Noun
A rude picture, as of a bird, beast, or the like, used by the North American Indians as a symbolic designation, as of a family or a clan.
Source: Webster's dictionaryI think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood. Denzel Washington
Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris. Mason Cooley
You can't really get into regular football after you watch Australian rules football because it's just two different ends of the totem pole. Andrew Bogut
The totem pole, for example, is a remnant from an era where there was much greater communication between man and the animals -- when, in fact, men went to the animals to learn, and from them first acquired knowledge of herbs and corrective medicinal behavior. Robert Butts
As the totem pole is tied to the lineality of the missionaries' Bible, so the igloo was made possible by the primus stove. Marshall McLuhan
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came, And he told me in a vision of the night:- There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And every single one of them is right! Rudyard Kipling