{"id":35002,"date":"2018-09-04T10:38:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T17:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/home2\/new-totem-pole-on-prince-of-wales-island-honors-alaskas-veterans\/"},"modified":"2018-09-04T10:38:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T17:38:00","slug":"new-totem-pole-on-prince-of-wales-island-honors-alaskas-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home2\/new-totem-pole-on-prince-of-wales-island-honors-alaskas-veterans\/","title":{"rendered":"New totem pole on Prince of Wales Island honors Alaska&#8217;s veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>KLAWOCK<\/strong> &mdash; A well-attended, three-day celebration culminated with a totem pole raising ceremony Aug. 18 at Prince of Wales Island.<\/p>\n<p>The 37-foot totem stands to honor Alaska&rsquo;s veterans and was designed with input from veterans.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This is how we as Tlingit and Haida people acknowledge an event or person by raising a totem pole in their honor,&rdquo; said Klawock elder Aaron Isaacs, a former Alaska Army National Guardsman and U.S. Army 82nd Airborne paratrooper, in a release. &ldquo;[This] is what we are doing &#8211; honoring all veterans.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Isaacs, a member of the Alaska State Defense Force and president of the Prince of Wales Island Veterans Association, worked with a local carver, Jon Rowan, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, to design the totem. It displays service branches and Prisoners of War-Missing In Action insignias, a 1960s-era U.S. Army Soldier, ancient warrior holding a double-headed dagger and carrying a jade pick, an eagle and raven at the top, and a set of identification tags that veterans can pin unit crests and insignia to in the bottom of the totem pole.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The eagle and raven are a representation of us watching each other&rsquo;s back,&rdquo; explained Rowan in a release.<\/p>\n<p>The totem is also meant to symbolize a mortuary pole where remains were historically preserved inside a small wooden box in the totem.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Behind the POW-MIA flag we have a bent wood box. That is for our missing brothers and sisters &mdash; a place of honor,&rdquo; Rowan said in a release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>KLAWOCK<\/strong> &mdash; A well-attended, three-day celebration culminated with a totem pole raising ceremony Aug. 18 at Prince of Wales Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":35003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[73,103,345,363,364,142,365],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-35002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","tag-ccw","tag-military","tag-southeast-alaska","tag-tlingit-and-haida","tag-totem-pole","tag-u-s-coast-guard","tag-veterans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35002"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=35002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}