I remember the shock of recognition I suffered the first time I saw a totem pole, with the S’s and U’s and ovals of the Southeast girls’ bracelets repeated in cedar logs of wood ten, twenty, forty feet high
WHEN I WAS IN school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, you could always tell the girls from Southeast by the fabulous silver bracelets they wore, exquisite, glowing pieces carved with Tlingit and Haida and Tsimshian symbols. It was then that I first learned the legend of Raven stealing the sun, the moon and the…