Master totem pole carver, TJ Sgwaayaans Young, has been in Wrangell since July. Originally from Hydaburg but resides in Anchorage, he has been guiding local Wrangell carvers on replicating a totem pole. This is the first of eight totem poles that the community plans to replicate.
“I am of the Yaadaas Eagle Beaver Clan out of Kasaan,” he said.
He mentors five apprentices at the Wrangell Cooperative Association’s Carving Shed. On this particular August day, hammering sounds with chisels and mallets filled the large open room where a long wooden totem laid horizontally on supports to keep it off the floor.
“This is the frog,” Young said. “We have Gunakadeit right here, Sandhill crane and sort of coming out of the feet, almost like it’s being held by the Sandhill Crane, is this frog, and so I’m working on the eye right here.”
Each totem will take about four months to complete
Young has been carving for about 25 years and has worked up and down the coast, from Juneau to Seattle, with many artists. His mentor is totem pole master carver Robert Davidson, and these days, since 2016, Young has been serving as a mentor to other carvers.
“I’m really appreciating the master, apprentice, mentor aspect part of it,” he said. “I didn’t realize how important that was in the development of an artist or a person in general, just having a mentor.”
He said serving as a mentor here in Wrangell is his sixth or seventh project with actual apprentices.
“I can kind of figure out what their weaknesses and strengths are; and just try to move them to whatever the next step is for them,” Young said.
Young arrived in Wrangell in early July; WCA expects another mentor to arrive soon to mentor apprentices on a second totem. They’ll be between 35 and 37 feet tall and will take about four months each to complete.
The Kadashan pole represents the repatriated staff-a gift to Chief Kadashan
One of Young’s apprentices, Mike Hoyt, said he grew up around woodworking.
“My Tlingit names are Aak’wtaatseen and Gashx,” Hoyt said. “I’m Teeyhittaan from here in Wrangell. My family’s been in Wrangell for generations upon generations upon generations, a lot of whom were carvers.”
Both his dad and grandfather were carpenters. But his great, great, great grandpa carved a lot of poles in Wrangell and his son, Hoyt’s great great grandpa, Tom Ukas, carried on with his father’s art.
“I’d try things out here and there,” Hoyt said. “Then in the last year or so in preparation for this project, I wanted to make sure that I would be ready for the project. And so I’d probably carve maybe an hour or two a day. And some days a lot longer than that.”
“…some oral history says it’s probably raised about 1830s.”
The totem they’re currently working on is the Kadashan pole. It represents a staff that was a gift to Chief John Kadashan from Haida relatives. Historians assume before 1868.
“He was part of the Kaasx̱ʼagweidí clan here in Wrangell,” Hoyt said. “Now their origins stem back to Haida Gwaii, and they migrated up and they stopped in Kassan, where they became part of the Yáadaas clan, which I think is really great that TJ is working on this, because that’s his clan.”
The staff signifies the relationship between Kadashan’s family, Haida Gwaii and the Kaasx̱ʼagweidí clan here in Wrangell.
“The earliest photos we have of Wrangell that I’m aware of, at least, are from 1868 and it includes the Kadashan pole,” Hoyt said. “It looks fairly newish, I think in those photos, like you can see paint on it still. And some oral history says it’s probably raised about 1830s.”
“…that is a mythical figure known as Gunakadeit.”
The original Kadashan pole stood until the 1920s; carvers replicated it entirely in 1940. Hoyt said the replica stood until about 2010.
“It has an eagle on the top, but it is a Raven clan, and that eagle has two Tin’aa, or copper shields, below,” he said. “Then the next figure below, that is a mythical figure known as Gunakadeit.”
He said another major figure is a sandhill crane and two smaller figures which are a frog at the feet of the crane and a bear or wolf on top of the crane.
“That’s one where, when we get the staff, which was recently repatriated from the Oakland Museum, it’ll be really good for us to be able to look at that in more detail,” Hoyt said. “It’ll be a lot better to have it in front of us and be able to look at it.”
The other totem that the apprentices will carve is the Strongman pull. The original totem stood on Shakes Island and belonged to the Naanyaa.aayí clan.
“I can’t remember exactly how the figures are arranged, but I believe the top figure is a human with a hat on,” Hoyt said. “Then below that I want to say it is Strongman himself, or Dukt’ootl is one of the names that he goes by.”
The strongman is tearing a sea lion in half. Like most poles in Wrangell, carvers replicated it in 1940. Now it’s at the carving shed. The Wrangell Museum has the original.
“…they wanted an Eagle pole and a Raven pole for balance.”
Wrangell Cooperative Association’s Tribal Administrator Esther Aaltséen Reese said the tribe received over a half million dollars in funding from the Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy. The goal of the grant was to promote a sustainable economy within Southeast Alaska.
“We were really excited to get a total of $660,000 for a lot of different projects, but this one was a very exciting project,” she said. “We got half a million. We did get some feedback that Wrangell had the very best proposal to the SAS funding, which was very exciting. And also want to acknowledge that the Forest Service was an amazing collaborator with us.”
Reese said the totem pole project is part of a three-part project that began in 2011. The first part was the replication of Chief Shakes House. The second was building the cultural center, or carving shed. The third is the replication of the totems on Shakes Island. Sealaska Corporation donated three logs to the Shtaxʼhéen Ḵwáan Totem Restoration Project. She said the tribal council looked to clan leaders to get their input on which of the eight totems to replicate for this project.
“The clan leaders decided that they wanted an Eagle pole and a Raven pole for balance,” she said. “So the Strongman pole was chosen as the Eagle pole and the Kadashan as the Raven pole. It was also very meaningful that the Kadashan staff was being repatriated.”
Storytelling and encouraging youth in Native arts
She said the tribe’s goal is to raise their own carvers here in Wrangell.
“We want the kiddos to be coming in to look at the project, watch the project as it’s progressing and try to interest some of our youth in carving so they can see TJ working with the apprentices and try to encourage more kiddos to get involved in our Native arts,” Reese said.
She said there’s another goal with the totems as well, which involves storytelling.
“TJ was talking about how our totems were our books,” Reese said. “We don’t have a written language, but they [totems] told our stories or our books. My goal would be to have the school kids know the stories of these totems before they’re raised and then when we do have the totem raising, they’ll have that interest, that connection.”
She said this will be the first totem pole raising in 37 years.
“Now that we’re going, I don’t want it to stop,” Reese said. “I want to get all of them carved.”
Two female apprentices helped adze Chief Shakes House over a decade ago
Another feature of the totem pole replication is that two of the five apprentices are women. They helped adze Chief Shakes House during its replication over a decade ago. Adzes are similar to axes that are used for carving wood. At that time, it was a big deal for women to carve and they had to get permission from the Council.
“There was a handful of us that just kept volunteering and volunteering. They were going to hire two apprentices and they hired three of us, and we were all women,” apprentice Linda Churchill said. “And a woman is not to touch a man’s tool because that’s a life taker…but in the 20 thousands, you know, it’s 20 thousand, it’s time.”
She said that she’s worked on her own adzing projects between. She’s also working on benches at Chief Shakes Island.
“I love adzing,” Churchill said just before she began chiseling away the wood with the adze. “It shuts your mind off when you’re working. You aren’t worried about anything and it’s hard to shut your mind off from just everyday thoughts. My dad was an adzer, and so I grew up listening to him and watching him.”
Master Carver Young, who’s here for a couple more months, said all the apprentices are doing pretty well and that he’s proud of them.
