The $23,000 Totem Pole Debacle This leads to many questions: 1.
What other art work has the Census Bureau commissioned? (Isn’t
this the job of the National Endowment for the Arts?) 2. How
much money has the Census Bureau spent on art projects? 3. How
much money did it cost to make the totem pole video that is on
YouTube that (before I blogged about it) received only 42 total
views and still only has 217 views? 4. Who are Deni
Luna/Gutacetla — the people who are responsible for this video?
Is it the same person as on this web site? Was the bidding
process to make this video competitive? Were the Tinglit Raven
Clan compensated for their part in the video? If so, how much
money? 5. Why would the Census Bureau commission Tommy Joseph,
an artist from Sitka, Alaska, to design a totem pole to
commemorate an action taken by people of Noorvik, Alaska — two
places that are approximately 1,500 miles apart from each other?
Steve Jost of the Census Bureau answered my previous questions
about this by writing the following: