Students and native carver create totem pole for Parkwood

A small crowd of men, jackets off, circled around a 1200-pound wood carving that lay on its back in the Parkwood Elementary School courtyard. The problem: How to lift it up a small slope and onto a concrete pedestal?

It was the crowning hour of the past years’ work, during which Parkwood students, working with famed Northwest carver Saaduuts, chiseled a Haida watchman figure from a giant cedar log.

With a heave, the men rolled the carving partway up a rickety ramp of boards and bricks, some of which cracked under the pressure.

The crowd breathed out a “Woah,” and there was doubt in the air.

The volunteers rolled, tugged and pulled the heavy carving in the finger-numbing cold.

Then, in a moment, the watchman was up on the pedestal, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

“It was made with a lot of love as you can see,” Saaduuts told the audience at the start of the ceremony. “It’s about saving, not wasting, and teaching the kids about unity and compassion. It was made with a lot of love.”

In spirit, the closing ceremony echoed the project’s start a year ago.

“When we started, we had the kids around this huge log,” said teacher Dianne Hertzberg, whose students participated along with other third-through-sixth graders.

Saaduuts had the children touch and smell the log. He asked them to think only positive thoughts while carving .

And he continually stressed the need to stay present and focused.

The idea of giving chisels to children made some a little nervous, said Hertzberg. But Saaduuts was right there the whole time, stressing quiet concentration, she said.

“The kids who had a hard time paying attention, he wouldn’t let them (carve) until they were totally focused,” she said.

Working with Saaduuts brought Hertzberg a quiet mind too.

“It was an experience that was — I don’t have words for it,” she said. “Spiritual. It was very healing for me.”

Hertzberg appreciated the reverence for nature that Saaduuts taught the children.

For example, he told them that before a tree can be carved, the tree needs to give permission.

“We have curriculum, but who’s teaching them about the trees and the birds?” Hertzberg said.

Saaduuts carves from his heart, and that what made it such a meaningful project, Hertzberg said.

“The kids just loved him,” she said.