peoples. Much of it was spent and distributed in lavish potlatch celebrations, frequently associated with the construction and erection of totem poles. The monumental poles commissioned by wealthy family leaders to represent their social status and the importance of their families and clans. In the 1880s and 1890s, tourists, collectors, scientists and naturalist interested in Indigenous culture collected and photographed totem poles and other artifacts, many of which were put on display at expositions such as the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978, the practice of Indigenous religion was outlawed, and traditional Indigenous cultural practices were also strongly discouraged by Christian missionaries. This included the carving of totem poles. Missionaries urged converts to cease production and destroy existing poles. Nearly all totem-pole-making had ceased by 1901. Carving of monumental and mortuary poles continued in some, more remote villages as late as 1905; however, as the original sites were abandoned, the poles and timber homes were left to decay and vandalism. Beginning in the late 1930s, a combination of cultural, linguistic, and artistic revivals, along with scholarly interest and the continuing fascination and support of an educated and empathetic public, led to a renewal and extension of this artistic tradition. In 1938 the United States Forest Service began a program to reconstruct and preserve the old poles, salvaging about 200, roughly one-third of those known to be standing at the end of the 19th century. With renewed interest in Indigenous arts and traditions in the 1960s and 1970s, freshly carved totem poles were erected up and down the coast, while related artistic production was introduced in many new and traditional media, ranging from tourist trinkets to masterful works in wood, stone, blown and etched glass, and other traditional and non-traditional media. In June 2022 during the biennial Celebration festival in Juneau, Alaska, the Sealaska Heritage Institute unveiled the first 360-degree totem pole in Alaska: the Sealaska Cultural Values Totem Pole. The structure, carved out of a 600-year-old cedar tree, "represents all three tribes of Southeast Alaska — Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian." Meaning and purpose Totem poles can symbolize the characters and events in mythology, or convey the experiences of recent ancestors and living people. Some of these characters may appear as stylistic representations