The Indian New Deal of the 1930s strongly promoted native arts and crafts, and in the totem pole they discovered an art that was widely appreciated by white society. In Alaska the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps restored old totem poles, copied those beyond repair, and carved new ones. The Indian Arts and Crafts Board, A federal government agency, facilitated their sale to the general public. The project was lucrative, but anthropologists complaining that it stripped the natives of their traditional culture and stripped away the meaning of the totem poles.[58][59]
Another example occurred in 1938, when the U.S. Forest Service began a totem pole restoration program in Alaska.[60] Poles were removed from their original places as funerary and crest poles to be copied or repaired and then placed in parks based on English and French garden designs to demystify their meaning for tourists.[61]
In England at the side of Virginia Water Lake, in the south of Windsor Great Park, there is a 100-foot (30 m) tall Canadian totem pole that was given to Queen Elizabeth II to commemorate the centenary of British Columbia. In Seattle, Washington, a Tlingit funerary totem pole was raised in Pioneer Square in 1899, after being taken from an Alaskan village.[62] In addition, the totem pole collections in Vancouver's Stanley Park, Victoria's Thunderbird Park, and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia were removed from their original locations around British Columbia.