Talking Totems tour explores Indigenous art in present-day Stanley Park
Talaysay Tours’ new guided cultural experience shares stories of totem poles, sculptures at B.C.’s most visited tourist attraction on unceded Coast Salish territory
Talaysay Tours’ Talking Totems Indigenous Art Tour goes into detail about the significance of individual elements of the Stanley Park totem poles. Photo by Talaysay Tours
CANDACE CAMPO DESCRIBES herself as an introvert. When the member of the Coast Salish Shíshálh tribe and founder of Talaysay Tours leads a guided walk in what’s now known as Stanley Park, however, she could talk to people for hours.
Maybe she’s describing the traditional Indigenous food uses of plants like salal and licorice fern or discussing how her ancestors would use the inner bark of different trees to create the reds and browns on so many totem poles. Or she might be telling the tale of the Trickster or Raven, or why, according to lore, the Western hemlock tree hangs her head in shame.
Campo’s gift for sharing the history, practices, legends, beliefs, and philosophies of Indigenous people in the most calming, captivating ways comes to her naturally. Listening to her speak is like being a wide-eyed kid again during story time at the library, in wonder.
“I was raised by storytellers,” Campo says in an interview with Stir. “My Blackfoot-Cree-Ojibway-English-Irish father—he was a natural storyteller,” she says. “My grandmother was part of the first generation to attend residential school; despite it all, she held on to her traditional stories. She was a midwife, and truthfully, she wasn’t known on a daily basis as a woman of many words. That changed when it came to sharing a story. I come by it honestly. It can’t be helped!”
Campo, whose ancestral name is xets’emits’a (to always be there), has been telling stories through Talaysay Tours, the eco-tourism company she founded with her brother, Jon, and husband, Larry, since 2002. Jon and Candace (a kayak guide who also trained as an anthropologist and school teacher) are members of the Shíshálh tribe’s wolf and grizzly bear clan, while Larry is a member of the Squamish Nation. Talaysay Tours’ mission is to educate and inspire people through the sharing of Indigenous people’s history, traditions, and beliefs. (In its pandemic pivot, Talaysay offers virtual, private, and small-group tours in addition to its school programs.)
Operating on the traditional, unceded territory of Coast Salish First Nations, including the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, Talaysay offers cultural experiences like the Talking Trees Tour of Stanley Park, which is all about the plants on this ancestral land and traditional Indigenous practices and philosophies related to them.
New to Talaysay’s offerings is the Talking Totems Indigenous Art Tour in Stanley Park. It’s geared not only to art enthusiasts but to anyone who appreciates historical and contemporary Indigenous art, with the company’s cultural ambassadors sharing the stories, significance, and artistic techniques of totems, sculptures, and welcome figures.
“Art is part of every aspect of Indigenous culture,” Campo says. “There is no word for art; art represents our identity. It encoded our laws and told our stories, history, and genealogy. Art was in our clothing and on our houses; everything was decorated. It was never viewed as art the way the western world does, as something separate.
“With the banning of potlach in 1884, we were not able to practise art,” she says. “The irony is we were not allowed to make art for our own ceremonies and cultural purposes but we were allowed to make art to sell to museums or to European or North American patrons.”
Talking Totems Indigenous Art Tour includes information about Susan Point’s People Amongst the People. Photo by City of Vancouver
The Talking Totems Indigenous Art Tour grew out of Talaysay’s Spoken Treasures Tour, which delves into the Indigenous history of Vancouver and Stanley Park. Spoken Treasures wraps up at the Stanley Park Totem Poles, where guides conclude the tour with information about the structures and the people who carved them.
“We found we had so much to cover on the totem poles that we could do a whole tour on the poles alone,” Campo says. “Many of our guides are artists, and I’m a huge art enthusiast as well.”
Now, with Talking Totems, Campo and other guides can spend time going into detail about the nine poles at Brockton Point—which is B.C.’s most visited tourist attraction. Each tour starts with one of the guides welcoming guests to the land of their ancestors, as is customary, with a song set to a steady drumbeat.
They share such information as the significance of important figures in Kwakwada'wakw culture depicted on Ga'akstalas, the pole carved by Wayne Alfred and Beau Dick that was completed in 1991 and based on a design by Russel Smith, for instance. There’s Red Cedar-bark Man, who survived the great flood, and Dzunukwa, the giantess who sits at the base of the pole, bringing magic and wealth to her people.
Campo and her team of cultural ambassadors relay the back story of Charlie James, who created the iconic Thunderbird House Post, and the meaning of individual elements such as the killer whale being held by the wolf on Rose Cole Yelton Memorial Pole of the Squamish Nation, carved by artist Robert Yelton. (Raised in 2009, the pole stands in front of the house site where the Cole family lived until 1935. Until her passing in 2002, Rose was the last surviving resident of the Brockton Community.)
The Talaysay guides share the meaning of Coast Salish artist Susan Point’s People Amongst the People. Constructed over three years in collaboration with other artists, the three carved red cedar gateways represent the traditional slant-roof style of Coast Salish architecture with welcome figures in the doorways. The portals comprise Male and Female Welcome Figures, who greet visitors in a traditional gesture of welcome; Grandparents and Grandchildren Honoured, upon which an intertwined braid of hair links three female faces to illustrate the matrilineal ancestry of the Coast Salish; and Salish Dancer and Killer Whale, which shows how Salish design has evolved.
Candace Campo, co-founder of Talaysay Tours, is an art enthusiast.
On the Talking Totems tour, not only do guides share details such as how Indigenous artists used to acquire colours—using natural materials like minerals, bark, and roots—they also put the relevance of various elements of the poles into context. Take Point’s Grandparents and Grandchildren Honoured, for example. Campo points out how the figures’ hair is different colours to reflect the transition from adulthood to elderhood, and how the sculpture depicts the sacred relationship between grandparent and child. “In our culture, grandparents helped raise children,” Campo says. “Strong relationships and families meant a strong community and a strong tribe. That relationship between grandmother and children was severed during the era of residential schools. With the revitalization of Indigenous culture, the strength of families is growing again.”
The way Campo sees things, the stories of Indigenous people need to be told; doing so is vital work that she feels honoured to do. People may interpret the stories differently or be affected by them in different ways; that’s part of their magic and beauty.
“Stories really expand your process and ability to think about things in a different way,” Campo says. “They don’t have to be intrusive or in your face; they just allow you to ponder and see other ways of being.
“Stories have a spirit of their own,” she adds. “In our culture, if you’re a storyteller, you’re a vessel. The power of the story is not from just the storyteller; the power comes from the listeners and the storyteller coming together for however that story needs to be told at that moment. I feel very fortunate. It’s my responsibility.”
For more information, see the Talaysay Tours.
Related Articles
