The Treaties

Canada and the United States have a lot in common. It may not seem like that today in the year 2026 but they do. For sure. And "a lot in common" may be selling the situation way short. It might be "a whole lot" to "a ton" in common. And yes, a ton is more than a lot or a whole lot.

Shall we review a little? Think about it. Both nations were former British colonies that achieved independence from that nation. Both countries had Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean nation-building ambitions that were ultimately quite successful. Both countries courted the British colony of British Columbia to join their nation in the mid-1800s (although only one was ultimately successful). And both countries absolutely decimated the livelihood of those people who were on the North American continent before Europeans started landing on these shores and started taking every piece of land for themselves.

Didn't see that last one coming, maybe? Didn't think Canada and the United States had that in common? Oh they did. There's no doubt about that. There can be no understating just how brutal the conquering of this continent was by the white man both above and below the current Canada-United States border. The lives of those who were here before Europeans arrived in what is now North America were completely upended in absolutely the worst and most destructive way. 

Can't quite wrap your head around that one? Think about it this way. What if a heavily armed group of people with skin color a lot different that yours showed up at your door today, took possession of your house and all your belongings and money, handed you a snow shovel and told you that from now on you just needed to figure out how to survive with the clothes on your back and your snow shovel. Oh...and you can't sleep or take up residence on any public lands. How long would you last? Not too long, I'm guessing. I know I wouldn't. 

I don't know why I picked a snow shovel by the way. It just popped into my head. It could have been a set of andirons or a rechargeable leaf blower or anything, really.

The Forks, at the confluence of the Red River and Assiniboine River, Winnipeg.

Let's do a quick (and I do mean quick) historical overview of relations with First Nations (yes, I know that's typically a Canadian-only term) peoples north and south of the United States / Canada border, shall we?

Both the United States and Canada gave their federal government the right to regulate indigenous affairs. The United States did it through the Constitution; Canada did it through Royal Proclamation. That's cool, right? Countries passing laws and rules to allow them to govern people who happened to be living on land "owned" by the newly established nations without the say so of those people. Sounds good to me.

Both the United States and Canada negotiated treaties with indigenous peoples to define land owned by people of European descent and land designated for indigenous use. The catch on most of those treaties was that the governments of the United States and Canada either just didn't honor the conditions of the treaties or called for the treaties to be renegotiated when the government "made a mistake" in the original treaty (like not realizing there was gold in the Black Hills in what is now South Dakota when the original Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed).

Both the United States and Canada tried to systematically destroy indigenous culture particularly by (1) imposing western notions of land ownership on indigenous peoples; (2) causing the near extinction of the bison to remove food, shelter and meaning from indigenous life; (3) introducing deadly diseases into native communities for which there was no protection; and (4) forcibly removing indigenous children off reservations to attend special schools designed to foster assimilation into western society. These schools (called Residential Schools on both sides of the border) removed traditional clothing, required western haircuts and conferred western names on children while also prohibiting indigeous languages and religious practices. 

Know when indigenous people were granted the right to vote? In the United States, it was 1924. In Canada, it was 1960. 

Dog sledding with Wapusk Adventures, Churchill.

Having said all that, there are some differences between how those two countries view that history today.

I can't remember ever traveling within the United States anywhere and being apprised of how the land I was standing on was ceded to the United States government by treaty with an indigenous tribe. Maybe my memory is faulty here. I know I've seen land acknowledgements written in National Park properties and (of all places) in multiple buildings in downtown Chicago. But the specific treaty? And talked through it? Don't think so.

In Canada this summer? Different story. Our tour that took us to Churchill and Riding Mountain National Park started off with a spoken land acknowledgement and we talked about the treaties that conveyed the lands we were visiting pretty much every time we went somewhere new. Maybe it was the specific places we visited. Maybe it was our tour company's choice to emphasize this information. Maybe it's that we were traveling for a time with someone of First Nations ancestry. Maybe this sort of thing only occurs in Manitoba and not in other parts of Canada. 

But all that's not true. Because last summer when we were in Alberta we ran into the same thing, particularly at the Calgary Stampede and the Elbow River Camp set up at that event. We heard speeches listing various treaties (all numbered) acknowledging just how land was removed from First Nations control and handed over to Canada. It all seemed very civil but to me, it was somewhere between eye-opening, shocking and refreshing. Although after this year, I'm not sure it was as healthy a history as it was portrayed at the Elbow River Camp.

