Canku Ota
	(Many Paths)
	An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America
	August 10, 2002 - Issue 67
	Totem Pole Will Return to Alaska
	by Gloria Reynolds Greeley Tribune
	credits: Richard Hackett / Greeley Tribune

A totem pole that has played a colorful role in University of Northern Colorado history since 1914 will return to its Alaska home this fall. The Tlingit Indians crafted the Brown Bear Totem, which UNC students know as Totem Teddy. The totem pole mysteriously disappeared from Angoon, Alaska, in 1908. Six years later, it appeared at UNC — a gift from U.S. Commissioner of Education for Alaska Andrew Thompson, an 1897 UNC alumnus. The totem is a memorial to a Tlingit man named Kaats’. He married a bear and fathered two bear cubs. They are the ancestors of the Bear House of the Teikweidi Clan of Angoon, a group of Tlingit. The totem and the story behind it belong to the Bear House, whose members believed the sacred object lost until recently. “I didn’t know it was still in existence. We used to hear stories,” said Harold Jacobs, a cultural resource specialist for the Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. A grandmother of one of his friends told the story that one morning it was just gone. But stories that tell the history of the totem pole since its arrival at UNC are all but sacred. The bear, which inspired the campus mascot, bore the brunt of pranks ranging from tar and feathering to a monthlong kidnapping. Students from what is now Colorado State University tried several times to saw down the pole. Woodpeckers destroyed the original bear that topped the pole, and the class of 1960 paid to have it replaced with a 600-pound concrete replica, said UNC archives manager Mary Linscome. The school had the totem pole painted several times. Linscome met with Jacobs and other Tlingit representatives in March. They first inquired about the totem pole more than a year ago after a Sitka, Alaska, museum curator recognized a photo of the lost Brown Bear Totem as the Totem Teddy from his alma mater. Linscome sent Jacobs photocopies from the archives and heard nothing for a year, she said. But Jacobs’ title made her curious enough to look up the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, Linscome said. “I said to myself, ‘This has meaning.’ ” That meaning became clear when Jacobs visited. He and the others spent two hours telling and singing stories for Linscome about the totem pole and the bear it represents. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Linscome said. Returning the totem pole to its rightful owner is an equally rare opportunity, said Solomon Little Owl, director of UNC’s Native American Student Services. Little Owl, a Crow Indian, remembers a sacred item being returned to his tribe when he was 9 years old. “His name was Chief Blackfoot,” he said. “I was probably in about third grade. He was brought back from the Smithsonian Institute. They had a big funeral for the guy that’s been dead for over 90 years. I was young and I didn’t know a lot about what was going on. People were crying.” Little Owl said ceremonies are often part of returning items to their owner. UNC President Kay Norton said she hopes there can be some type of ceremony on campus as part of the return. Details of the return are still being negotiated. “It ends up being a fascinating story about the role of the bear,” Norton said. But the school had no reason to question the gift when it was made, she added. “Particularly at that time, no one was worried about those issues.” The 1990 act, however, gives tribes rights to reclaim archaeological objects that have religious or special cultural significance, Norton said. UNC is in good company in its decision to return the totem pole, Linscome said. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University returned a Bear Pole to a Tlingit clan in Ketchikan, Alaska, last year. And the Thomas Burke Memorial Museum at the University of Washington returned Kaats’ Houseposts — indoor carvings similar to totem poles — to the same clan. Linscome said Jacobs asked her how the people of Greeley would react to losing the totem. “He’s thinking that the people of Greeley have a stake in this as well — which was a nice thing for him to say,” she said. She expects older alumni to be upset about losing Totem Teddy, but it will be nothing like it would have been 50 years ago, Linscome said. “It would have been a totally unthinkable thing in 1958,” she said. “But in the 1960s, people started changing — rebelling against things and not identifying with history the way they did in the past. Because things have changed, it makes it easier to comply with the law.” It’s not as if UNC has much choice but to return the totem pole, Linscome said. “But I don’t want to say we don’t care about it. It’s a state treasure.” The UNC Archives contain dozens of items relating to Totem Teddy, including a full page photograph in the Denver Post in 1947. It is obviously an important part of campus history, Linscome said. “The Tlingit are a clan that is related to this bear, but we’re a college that is.” Many moves Totem Teddy resided in at least seven places on the University of Northern Colorado campus: Cranford Hall, a building that once sat south of what is now Frasier Hall Cranford Hall’s northwest lawn Outside Bru-Inn, the former student center, which is now Gray Hall Parsons Hall, the warehouse on 20th Street near Jackson Field Bru-Inn student center ballroom, where Parking Services is now University Center atrium University Center lower level Other items Members of the Tlingit Indian tribe are also seeking return of five items from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Their trip to UNC was part of a longer visit to Denver to see items in the museum. The Tlingit requested the return of a whale fin staff, a beaver headdress, a shaman’s hat, a beaded shirt and a button blanket from the museum, said Richard Stuckey, vice president for museum programs. A group of curators evaluates the claims to determine if they are valid, and recommends to the museum board of directors whether they should be returned, Stuckey said. Through a National Park Service grant, the museum has brought in 50 American Indian tribes since 1990 to look at museum artifacts and see if any are theirs, spokeswoman Julia Taylor said. Tribe representatives tell what they know of the artifacts and museum representatives talk about how they have been cared for, Taylor said. Totem is memorial to Tlingit ancestors The Brown Bear Totem is far more than art to its owners. It is a memorial to the ancestors of a group of Tlingit — the Bear House of the Teikweidi Clan of Angoon. Totem poles and the designs on them identify clans and symbolize the special relationship clan members have to the animals depicted on them. They cannot be owned by a single person: They belong to the entire clan. They also embody spirits that are a vital part of ceremonial rites that help clan members maintain relationships with their ancestors. Some scholars compare the presence of spirits in sacred objects with the argument that the blood and body of Christ are present in the sacrament of Communion. The Tlingit claim to the Brown Bear Totem at UNC states: “We must attempt to explain how it came to be held in a college as a ‘mascot’ rather than its homeland. We must then assure the object that we will prepare a special path for its return.” The abuse the totem pole has endured during the past 88 years may change its spiritual role, said Harold Jacobs, a cultural resource specialist for the Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. “Hopefully we can restore that — take away that part of it,” he said. Jacobs is not a member of the Bear House, which owns the totem pole, but he has spoken with several who are. “I don’t think there’s any anger or resentment,” he said. “I think they’re just happy to know where it is.” www.expedia.com

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