The totem pole stands in the entryway of France’s Musée du Quai Branly, tall and elegant but somewhat out of place — the contours of its weathered exterior in stark contrast with its clinical surroundings.
Known as the K’ëgit pole, it stands 15 metres tall, rooted in the museum’s lower level and extending into the main-floor foyer. Strangers entering the museum breeze past, often without a glance. Its grace is paired with a loneliness. For nearly a century, the pole has been separated from its people.
But the pole’s family recently came to visit.
In October, members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation travelled to Paris and gathered around the K’ëgit pole for the first time since it was removed from Hagwilget Village in 1938. The visit marked the beginning of what is likely to be a years-long process to reconnect, educate and discuss what comes next.
“It was emotional,” Ron Austin says, pausing to remember the moment he first entered the museum and leaned over the railing to take in the full height of the pole.
“I shed tears for our ancestors,” says Austin, who holds the traditional Wet’suwet’en name Tsekot. “My grandfather was one of them that was in the group that was selling it. They didn’t want to sell it. But they had to let it go.”
The K’ëgit pole was carved in the mid-1800s for C’idimsggin’ïs, at the time Likhsilyu Clan’s highest-ranking Chief and a member of the House of Many Eyes. For the better part of a century, it stood overlooking the Bulkley River, Wedzin Kwa in Wet’suwet’en, at Hagwilget Village.
At the base of the pole is K’ëgit, a mythical shaman whose story tells the origins of the Wet’suwet’en clan system. It also bears an otter, tsantiy, another supernatural being and one of the clan’s crests. Austin believes a human figure perched at the top represents C’idimsggin’ïs, although it’s unclear who held the hereditary title when the pole was carved.
Austin, a master carver and member of the Likhsilyu Clan, is next in line to take the name C’idimsggin’ïs. The title has been vacant for years.