means A totem is an animal, plant, or object adopted as the emblem of a clan, family, or individual, often carved or depicted to represent ancestry and spiritual connection.

from From Ojibwe (an Algonquian language of the Great Lakes region), where 'odoodem' meant roughly 'his kinship group' or 'his clan' — the word carries the idea of belonging to a family marked by a shared emblem. English picked it up in the late 18th century through accounts of Indigenous North American peoples, and the now-familiar 'totem pole' followed as settlers described the carved cedar monuments of the Pacific Northwest coast.