> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://theparnassian.com/en/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# I have read two items in the official information bulletin of the Haida people, who live on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, Canada, devoted to the return of totem poles
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/prochital-v-ofitsialnom-informatsionnom-biulletene-korennogo-naroda-khaida-zhivushchego-na-arkhipelage-khaida-guai-v-britanskoi-kolumbii-v-kanade-dva-materiala-posviashchionnykh-vozvras/
- Published: 2026-08-21T10:03:09.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:25:22.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Observations, Heritage, Ethnography

One article tells how the village of Sgaang Gwaay Llnagaay, which was emptied in the 1880s by epidemics, still has more than thirty ceremonial poles with figures of bears and killer whales, carved from cedar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The poles marked families and served as memorials to the dead. Five of them were carried off in the 1930s, and they ended up first in Prince Rupert, then in the Royal British Columbia Museum and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Formally, the Haida secured the return of the removed totems as long ago as 1976 and 2019\. In practice, however, the poles came back only this spring: they were delivered by sea and then carried one by one by helicopter. A few weeks later elders and descendants of the villagers arrived at the site with a procession, a ceremonial burning of food, songs and stories of their history.

The second piece covers the mass revival of the totem pole tradition since 2001, when six poles were raised at once in Kay Llnagaay. In the spring, for instance, a small three-metre pole by Michael Moody was put up, commissioned by a local bank for the lobby of its branch. Carved on the pole are Wasgo, the sea wolf, and the Deep-Sea Frog, which, according to Haida tradition, brings good luck and accompanies supernatural beings. The Skidegate council, for its part, announced a competition and commissioned three monumental poles, 12 to 13 metres tall, for the national celebration, the composition to include Raven, Eagle, the Three Watchmen and a supernatural being. A pole of such a size ordinarily takes about ten months, yet in this case the work was done in four and a half. The subjects of the totems are most interesting. The Sacred Standing-and-Moving One, taller than Wasgo, with the Mouse-Woman between his ears, on the ears a Raven with a loon's head turned downwards, above him an Eagle, and the Three Watchmen at the top. Frog, Raven, Raven turning into a man, Eagle and the Three Watchmen. Eagle in the guise of a chief, Thunderbird, Wasgo, Raven in the guise of a chief and again the Three Watchmen at the top