Article: Indians carve up new totem pole market

SAXMAN, Alaska Lee Wallace is descended from a long line of totem pole carvers, but his father, like many Northwest coast Indians, gave up his craft for the sake of becoming "modern."

Today the younger Wallace is part of a renaissance. Totem poles are coming back.

At 36, Wallace is an apprentice carver at Saxman, a Tlingit village just south of Ketchikan where leaders are building totem poles into a local industry. Saxman has opened a totem park for tourists and hopes eventually to have a pole factory.

"My grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather were all carvers," Wallace says as his adz, an ax-like tool used for trimming and smoothing wood, shapes a beaver on a pole. ...

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