Joe Martin and Memorial Pole
Tla-o-qui-aht elder and carver Joseph Martin draws final designs on a totem pole carved to memorialize the deaths of Tla-o-qui-aht from the pandemic, Canada's residential schools, and missing and murdered Indigenous women in Tofino, Canada. "When the Europeans came, they said we were illiterate," explains Joe Martin, the master carver who is overseeing the pole's creation. "But so were they– they couldn't read our totem poles."