The repatriation of the totem pole was a two-year-long project. Here the museum’s is staff preparing the totem pole for shipping. Photo: Honolulu Museum of Art.
Finally ending it’s 84-year journey, a totem pole will finally be returned to the Tlingit people on November 6. Actor John Barrymore removed the pole from the village of Tuxecan on Prince of Wales Island in 1931 during a sailing trip. Barrymore, grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore, displayed the pole at his home until 1944, when Vincent Price bought it from him.
In 1981 Price donated it to what would become the Honolulu Museum of Art, where it sat in the basement until Steve Langdon, professor emeritus of the University of Alaska, tracked it down.
Langdon hasn’t been able to find any information about how Barrymore acquired the pole, aside from a photo of crew strapping it down on his 120-foot yacht, and a caption saying it was purchased. No records exist anywhere that it was a purchase, and Langdon seems to have his doubts.
When the Honolulu Museum of Art found out what they had in their basement, they agreed to give it back to the Tlingit. Several representatives from Klawock, a village of about 800 people near where Tuxecan once stood, traveled to Hawaii for a ceremony to see the pole on its last voyage. Once it reaches Klawock, it will be kept in the village’s cultural center, while a replica is put outside.
While this story has a happy ending for the totem pole and its tribe, it speaks to a long narrative of white people appropriating Native American art, in this case quite literally.
Totem poles are sacred objects, but the disrespect with which native peoples have long been treated has created a culture in which they could be purchased and kept as conversation pieces in an actor’s front yard.
Stories like this are too rare in a country that still allows racist characters of native peoples to serve as sports logos, or tell young kids it’s okay to dress up as Native Americans and “play Indian.”
