Over the last decade, several hundred Native American students and their families helped design, carve, and paint a series of totem poles for the Eugene 4J School District's NATIVES program. Five were installed outside Eugene schools, often with the burning of sage and traditional drumming.
Backers say the poles celebrate and empower Native students in the school district. But others in recent years have called them inappropriate, inaccurate, and harmful.
Now, those same poles will be removed.
The 4J District’s last totem pole installation was in November 2023 at Ridgeline Montessori Charter School. Once the pole was in place, staffers with the 4J NATIVES program drummed and sang as students cheered.
It was a restored pole that was first installed at the school in 2016. Four more were also made and installed at Eugene schools over the years, including North Eugene High School, Madison Middle School, and Spencer Butte Middle School.
Brenda Brainard, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, ran the NATIVES program then along with her husband, Joe. In 2019, when asked about the significance of a pole installed outside Sheldon High School, Joe Brainard—of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Chiricahua—likened it to a “mailbox” that represented the school’s Native kids.
“It’s a legacy to the students that are there now. Forever and a day it’ll be standing right there,” said Brainard. “That mailbox, telling everybody that, ‘This is us, this is the people that were here, so the new people coming in, observe. And respect.’”
Hansen and Boxley
The Brainards consulted with a non-Native master carver, Vic Hansen, on the totem poles. He worked with the NATIVES students on carving techniques and safety. In an interview last week, Hansen and his wife Karen told KLCC that many years ago they visited David Boxley, a renowned Tsimshian carver from Alaska.
“Vic learned to carve really well from him and the right tools to use,” said Karen Hansen. “The bent knife and everything else that he used all the time with the totem poles.”
Hansen said Boxley inscribed a book on totem poles with a message: “Vic and Karen, your interest in our culture is one more way to keep it alive.”
Hansen said between this and the Brainards’ trust, his role as master carver was valid.
“I believe that I have a right to carve poles because of my brief contact with David Boxley, but mostly because of my support from Brenda and Joe Brainard.”
The totem poles were just part of the larger program at NATIVES. Drumming, dancing, and history lessons were also provided for students, as well as a communal dinner. But the pole projects and installations drew much community attention and support. The town of Blue River even commissioned a totem pole for their new library.
Opposition and criticism grows
But some local Native Americans accused Hansen of cultural appropriation, and challenged the poles’ appropriateness for the Willamette Valley. Jan Smith, a member of the Kiowa Tribe, and Leilani Sabzalian, who is Alutiiq, are both educators who’ve been writing 4J administrators for several years now with their concerns.
“You can carve whatever you want. Just don’t put it up in front of the school that this represents the tribes in Oregon. It doesn’t,” said Smith, a former administrative employee of the University of Oregon’s Knight Library. “No tribe in Oregon has carved totem poles. Totem poles were not carved by any tribes south of Seattle.”
“And those poles have very specific cultural significance,” said Sabzalian, an assistant professor of Indigenous Studies for the UO’s College of Education. "They often represent kinship systems, clans, and relationships or stories or histories from a particular family. And that’s not what was expressed in these poles.”
Both women say they’ve faced pushback or indifference over the totem pole issue, but have pushed on. Nine more tribal members—including several elders—have signed onto their letters.
Smith says things really changed after she contacted Boxley about teaching Hansen.
“We reached out to David and said, ‘Is this true?’ Cause I’ve never heard of it that people get blessings to do carvings,” she said.
Boxley told Smith—and has repeated to KLCC—that he never taught Hansen or endorsed him. Boxley says he may have signed Hansen’s book, but doesn’t want to get caught up in any more of the controversy.
The conversation shifts to Native families and students
Over the past year, Darcy Dickey, who is of Blackfoot and Cherokee heritage and Chair of the 4J Indian Parents Committee, and NATIVES Program Administrator Josh Davies—a member of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians—held community talking circles on the totem poles. Families, students, and other concerned parties listened to the criticism and concerns. Dickey and Davies said the consensus was clear.
