Totem Pole Carving Tells Easter Story Through the Tsimshian Tribe

Retired pastor David Fison designed and carved a 17-foot cedar totem pole which will be permanently displayed in front of Saint John United Methodist Church.

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By KTVA CBS 11

Story Created: Jul 18, 2011 at 2:08 PM AKDT

Story Updated: Jul 18, 2011 at 2:08 PM AKDT

An Anchorage pastor has found a non-traditional way of telling the story of Easter—with a totem pole.

For more than three years, retired pastor David Fison designed and carved a 17-foot cedar totem pole that tells the story of Jesus Christ being hung on a cross and rising from the dead.

The pole will be permanently displayed in front of Saint John United Methodist Church alongside a Christmas pole he also designed.

Fison said the story is told through the ways of the Tsimshian, a southeast Alaska tribe he preached to decades ago and was also adopted into.

“I had to go to Ketchikan to get the logs and brought it up. It was a 500-year-old cedar tree and it took a year to design it,” said Fison.

Fison said that totems were the closest things to books for the tribe.

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