Dear Editor: It is hard to shock or offend me with any type of political ad, especially this close to the election. I know what I’m signing up for when I scroll social media, stream, or even listen to the radio. The same attack ads are repeated on a loop, my finger hitting mute before the first accusation starts to sound. Still, an ad supporting ballot measure 2 popped up on my feed the other night and affected me in an unexpected way. This was beyond what a mute button could fix. It was personal.
The Yes on 2 ad pairs a cheerful jingle mocking ranked choice voting with AI-generated "Alaskan" visuals. Between the bald eagle and the bullet-riddled road sign, the ad paints a ridiculously reductive picture of our state. As a proud Alaskan, knowing that we are so much more than a stereotype, this was offensive in itself, but what really got me, what made me physically ill, was the blue-eyed, AI totem pole screeching in the middle of the jingle, turning a sacred Tlingit object into a literal caricature.
What the ad makers don’t seem to understand is that a totem pole is not just Alaskan decorative art. In Tlingit culture totem poles are considered at.óow, sacred objects belonging to specific clans. The clan ownership comes from our ancestors through historic or profound events tied to our specific histories. Not only do these sacred objects come from our ancestors, but we think of them as our ancestors. Totem poles are sacred at.óow; they are both our lineage and our legacy. Every aspect of the totem pole is intentional and significant, and in the past, the unpermitted replications of the crests and imagery belonging to a clan would have faced severe punishment.
The totem pole, like many aspects of Indigenous culture, has a long history of being taken by Outsiders who did not care to understand the cultural significance, and instead saw our at.óow as pretty and exotic tokens of the mysterious far north. In fact, as tourism to Alaska grew, cruise companies pulled totem poles out of the villages that raised them, hauling them to tourist stops far away from the clans they represented. Roadside trading posts removed from any Indigenous community sold miniature totem poles next to rubber tomahawks, dreamcatchers and plastic headdresses; different tribes, different regions, different meanings, all flattened into one vague "Indian" souvenir that portrayed a monolithic culture that still survives today.
Indigenous people are still recovering from decades of forced assimilation that robbed generations of Natives of their cultural identity. In Kake, totems were cut down and burned under missionary pressure in the early 1900s; no new pole was raised there again until 1971. In 1904, facing coercion and colonial pressure, my ancestors agreed to hold a “last potlatch,” forfeiting pieces of our culture in the name of safety. In 2004, as a member of the Kaagwaantan clan, I participated in the 100th anniversary of that event, where despite decades of somber adaptation and quiet cultural genocide, we once again proudly engage in the traditions of our ancestors. We are still here, reclaiming our identity, our language, and our history, but reductive, stereotypical imagery like the ad’s AI totem pole still sets us back.
To the ad's makers, it was just a totem pole, one more prop beside the bald eagle and the road sign. But the AI-generated pole appears to be based on the Gaanax.ádi Raven Crest Pole; sacred at.óow that belongs to a clan, a people, a history.
A re-carving stands in Sitka National Historical Park which is why it was likely so easy for AI to appropriate, but the original came from the Tlingit village of Tuxekan, on Prince of Wales Island and it depicts the sacred history of their ancestors. Our culture and our sacred objects should not be appropriated, especially not to fit a political narrative.
This blatant lack of care and awareness is not surprising from a group bankrolled by a $1.5 million check from Elon Musk, a man with no stake in this state beyond what the passing of Ballot Measure 2 could do for him and the flood of dark money and corruption he represents.
In contrast, the No on 2 campaign has a coalition of over 150 real people throughout the state, including many proud indigenous Alaskans. Their ads do not use AI, and certainly nothing appropriative or insulting of this state’s original inhabitants. I am not writing to tell you how to vote on Ballot Measure 2 but only asking you to look closely at how Yes on 2 is choosing to depict the state it claims to represent. An ad campaign that makes a mockery of indigenous Alaskans? It sure doesn’t represent the Alaska I call home.
Talia Eames
–Talia Eames is Sitka Kaagwaantaan from the Wolf House, an Air Force veteran, and a C/O 2000 Sitka High School graduate. She does work for the No on 2 campaign.
