1. English 11 Summer Learning
“Totem” by Thomas King
English 11 Summer Learning

2. Thomas King Background
Thomas King is an Canadian-American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, screenwriter, and photographer. He is a member of the Order of Canada and is a two-time nominee for the Governor General’s Award. Thomas King is often described as one of the finest contemporary Aboriginal writers in North America. He is part Cherokee and part Greek.

4. Totem Poles
Monuments created by First Nations of the Pacific Northwest.
Represent and commemorate ancestry, histories, people, or events.
Typically created out of red cedar, and designed to be visible within a community.

5. Totem Poles
Most display beings, or crest animals, marking a family’s lineage and showing rights and privileges that families hold.
Intended to document stories and histories familiar to community members or particular family or clan members.

6. Totem Poles
Typically feature symbolic and stylized human, animal, and supernatural forms.
Primarily visual representations of kinship, depicting family crests and clan membership.
For example, some First Nations families of northern Vancouver Island belonging to the Thunderbird Clan will feature a Thunderbird crest and familial legends on their totems.

7. Totem Poles
For many years in British Columbia, the presence of totem poles came under threat by non-Aboriginal settlers who predominantly viewed the poles as an impediment to colonial efforts to assimilate First Nations people.
Officials attempted to assimilate Aboriginal peoples by banning cultural expressions and practices, based on the expectation that Aboriginal peoples would then adopt Christian traditions. Much of this discriminatory legislation was not repealed until 1951.

8. Totem Questions

9. 1. What do the totem poles symbolize?
The Totem pole can represent the First Nations peoples.
One interpret that they are still present, and that they are not going to be moved easily
“’It appears,’ he said, ‘that it goes right through the floor’”
In the story, the museum workers feel they must be moved because some think they do not belong, even though they were there first.

10. 2. What is the significance of the repeated reference to the “lack of space” for the totem poles?

11. 3. Why does Mr. Hootam disagree with Beebe that the totem pole is gargling when he knows that it is? Why do different people hear different things?

12. 4. What does the storage room and its limited space symbolize
4. What does the storage room and its limited space symbolize? What does the basement symbolize?

13. 5. Why is it that they finally stop cutting down the totem poles?

14. 6. What is the irony of this short story?
We see every character in the story annoyed by the totem poles. They do not see the totem as worth having at their museum. They show no signs of sympathy got its “shouts that echo through the collection of sea scenes” or even when they want to know how it mysteriously reappeared.
This gives the tone of irony because it is the totem that should be the most affronted. This was once the land of the natives, yet now they are forced into reserves and have their very existence thought of nothing more than a hindrance.,