy at the time prevented him from attending college for any profession other than the clergy.
Robert James "Jim" Schoppert was an Tlingit Alaska Native artist and educator. His work includes woodcarving, painting, poetry, and essays. He has been described as an innovator, whose works pushed the boundaries of what was expected from Northwest Coast art.
Michael Bonsignore is an American businessman. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Honeywell. In 2004, he was elected to the National Geographic Society board of trustees. He is the owner of a Stonington Gallery in Seattle, which showcases contemporary masterworks by artists in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska working in indigenous traditions.
Doug Cranmer (1927–2006), also known as Pal'nakwala Wakas and Kesu', was a Kwakwaka'wakw carver and artist as well as a 'Namgis chief. Cranmer was a significant figure in the Northwest Coast art movement, both in its traditional form and in a modern contemporary form that he created and developed.
Phil Gray is a Canadian artist who specializes in wood carvings from the Tsimshian and Mikisew Cree communities. His work uses traditional technique and features imagery from legends. In 2014, Gray was awarded a British Columbia Creative Achievement Award in Aboriginal Art from the Government of British Columbia.
The Pioneer Square totem pole, also referred to as the Seattle totem pole and historically as the Chief-of-All-Women pole, is a Tlingit totem pole located in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, Washington.