Elbow River Camp, Calgary Stampede. 2025.

So how many treaties were signed between Canada and First Nations people? 11. Treaties 1 through 7 were negotiated between 1871 and 1877 and the other four followed from 1899 to 1921. On our August trip we traveled over lands covered under Treaty 1 (1871), Treaty 2 (also 1871) and Treaty 5 (1875). 

Negotiated may be a term that's very generous to the Canadian government.

Know what Canada got out of all those treaties? A whole lot of land, that's what. And some other strange things like guarantees around violence towards Canadians and restricted alcohol use and control of all schooling on First Nation Reserves. Those last two things are just control measures, right? They are just oppressions. In exchange for all that land, the First Nations got a whole lot of land taken away, a little bit of cash, farming tools (for people who weren't generally farmers), the right to fish and hunt on lands they gave up and some schools. But they only got schools when the government of Canada decided it was appropriate.

So what does this effort to inform us about various treaties do? There's not really any context around the Treaties described when we are told what land we are standing on. We are just told we are now on Treaty [insert number here] land. The exact conditions of each Treaty aren't really described to the visitor. But at least it's a start. At least there's an acknowledgement that at one time, the country we are visiting negotiated an agreement (likely one-sided) with the people who were here before European people where the Europeans got the land in exchange for something which really ended up being nothing much.

Canadian history seems to be full of retroactive actions around the treatment of First Nations peoples and I guess from a certain point of view, it's better late than never. In 2008, the Canadian government launched a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to research and document the effects of the Residential School system. The finding of the Commission was that the Residential Schools amounted to cultural genocide and they issued recommendations to apologize for and correct the effects of those Schools. 

Of course most of the recommendations really amount to nothing much more that promised apology. There is nothing the government of Canada can do to un-do what they did. They can't go back and populate the plains full of bison; they can't un-kill all the people that we were wiped out by disease or just killed by white people; and they can't un-destroy all the culture that they tried to eradicate along the way. Apologies, unfortunately, are about all these are or can be.

The interior of the Itsanitaq Museum, Churchill. The Museum collects Inuit carving and artifacts.

Even if all of this stuff is an apology. I believe talking about all this is important when we travel. Even if we don't get into all the details. Even if we get biased versions of the truth, at least we are discussing it. We can go research the history on our own later if we want to, which is exactly what I have done to write this post. At least it's something different than we do in the United States. 

On this trip, we deliberately engaged with places and people that have been affected by the Numbered Treaties. A lot of this was decided by our tour company on an agenda which was handed to us. But we also visited other spots that maintained the same theme and we did it before we started our tour. This is something we care about engaging with so we appreciated our tour company's efforts to supplement the themes of our one day on our own in the Winnipeg area before the tour started.

All told, our engagement with the First Nations of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Riding Mountain National Park and Churchill included two museums; two historic properties; two cultural talks or activities; a couple of walks around towns or parts of cities; and some time on a dog sled. If the dog sled based on the picture above seems like just a ride in the woods on a sled pulled by a team of dogs (which it was on some level, and all rescue dogs by the way),  the business is First Nations / Métis owned and that's how First Nations people got around at one time. I mean it's not like there are roads all over Manitoba even today (it's actually impossible to drive to Churchill). Dogs pulling sleds over snow is far safer and more efficient that pretty much all other methods of transportation. 

We spent time listening to or in conversations with Anishinaabe, Sayisi Dene, Inuit and Métis peoples and we probably learned something from absolutely every talk whether it was who the Métis people were and are or how many calories a sled dog burns or how long it takes two men to build an igloo or something else. Horizons were broadened, which for me is most of the point of travel. 

And 12,000 calories per day is the answer to the dog question and less than an hour to build an igloo. But only if its the right kind of snow.

It is likely impractical to relay everything we learned talking with First Nations people so I'm picking one thing each from the three places we visited, starting with Riding Mountain National Park.

