Ellen Neel, Kakaso’las, 1955–56 

Neel is a pivotal figure in Northwest Coast art history—the first woman in Canada recognized as a professional totem-pole carver. Trained by her grandfather Charlie James (1867–1937) and her uncle Mungo Martin (1881–1962), Neel carried forward an ancestral lineage of Kwakwaka’wakw design while transforming it through modern adaptation. Kakaso’las, carved in the mid-1950s with the assistance of her family, embodies both survival and resurgence. The title, meaning “People-on-the-Outside,” refers to a family crest within Neel’s own matrilineal heritage, asserting identity in a time when Indigenous women’s roles in public art were seldom acknowledged.

Kakaso’las was originally installed at the Totem Park residences at University of British Columbia (UBC) and later stood for decades at Brockton Point in Stanley Park, where it was viewed by thousands of visitors. The pole has now entered a new chapter. In September 2024, through collaboration between UBC’s Museum of Anthropology and Neel’s descendants, Kakaso’las was relocated to the museum. This move reflects a broader shift in stewardship from civic display to cultural care and honours the Neel family’s wish to see the pole preserved within a context that acknowledges its history as both family legacy and national landmark.

Kakaso’las continues to teach. Its relocation restores the pole to Indigenous custodianship and to a curatorial framework informed by dialogue with the Neel family. What began as an act of assertion in 1955 endures as an act of relationship. The pole stands as evidence of history and also as living testimony to Neel’s vision. She believed that carving could be art, livelihood, ceremony, and education all at once and that through such work, the curve of the blade might shape the curve of the future.

As recalled by Neel’s grandniece, artist Mary Anne Barkhouse (b.1961), Neel was both a designer and an entrepreneur, running Totem Art Studios in Vancouver, employing family members, and marketing carvings ranging from full-scale poles to small souvenir works. Her initiative joined artistry with survival. What some mid-century commentators dismissed as “tourist art” was in fact an innovative strategy—a way to circulate cultural form and sustain her family amid limited economic opportunity. The “commercial” nature of her practice, Barkhouse argues, must be understood not as dilution but as resilience, carving a space for Indigenous women’s creativity within colonial economies.