From left to right: Carl Heinmiller, Johnnie Avatock, John Hagen and Wes Willard (standing). Photo courtesy of Delta Museum.
The 15-foot pole arrived in Haines last month vacuum wrapped in plastic, and now sits at the tribal house in Fort Seward waiting to be unsheathed sometime this spring. It has been stored at the museum of Delta Airlines in Atlanta for at least 10 years, according to the museum’s website.
“Everybody’s gonna be excited to see it,” said Alaska Indian Arts director Lee Heinmiller, whose father, Carl Heinmiller, helped with the carving.
Heinmiller said the pole was originally carved by a group of artists from the Chilkat Valley in Los Angeles, where Western Airlines had its headquarters in the 1960s, before it merged with Delta. Heinmiller said there are a number of notable artists involved with Alaska Indian Arts who helped with the pole, including John Svenson, Wes Willard and John Hagen.
The younger Heinmiller said he was there as well, as part of a dance group that performed at the dedication ceremony for the pole in Los Angeles. According to the Delta Museum, the totem was a
“gift to acknowledge their commitment to Alaska when they merged with Pacific Northern Airlines” in 1969.
In 1987 it was transferred to Atlanta when Delta merged with Western.
Earlier this year, the museum contacted the Chilkoot Indian Association administrator Harriet Brouillette about returning the totem.
James Hart, the tribal council president, said that until then, he wasn’t aware the totem existed.
“I had no clue it was out in the world, so it was a surprise to me,” he said.
Heinmiller said he lost track of the totem over the decades. Alaska Indian Arts was formed by a group of Native and nonnative artists to revitalize some fading Tlingit art forms during the 1950s. Largely self-taught, they soon became a prominent arts group that was invited around the country to perform dances and carve totem poles, especially during and after the statehood push of 1959.
Heinmiller said the carvers would complete about 80% of a pole and then ship it to exhibitions like the World’s Fair, where they would put the finishing touches on it.
The pole had been on display in Atlanta for the last 10 years, but staff started wondering whether it was a good fit for the aeronautics-focused museum at the city where Delta has its headquarters.
A blog post on the museum’s website explained the reasoning for returning the totem:
“The consensus of Museum staff was that this object should not have been rehomed to Atlanta from Los Angeles and deserves to live in a collection of the indigenous people who carved it originally. Museum staff feels this object should be interpreted by a museum or cultural institution with expertise in Western indigenous peoples’ history.”
For the tribal council, the decision to accept the pole was a no-brainer, Hart said. The only question was where to put it. The tribe quickly decided that the Noow Hit tribal house would be a good fit.
The house, which has several intricately carved and painted formline panels, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for restoration recently from the National Park Service and other organizations. A full restoration is in the works. Work could begin in 2024.
Heinmiller said the pole itself could be erected either inside or outside of the tribal house.
Tribal leaders said they had invited a documentary film crew from Delta for the unveiling of the pole, likely in the spring. Hart said working with Delta-a multi-billion dollar airline – has been a gratifying experience, despite the company’s distance from the project.
“I’m just excited to have a group event, or a community event and bring those aspects of dark periods of our art and breathing life back into our culture,” said Hart.
Hart, himself a recognized formline artist, said there are mixed emotions about seeing the totem. From pictures, he said the craftsmanship looks a little rough. It represents a period of revitalization when a lot of the mastery from older generations had been lost.
“There’s some bittersweetness to looking at poles from earlier eras,” he said. “All pieces tell a story, but there was a dark period in our arts where we weren’t allowed to practice those things. I don’t judge any pieces that were done from the 60s through the 90s because there was a period where they were relearning everything.”
Currently, there is just one active master carver in Haines, Wayne Price, Hart noted.
Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that there other master carvers in Haines, but Wayne Price is the only one actively carving.