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Article: Indians carve up new totem pole market
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- October 30, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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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. ...