Much like pow-wow, this is another phrase that is not only over-used by modern society, but it’s misused.
When someone is described as the “low man on the totem pole,” it’s means that they’re below everyone else on the pole, thereby somehow making them less important.
This reminds me of a story that my Haisla friend, Ab, once told me. There’s a story in a book called Tales of Kitamaat called “The Chilakoons”. In this story, three boys kill a frog and have a curse placed on them by his mother as a result. One boy survived long enough to go home and tell his people what happened and after doing so, the boy dropped dead. The village then went up in flames, much like the poor frog, and everyone in the village died except one little girl who was found by a hunting party from a nearby village. When the girl told the chief about what happened to her people, he decided to turn the staff that the old lady was carrying into a totem pole. This pole consisted of: a frog, a halibut, and a man. Can you guess what was on the bottom of the pole?
That’s right: the frog.
So is the frog the least important character in the story? Would the story exist if not for the frog? No. Therefore, the frog is the most important part of the story.
So why is he on the bottom of the totem pole? Maybe it was a decision made by the carver, who knows?
The point is that because Western society has this obsessive notion of hierarchy where being on top is the best, everything is seen everything that way. Totem poles don’t work like that. Sometimes the most important figure is on top, sometimes it’s on the bottom, sometimes it’s in the middle. A totem pole is not meant to be read from top to bottom, at least not all of them are, thereby making the “low man on the totem pole” a totally inaccurate saying because it doesn’t apply to all totem poles.
It really irritates me when people utter this phrase and I hear it pretty often. This is a major pet peeve of mine and people need to be set straight instead of perpetuating yet another inaccuracy about First Nations people.
You know how the little girl in the story survived? Her father dug a pit in the floor of his house and buried her, covering her with copper shields. The next time I hear someone say they’re the “low man on the totem pole”, I’ll dig a pit and throw them in it. And while they’re in this pit, they’ll be putting the lotion in basket.
So if I were you, I’d stop saying it.
Shis'ka Bob 