Pemmican

On one of our two afternoons in Riding Mountain National Park, we ventured over to Turtle Village, an off-the-grid camp which offers overnight accommodations and afternoon and evening storytelling sessions, including one to introduce visitors to pemmican, a kind of bison jerky that was created by drying out meat from a hunt; pounding it into powder; supplementing the powder with melted animal fat, fruit and spices; and then consolidating the mixture into what was described as the first ever power bar. If stored right, pemmican could last years (the timeline offered here was "decades") and was essential for survival during times when hunting wasn't possible.

We didn't actually make pemmican (that would have been a longer process than the hour or so we spent at Turtle Village) but we did each cook up a customized, personal mixture of dried fruits, nuts and spices based on our selection from a buffet table of local ingredients or ingredients that would have been available to First Nations people through trade, including dried saskatoon berries, peppercorns and maple syrup. I guess we ideally would have fashioned our personal concoction into a bar of some sort and taken it with us on a hunt but since we weren't hunting elk or bison or anything else on this trip, it became an afternoon snack eaten out of a tray. 

I'd never had saskatoons (which are blueberry-like) and I was surprised how soft both hazelnuts and peppercorns become when cooked quickly over a high-heat open flame. The demonstration emphasized the point of the necessity for drying out ingredients when plentiful to preserve foods for times when nothing was available. But it was also interesting to think about how First Nations people would have ingredients like cinnamon and peppercorns from far away available to them. It was also probably the healthiest food we ate all week.

The Métis

One of the differences between the United States' persecution of indigenous people and Canada's persecution of the First Nations people was that Canada managed to do their southern neighbors one better and extended their discrimination not only to First Nations, but anyone who actually interfaced with them in a positive way. Enter the Métis, a group of intermarried First Nations and European settlers with a distinct and unique national culture. 

The Métis became a thing when early fur traders in the new world (mostly French and Scottish) married First Nations women (primarily Cree). Over time, the descendants of these first marriages evolved into a community of people with their own language, music, flag and system of farming. Their farming was unique. It was based around long, narrow lots providing each property both with river access and close proximity to their neighbors. The Métis settled on land in Manitoba which was part of a massive area called Rupert's Land, which was basically the drainage basin of the Hudson Bay over which the Hudson's Bay Company had exclusive trading rights.

In 1868, the entirety of Rupert's Land was conveyed to the Dominion of Canada which then set about dividing the land into settlements, including the land already occupied by the Métis. The Métis leader, Louis Riel, led a series of resistance efforts to hamper the Canadian government's efforts to enforce various Proclamations, including those around land redistribution and (perhaps unbelivably) the sale of pemmican. Yes, there was a war waged over pemmican and restrictions on it's distribution. Insane, right?

We learned a little about the Métis at the Riel House National Historic Site in Winnipeg (shown above) including the events of the Pemmican War and the hanging of Louis Riel by the Canadian government. The Métis are still around today as a distinct and proud part of the population of Canada. They are remarkably visible if you look, which I guess is encouraging.

English, French and First Nations syllabics. On a commercial airline flight. 

Broken Promises

Our conversations with First Nations and Métis people in Manitoba was littered with acts of ethnic violence and promises by the Canadian government that were never fulfilled. We heard these stories in Riding Mountain National Park (the Anishinaabe were burned out of their homes by white settlers) and Winnipeg but we heard them most notably in Churchill from Florence Hamilton in a cultural presentation one night in Churchill. 

The thread of our discussion with Florence included a serious lack of personal cultural identity, pretty much all at the hands of the Canadian government. The Dene were forcibly relocated to the Churchill area and prohibited from participating in their annual caribou hunt starting in the in 1950s. The land they were assigned was leftover land and by the mid-1970s it was abandoned by the Dene. By that time, their ties to their past way of life was destroyed. As if that wasn't bad enough, Florence's mother was a Residential School survivor and she took the teachings to heart, raising Florence without connection to her people's background. I think that sometimes, we think people can recover from something like forced re-education. Apparently not.

It is difficult for those of us who are in the majority to understand these types of concepts sometimes but it's important to listen and see that other perspective. When asked if there was anything that the Canadian government could do to make things better going forward, she pretty much acknowledged that there was no fix. But she did hope that the government would just stick to the agreements that they already negotiated rather than ignoring them. It's not encouraging when your only hope for things not to get worse is for people who have historically broken promises to start keeping them.

