Canada's Northwest Coast Indian Totem Pole Cultural Symbolic Interpretation

Totem poles are the most prominent and noticeable concentrated symbol of the Northwest Coast Indians and are the precious historical and cultural heritage of Canada. In the modern society, totem poles are still one of many forms of visual representation widely created by the Northwest Coast Indians. Totem poles are not only the symbol of the Indians cultural identity, but also the pride of other Canadians. The relation between Indians and Whites, tradition and modernity, the conservation and the development of the cultural heritage, culture and economy and so on is so harmonious that totem poles are the most famous forms of material expression of the Northwest Coast Indians. It is well known that ethnical cultures of other countries and areas including Northwest Coast Indians are the weak point in the field of Chinese Ethnology and Anthropology. So it is of great significance to study totem poles of Northwest Coast Indians. It can widen the research field of Chinese Ethnology and fill the space of ethnical cultures of the world. On the other hand, totem poles are widely exploited in the Northwest Coast areas and become the tourism symbol of Northwest Coast areas, even Canada. This is a wonderful case to deal with the relation between cultural heritage restoration and conservation and tourist development and it will offer us some inspiration and be a useful reference concerning the issue of resolving the problem of cultural heritage restoration and conservation and tourism development.My research data mainly comes from National library of China and digital library of university and museum in the USA and Canada. Although during the past period the Chinese scholars paid little attention to totem poles of Northwest Coast Indians, totem poles have been a hot topic for a long time in the western countries, especially in the USA and Canada and there have been an immense number of books about totem poles. Totem poles are the interest of scholars of Ethnology, Anthropology, Museum, Art, History and Tourism and so on. As a result of the unique research tradition of the western scholars, they either approach totem poles in the traditional society of Northwest Coast Indians, or regard totem poles as an element of the cultural system of the Northwest Coast Indians. Totem poles themselves have not been studied as a whole and independent cultural system. Based on the abundant data of the western scholars, totem poles culture will be approached according to the theory and method of Symbol Anthropology in this dissertation.According to the Symbol Anthropology, culture is a symbol system that conveys messages and meanings that people manufacture. It consists of signifier, the signified and the coding. Totem poles culture is a typical kind of symbol culture. In this totem poles symbolic system, the signifier of totem poles comprises all kinds of tangible cedar poles and all kinds of actions concerning the totem poles such as carving and erecting, destroying, buying and selling, stealing, visiting, restoring and conserving and so on. Furthermore, it also includes all kinds of images such as animals, human beings, supernatural beingsand material objects and so on. The signified may be clear and explicit, or it may be diffuse and ambiguous. To study totem poles culture is to understand and explain those messages and meanings or connotations which are conveyed by those signifiers. The culture rule is the core of the totem poles culture. After European whites arrived at the Northwest Coast areas in the seventies of the eighteenth century, the rule of the totem poles culture had been changed dramatically. More and more competitive subjectivities had been involved in the deconstruction and reconstruction of the meanings of totem poles culture. To sum up, totem poles culture of Northwest Coast Indians has developed a unique, fluid, abundant and of great diversity characters. This dissertation is one kind of understanding and interpretation of totem poles culture.This thesis is made up of introduction, text and conclusion. Introduction includes study background and current significance, correlated studies and works and methods of collecting data. The text consists of five chapters. Chapter One makes a brief introduction to totem poles culture of Northwest Coast Indians. Chapter Two is titled lost symbol that consists of symbol of privilege and social status and symbol of mythic beings. It presents an interpretation of the meanings of totem poles culture in the lost traditional society. Symbol of doom is the title of Chapter Three which discusses the process of being destroyed of traditional culture of Northwest Coast Indians and explains the new meanings of totem poles culture. Chapter Four and Chapter Five are both titled symbol of revival which is made up of symbol of Canadian national heritage,symbol of Indians resistance and symbol of tourism. In the last conclusion I summarize the modes of totem poles restoration and conservation in Canada and present some ideas about the issue of cultural heritage conservation and tourism development.