In the first episode of season 3, Milena and Megan leave the US for Canada’s first woman known to professionally carve totem poles, Ellen Neel & the Italian Nobel laureate neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini

Ellen Neel

True to form, for the first episode of the season Megan is covering…..a sculptor. Today we’re going to the far west stretches of British Columbia to explore the work of the first professional totem pole carver Ellen Neel. A member of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations Peoples, we dive into the history of the tribe, assimilation efforts by the Canadian government & how that played a role in Ellen’s career as a carver. 

Selected Work

Shown from left to right: Grouse Wild Man, Sun & First Man painted cedar masks

Shown from left to right: Grouse, Dsonakwa and West Wind red cedar masks

Thunderbird pole made in 1955, on display at Stanley Park in Vancouver, Canada

Kwakiutl (Thunderbird), dedicated in 1948 at the University of British Colombia on the right. No idea what the totem pole sent to the Welsh Boy Scouts looks like

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Rita Levi-Montalcini is yet another woman that proves when there’s work to be done, death can wait. Living to the age of 103, Rita is to date the longest-living Nobel Laureate. As a young woman Rita had to convince her father that educating women, like herself, was in their best interests. Upon getting her father’s ok to study, Rita made the most of it – not even stopping her scientific research as her family fled from Nazi’s in Mussolini’s Italy. That work paid off when she was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for her research of nerve growth factor. Milena covers how Rita came to study neurobiology, the importance of educational support and what chicken parts have to do with all of this.

As always, music by EeL