An inuksuk, a traditional Inuit landmark, in front of the Itsanitaq Museum, Churchill.

I believe there is value in preserving what is unique and special about every place on our planet. I don't want everything to be the same wherever I go. Sometimes I feel I'm being selfish about this issue because I usually think of it in terms of food. By that I mean something like...I don't want KFC to be in every neighborhood in the whole world that I travel to but if people in Japan or Botswana or wherever it is want KFC, who am I to deny them?

It's a little more complicated for me when I move off the food analogy. But if our time in Canada this summer taught me anything, it's when the United States and (in the case of this post) Canada, imposed their sameness of dominant culture from coast to coast, it almost or completely destroyed some things that are valuable to not just tourists like me but others as well. And in this case, those others are the people who actually still remain from the culture that is conquered or overwhelmed or bypassed or whatever you want to call it and still feel there is value in being different.

So maybe everyone doesn't need access to pemmican so they can survive the winter when there's no hunting. Although with this summer's outbreak of diseased produce of all varieties here in the United States since we stopped apparently inspecting food, maybe I should be eating pemmican. But there IS value in being connected to our ancestors and the past whether that manifests itself in dog sledding through the woods or being able to hunt caribou or being able to farm in a way that's different than most people farm or even gathering fruits and nuts. We shouldn't destroy things just because they are not important to us personally. Eventually, it will matter to all of us.

The cover picture of this post is a detail from a painting called Arctic Apocalypse #2 by Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuvialuk Canadian artist. We found this work in the Winnipeg Art Gallery in downtown Winnipeg on the first full day of our trip. I think it makes a good cover post.

Eating healthily. Saskatoons, hazelnuts, peppercorns, maple syrup and a few other things.

Top Of The World

Through our first four full days in the Canadian Rockies in late June and early July we had visited or traveled through four Parks Canada National Parks. But it wasn't really that straightforward. We'd started out driving in Banff National Park and Yoho National Park but didn't stop in either. When we started our visits for real we visited Yoho first; then Banff; then Kootenay National Park (twice); then Yoho again; then Banff again; then Jasper National Park; and finally Banff a third time. 

Our goal was six Parks in five full days. So after all of that back and forth laid out above, we were down to a single full day remaining and two parks un-visited. Time to double up on Glacier National Park and Mount Revelstoke National Park. Last day, here we go!

So it's not like having two Parks to visit in the last day was an accident or anything. We planned it this way. Indeed, the very reason why we picked Golden, British Columbia as our home in the Rockies this year was so we could spend time in six Parks. And we planned all along to do Glacier and Mount Revelstoke in one single day. To visit the first four Parks, we headed east. To hit the last two, we'd head west.

So far, I've written and published these blog posts in the order we visited the Parks. If I did that with the last two Glacier would be first because we had to drive through that Park to get to Mount Revelstoke. But because we didn't actually do any park stuff in Glacier until the return trip, Revelstoke gets the five spot and Glacier gets saved for last. 

There's another reason Glacier is last but that's for another post.

I have to tell you Revelstoke didn't start out looking so promising. 

Our major planned stop in that Park was a drive to the top of its namesake mountain and the quick walk from the parking lot to the actual top of the mountain so we could see multiple peaks of the Canadian Rockies in all their glory all around us. Revelstoke appeared to us to be one of the only places where summiting the top of a mountain involved very little walking up. And being no mountaineers but finding a view like that too hard to pass on with little effort, we were all in.

The night before we were due to visit Revelstoke we checked the navapp to confirm the driving time and discovered bad news: the road to the summit wasn't open all the way to the top. We knew there would be the risk of snow still affecting access to the mountain top in early July which is why we pushed this park as late in our trip as possible. Finding out it was closed was a bit of a gut punch. But having no other plan, we figured we'd go anyway, make all the other stops we planned and see how far up the mountain we could get.

The view from halfway up Mount Revelstoke.

Our first stop in Mount Revelstoke National Park was at a place called Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk. We needed a stop along the way and I'd never seen a skunk cabbage. That and a reasonable length on the walk at that point seemed like a good break in the drive. 