“The totem poles were great for the kids,” said Dickey. “But when we found out there was not any genuineness and cultural appropriateness, it was devastating.”
“A lot of emotion was shared, tears were shared,” said Davies. “But ultimately, the goal and everything that came out of those meetings was that we need to make things healed, we need to make things right.”
Native Americans increasingly push for authenticity, ownership
The episode is reminiscent of a controversy that happened with the Oregon Country Fair’s Ritz Sauna and Showers in 2017.
Plans to erect a 36-foot tall Haida-style “Story Pole” were shelved when a number of local Native Americans and supporters decried it as cultural appropriation. The project had been worked on and developed for five years, but as the installation date neared, criticism mounted and OCF decided it was best to remove it from the fairgrounds and keep it in a warehouse lest there be protests and boycotts.
“We’ve heard Native voices on both sides of this question, and we’ve gotten over 500 written comments at our kiosk,” Ritz Sauna and Showers booth representative George Bodarky told KLCC in 2017. “Certainly we apologize for any hurt that’s taken place as a result of anything we’ve done at the sauna. And that we’re listening, and that we’re open to change. And that we really do need some help understanding more things about the boundary. I think that the history of the changing ideas in particularly the relationship of the art of North Coast, is an active conversation that’s been going on for a long time."
There have been other instances of Native people demanding authenticity in cultural projects, namely by being included for consultation and participation. This is also happening with museums and educational institutions, which in previous centuries had acquired Native and Indigenous items through theft, force, or deception.
A few years after the Story Pole controversy, Ritz Sauna and Showers confirmed that it had hired Pattrick Price—a Tlingit artist from Alaska—to do authentic Native artwork for them.
Next steps
4J’s Interim Superintendent, Colt Gill, will announce the removal of the district’s totem poles at a school board work session on Wednesday. Gill told KLCC that NATIVES staff will hold a cleansing ceremony at each site to start the healing process.
“Moving forward, the district plans to collaborate with Native community members and students to explore the creation of culturally appropriate symbols that accurately honor Indigenous history and the diversity of today’s student body,” Gill said in a statement shared with KLCC on behalf of the 4J District.
NATIVES mentor/culture coordinator Joe Brainard died last year while on a family vacation. His wife, Brenda, said she’s still grieving and can’t find the words to respond to 4J’s decision. But she and Vic Hansen say everything happening now with the poles would break Joe Brainard’s heart.
While the authors of the letter suggest burning the poles, Hansen said he wants to store them for people who will care for them. He said he feels traumatized by 4J’s decision, and that his critics have distorted his credentials.
“They accuse me of being a white guy who didn't have any right to carve native totem poles,” said Hansen. “While I agree that I am a white guy, Joe and I had many discussions about the idea of cultural appropriation, and Joe's answer to that always was, 'We are representing the 60 or so tribes in 4J by making the poles intertribal.'"
Meanwhile, the City of Eugene is weighing what to do with its three totem poles located at Amazon Pool, the DeFazio Bridge, and outside Sheldon High School, which—despite being located outside of a school—technically stands on city property.
According to Gill, the town of Blue River never erected the pole they commissioned after learning of the criticism.
And Ridgeline Montessori—the school featured at the beginning of this story—took its pole down earlier this month. In a statement shared on its website, the school said: “Removing these inauthentic totem poles needs to be done with care and respect so as not to create further unintentional harm.”
Sabzalian said the children who participated in the totem pole projects shouldn’t be blamed or feel ashamed.
“They were guided by adults that they entrusted, and were carving on the poles without other knowledge," she said. "But now that we know better, we do better.”
Sabzalian and Smith also say there should be some form of apology made to Boxley to help restore relations and move past the controversy.
As to what could be a new intertribal project for NATIVES students, Smith suggests carved canoes, which were common with many Pacific Northwest tribes.
Copyright 2025, KLCC.