It didn't work. We saw no skunk cabbages. We saw no boardwalk. We walked in the woods until we got to a sign telling us we could proceed no further. "End of Trail" was the actual message. No explanation other than that. But no cabbages. And no walk. Stop number one closed down  and our directions to the summit of Mount Revelstoke still having us stopping short. Not looking good!

And while we didn't know it at the time we stopped at Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk, our planned stop at Giant Cedars Boardwalk on the way back was also closed. Three planned stops. Three closed stops. I'm telling you...Mount Revelstoke didn't start out looking so promising.

The path to Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk. Only...no skunk cabbages and no boardwalk.

Then we got a break. That information that the road to the summit of Mount Revelstoke was closed? Turned out it was false. The internet is not always right. Shocker, I know. We rolled right through the Park gate and started the long, slow climb up that zig zag road to the top-most parking lot but we were on our way. 

And to be perfectly clear, the top-most parking lot was closed, so we really went to the next top-most parking lot. That meant a little more walking than we planned on this one. And of course, there were multiple, multiple signs about bears. Ugh! Are you kidding me? Why is the summit parking lot not open?

There were no bears. Who are we kidding?

Wildflowers? Is this it?

The signature attraction at the summit of Mount Revelstoke is apparently meadows and meadows of wildflowers. And of course, because I used the word "apparently" in the prior sentence, we did NOT see meadows and meadows of wildflowers. But that does not mean Mount Revelstoke was a disappointment. 

First, while we didn't see really very many wildflowers at all, you could tell they were coming. There were little orange and yellow flowers dotting the sides of the road to the summit. If these are the first ones to emerge and they are going to be followed by many, many more of the same sorts of things, I bet they are spectacular. And yes, I know I'm projecting the whole thing here and there might never be more than we found by the side of the road. 

We have a whole list of "next time" things to see in the Canadian Rockies. The wildflowers on Mount Revelstoke might have to be added to that list. Although if we are staying in Jasper "next time", it's going to be tough to get all the way to Mount Revelstoke. 

Second, the summit was incredible. Yes, it took more walking than we planned and I'm convinced we took about the most indirect route we could take that took us through what looked like remote back country (and therefore possibly filled with bears...I know, I'm fixated a bit here) but was really a stone's throw from the nearest paved road. At the very top of the mountain, there's an old historic fire lookout and it really is worth the very non-stressful (totally serious) final climb. You may have to scramble over some snow to get there but it really is an awesome view. There are mountains in that Rocky Mountain range all around you and it is a super clear 360 degree view. There is nothing else in the way of that view on the top of the mountain.

Third, there's a Native American art trail near the top of the mountain called First Footsteps. Any time we get to explore art created by the descendants of the original inhabitants of this continent of ours we feel privileged. And seeing sculpture and other works of art against the natural background of the Canadian Rockies is just an amazing setting. I mean we are on top of a mountain for crying out loud.

The real joy here was the summit. Of all the mountain views we'd been gazing and gawking at all week, the ones we got from the top of Mount Revelstoke were by far the most expansive and distant. We really got a sense of how far this range that we'd been exploring for the better part of a week covered. And we knew we couldn't see far enough to see all of what we'd driven through and past and in for the four days prior to our mountain topping. 

But ain't it always the small things that put experiences over the top just a little bit.

In 2011, some Parks Canada employees at Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland decided to drop 18 pairs of red Adirondack chairs somewhere in the Park for people to discover. They picked some iconic, but also some obscure, places to locate these seats. Some could be stumbled upon easily; others would take a little more work or would be more out of the way.

It became sort of a thing. Today, there are more than 400 red Adirondack chairs scattered about all over the wilds of Canada. We had maybe 10 or 12 approximate locations on our itinerary where we could find a pair or two (or 10 or 12, I guess). Yet after four plus days spending at least 60% of our waking hours in Parks Canada National Parks, not a single red chair was discovered. Until Mount Revelstoke.

Yep, on our walk to the summit, just as we reached the upper (closed) parking area, we looked to our right and there was our first pair of red chairs. Pointed towards one of those gorgeous views at the top of the mountain. We climbed up to the old fire watch and then on the way back down the mountain, spent five minutes or so looking out over the Rockies from a red chair each.

And after we drove, struck out at Cabbage Skunk Boardwalk, summited and sat, we had some lunch. Packed lunch, of course!

We first started packing lunch on National Park trips in 2020 during COVID. We sort of had to. Between closed restaurants and not wanting to get sick, we started hitting the grocery store in whatever town we were staying at, got up 15 or so minutes earlier than usual every day and made a sandwich and threw some chips and maybe a couple of other things in a lunch bag. We love it. It allows us to stop wherever we want when we are hungry and pick somewhere gorgeous to just sit and recharge with some food. 

Our choice at Mount Revelstoke was the spot below, right next to a clear mountain lake that I feel pretty confident in saying is all snow melt run off. It was peaceful and calm and sunny and the Parks Canada folks had managed to place a picnic table right next to it so we could sit and eat. We packed lunch on fours days on this vacation. This spot was my favorite. And that along with four of five other things made Revelstoke memorable.

Mount Revelstoke didn't go exactly to plan. I still wonder about those wildflowers. But it was pretty amazing all the same. While we were eating, we talked to a woman who was clearly admiring how brave we were for eating right out in the open near a lake with no escape route in bear country. She told us she was deathly afraid of bears. Yep! On some level, I guess we all are. By that time we'd seen enough of western Canada to take a pretty good educated guess that we weren't going to be seeing any bears during our lunch stop. We ended up being right.

Lunch view. Table for two lakeside, please.

Totem Poles

A long time ago, Raven and his two slaves built a camp at the mouth of a river. Towards the end of the year, they went out fishing to stock up for the winter but could catch nothing to keep them fed through the cold months. One day a woman appeared to them out of the fog that had set in that day. Neither raven nor his slaves saw her approach. She knew they were hungry so she asked raven for his hat, which she then turned upside down and out of the fog in the hat drew some salmon. These were the first salmon ever created.

Raven took the woman back to his camp and married her and she produced salmon for him and his slaves every day. Eventually raven started to take his wife for granted and became critical of her. In a moment of anger one day, he argued with her and hit her and she fled from him. He followed and tried to grab her but each time he closed his arms they went right through her, like she was made of fog. She ran until she reached the water and then kept going into the sea where she disappeared and took the salmon with her.

There are variations of the story of fog woman up and down the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Canada and Alaska. In some versions, fog woman is a chief's daughter who grants raven the right to marry. The story explains the origin of the salmon that are a critical part of the diet for peoples who have lived in that area of the world. Every spring when the fog returns to the land from the ocean, it is fog woman returning along with the salmon who start making their way upstream to their traditional spawning grounds.

Fog woman with salmon. Raven sits above her; the two slaves are below. Totem Bight State Park, Ketchikan.

When I was a kid growing up in England, I played with toy cowboys and toy indians. I'm not placing any value judgment on that activity; I'm just stating it as a fact. Back in the 1970s in England, I was fascinated by America and that for sure included the old west. I loved watching western themed shows and movies on the limited television we could get back then. At some point I'm sure I couldn't get enough of cowboys and indians.

Among the sheriffs and braves and outlaws and chiefs in my toy collection, there was a totem pole, something I probably at that time assumed was placed in the middle of every native American camp back in the 1800s or whenever I imagined the battles between these two sides were happening. I am fairly positive that the toys I owned as a kid were intended to depict the native Americans that lived on the plains of the central United States, nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples who lived in tepees. I believe this because I know I owned a toy tepee for my toy indians (I promise that will be the last time I use that term) to stand outside and fight off the cowboys.

Sometimes it takes a while for you to erase the beliefs you held as a child. Over the past almost four decades I've lived in this country I've been to a number of former or current native American communities, mostly the pueblo cultures in the American southwest. Not once did I ever see a totem pole in any of the places I visited. I wasn't particularly looking for them but they for sure weren't there. They never existed. Not in that part of the country. My toys were wrong.

In the last 40 years, I didn't question the toys I played with as a child because I probably just wasn't thinking about whether totem poles were carved by the Sioux or the Zuni or the Iroquois or whomever else I supposed I was playing with back then. Now I have. It took a trip to Vancouver and Alaska to make me think of this again. The reason my toys were wrong is simple: the native Americans who carved totem poles weren't on the great plains or the deserts of the southwest or the forests of New England. They were in the Pacific northwest. And that's the only place you can find true totem poles in their original locations today or at any other time.

Salish Grandparents and Grandchildren Gateway, Stanley Park, Vancouver.

Among the First Nations peoples, the carving of totem poles was a practice limited to six native American groups: the Chinook, Coast Salish, Bella Coola, Haida, Tsimshian and Tlingit. The range covered by these peoples stretched from present day southern Oregon or maybe northern California in the south all the way north to just above the top of the Alaska panhandle. I've listed the tribes in order from south to north in this paragraph. 

These people didn't live in tepees like the toys I owned in England; they lived in long wooden communal houses called plank houses which held about 40-50 people or so, usually associated with a single clan. In the center of these houses was typically a fire pit around which the family would gather on cold nights. A village would be comprised of a number of these plank houses. Their lifestyles and living habits were shaped by the geography and climate where they lived. It was cold in winter which required sturdy dwellings that could be heated in winter. And cedar, a most durable wood building material, was plentiful for building these houses. 

In front of their plank houses, you would frequently find a totem pole. In some cases the house itself might have a totem pole integrated into the construction and maybe used to hold the roof of the house aloft or denote the entrance to the dwelling. Or sometimes the poles would be shared in between houses or erected in a village for a festival. 

I admit I am fascinated by totem poles, so a trip up the Canadian and Alaskan coast had to include a visit or two or three to see different types of poles in the area of the world that they were first invented. Before I set off for the beginning of our trip in Vancouver, Canada, I admired these things as works of art. On a basic level these poles are composed of graphically striking and brightly colored animal and human figures stacked on top of one another (not really stacked, but carved out of a single tree to resemble that). On a deeper level they must have some sort of symbology to them. I was determined to find out more by the time I disembarked from our boat at the end of our journey.

Seven totem poles at Brockton Point. Stanley Park, Vancouver.

Our totem pole journey started in Stanley Park, a large green space just to the northwest of downtown Vancouver. Towards the eastern tip of the park, known as Brockton Point, there is a collection of a dozen or so totem poles and gateways of various origins, or more accurately, carved in a few different styles. Totem poles don't last forever, so the poles in Stanley Park are not works from a hundred or more years ago but are instead either copies of earlier poles or original works in the style of a particular tribe. If you are staying in downtown Vancouver, Brockton point is a good 45 to 60 minute walk depending on where you are staying, but it's an easy flat stroll and totally worth the effort.

Most of the poles in this location have a plaque explaining its origin or style, what exactly is carved and the meaning of each different symbol or animal or figure. In reading each plaque and studying each totem pole, we started to notice similar images on more than one pole: ravens, eagles, thunderbirds, halibut, killer whales (or orca), bears, wolves, beavers and frogs. In addition to the birds, fish and mammals that are indigenous to the area, there are human figures: tribal chiefs; or symbols of men or women or children; or figures from mythology of the region like fog woman.

Each pole generally tells a story, whether it's of a particular tale with a plot like the story of raven and fog woman or the history of the family or individual who commissioned the pole or in whose honor it was carved and erected. Families were usually associated with particular animals and in some cases the members of the family believed they were descended from the wolf or the bear or the raven or some other creature. It would all be laid out in the totem pole.

Three totem poles at the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary, Ketchikan. Spot the octopus, beaver and snow crab.

Stanley Park is a great place to start a journey to learn about all these symbols because there are a significant number of poles of different origins and functions together in one spot. There are modern and ancient poles. There are poles that were self supporting and those which held up part of a plank house. There are also special purpose poles, like a mortuary pole which held the remains of a great chief. You can appreciate the breadth of meaning of both the poles and the individual characters on each pole.

From Vancouver, you might want to head north to Ketchikan, Alaska (we did!) which is located on Revillagigedo Island several hundred miles to the north of Vancouver. A drive will take you about 25 hours or so. The best way to get there may be by boat or plane. When you arrive you will find an area which boasts more totem poles than any other spot in the world. 

Totem poles are seemingly everywhere around Ketchikan. Take your pick of wandering around downtown and looking at the few located in that area (including the totem pole from the page numbered 25 in the U.S. passport) or spending time at the Totem Heritage Center about a half a mile northeast of town or one of the couple of parks located on the Island dedicated to totem poles. There are buses running through Ketchikan and to the north and south so all these spots are accessible via public transportation for free (in the downtown area) or a couple of bucks each way (if you are headed further afield).

We opted to head north on the Silver Line bus for 40 minutes or so to Totem Bight State Park, a spot on the west coast of the Island with a walking trail and 14 poles of Haida or Tlingit origin or tradition as well as a replica of a Tlingit clan house or plank house, which gave us an opportunity to understand the places where the carvers and their families traditionally lived.

Tlingit clan house with a totem pole serving as the front entrance. The pole in the foreground shows a halibut and otter.

As a second major stop on a totem pole pilgrimage, Totem Bight was fantastic. The couple of days separation from Vancouver along with maybe a little reading on the subject picked up at the Legends of the Moon gift store in Stanley Park gave us a little time to process what we had learned from our first stop. We were able to spot eagles and orca and beavers pretty easily in the poles. We were even able to pick out fog woman in one of the poles, identifiable by the salmon she held in each hand.

So what do these things all mean? Well as you might expect, the different animals typically have multiple meanings. The eagle is a symbol of peace or friendship. The raven is a trickster capable of help or harm but is also a symbol of the creator. The orca or blackfish is a symbol of the sea and strength. The appearance of these creatures in totem poles either tells parts of a story or symbolize characteristics or origin stories of the families who commissioned them.

The walking loop at Totem Bight is a leisurely maybe hour long stroll, leaving enough time to study the poles, check out the clan house (entered through a hole in the front totem) and look out over the water and shoreline for maybe some bear or orca (we didn't see any). There are different types of imagery at Totem Bight from that we found at Stanley Park in Vancouver. We saw the devil fish (or octopus) in one of the poles and in another found a man wearing a brimmed hat, which was traditionally worn at occasions where stories were told. The more you see of these things, the more you can appreciate the depth of meaning and connections to the past.

One thing we didn't expect to see on our trip to Ketchikan was the actual carving of a totem pole, but here we were wrong. 

The first thing we did when we got to Ketchikan was head south to the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary where we planned on spending a couple of hours trying to spot black bears and bald eagles fishing for salmon in the stream running through the property. In addition to getting some amazing looks at these animals and a family of river otters, we found the workshop of Wayne Hewson, a Tsimshian who has been carving totem poles for almost 20 years.

Admittedly, not a whole lot got done in the 15 minutes or so we watched Wayne work but you could get a sense of how much work goes into these things and just how big the single cedar trees they are working with are. There were clearly some non-traditional images in the pole he was working on the day we were there, including some very large mosquitoes which we had heard before we set foot in the state referred to tongue-in-cheek as the state bird of Alaska, which caused a good deal of concern to us about the size of these insects (we saw pretty much zero mosquitoes in our almost week in state).

If I was fascinated and curious about totem poles before I went on this trip, I remain more so now that I've scratched the surface just a little bit on what these carved poles mean and have meant to the people who carved them. What before to me were pretty striking works of art now have a depth of meaning that I didn't understand before setting foot in Stanley Park earlier last month.

I have been buying knick-knacks or tchotchkes or whatever you want to call them wherever I've been in this going on five year journey. Right behind three small alien figures (from Roswell, NM) and a model of Hohensalzburg Fortress (from, you guessed it, Salzburg, Austria) sits a very small totem pole with a raven figure sitting atop a beaver (the protector, by the way). Like all the other items on my desk that I've accumulated over the last 50 or so months, my tiny totem pole is a reminder of where I've been, specifically my time in Vancouver and Alaska. It is also a symbol of how travel has enriched my knowledge of our planet's history. 

Ketchikan was one of the two best days we spent on this trip (along with our full day in Denali National Park) and one of the big reasons for the fond memories of that day is our stops at the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary and Totem Bight State Park learning about and deciphering totem poles. I can't imagine I'm setting foot in Alaska any time soon again. Don't get me wrong, it's on the list somewhere but there's a ton of stuff ahead of it including like three California trips. If I do ever get back there, Saxman Totem Village and the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan are way high up on my list.

Thunderbird, Stanley Park, Vancouver.