Hundreds of items returned to First Nations in Vancouver Museum’s ongoing repatriation process

Sierra William, Loretta Jeff and Chantu Williams with three of the 29 qatŝ’ay (coiled root baskets) that were repatriated and are now back in Tŝilhqot’in territory. (Courtesy: Jeremy Williams)

In 1974, the remains of a Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation ancestor that had been donated to the Museum of Vancouver seven years earlier were returned to the Cape Mudge Reserve, on the southern tip of Quadra Island, to be respectfully reburied.

It was long before museums around the world would collectively recognize the ethical imperative to return culturally and historically significant Indigenous objects to their rightful owners.

It would be another two decades before the museum would carry out another transfer of this nature, with the return of a collection of archaeological belongings to the Secwepemc Heritage Park, but by the early 2000s, when a new policy was officially added to its collections procedure, the ripple effect of repatriation was in full swing.

Since then, the museum has returned home a total of 384 belongings and 59 ancestors, says Sharon Fortney, the museum’s senior curator of Indigenous collections, engagement and repatriation.

They include repatriations to Indigenous communities in both B.C. and far-flung countries, including the return of a Korowai cloak to New Zealand’s Māori in 2010 and 255 belongings and ancestral remains to the Saginaw Chippewa in the United States in 2012.

THE PROCESS

“We get many requests for information about the collections,” says Fortney, adding how all the museum’s pieces are available to be viewed online, bar a few exceptions. The museum does not post records of ancestral remains publicly, and it does not show photos of items that are culturally sensitive.

Once a request in writing is received from a First Nation, the museum will begin to assess the requested item’s ownership. It is a complex and lengthy process, explains Fortenay.

“Is there someone else who might also have a claim to the item, or is the ownership well documented to the Nation, family or individual?” Fortenay says the teams have to question.

The request must be presented with supporting documents, like traditional territory maps or family genealogies, before it can be considered for approval. If granted, the plans are put in place for the transfer, which can take many forms and rarely follows the same path, says Fortenay.

“At times we have large ceremonies and invite the host Nation’s representatives for protocol, and sometimes we quietly crate items and ship them back to their communities,” she explains.

“The communities often must undertake ceremonial work on both ends of the process, leaving and arriving, and this can be a big undertaking depending upon what types of items are being returned.”

The entire process can vary from community to community. Some First Nations, such as the Haida, are very skilled at repatriation and have been doing this work for many decades. Others are at the beginning of the journey, and are working through how they want to proceed.

Others, she says, are still not yet ready to do the work.

A NATION’S RESPONSE

An exhibit coming to the museum in the spring, named the Work of Repair, will delve into the decades of repatriation work Fortenay, her co-workers, and numerous First Nations have carried out, with a focus on three different redress initiatives of the museum.

The exhibit itself was a request of the Tŝilhqot’in Nation, who were involved in one of the museum’s most recent, larger-scale repatriation projects that saw the return of over 60 Tŝilhqot’in ancestral belongings back to the Nation’s territory in western B.C.

In February of last year, Elders, youth, children, women’s council members and former Tŝilhqot’in leaders travelled to Vancouver to bring the belongings home.

The mass collection included 29 coiled root baskets, 29 prehistoric stone tools, one birch bark knife sheath embroidered with dyed porcupine quill, and one pair of snowshoes crafted from wood, rawhide and sinew.

“The objects repatriated have now reconnected with the Tŝilhqot’in people and territory after more than a century,” said Nits’ilʔin (Chief) Joe Alphonse, chair of the Tŝilhqot’in government in a statement issued by the museum in October.

Alphone said the nation’s people, particularly its youth, have taken “immense pride” in being able to witness the power of its people represented in the baskets.

“These objects are an amazing showcase of the strength of the Tŝilhqot’in people,” he said.

For Drew Blaney, culture and heritage manager for the Tla’amin Nation, an Indigenous community located on the upper Sunshine Coast, it is restoring pride and instilling cultural knowledge into his people that motivates him to continue embarking on repatriation journeys with museums.

“The reason why it is important for us to get some of these baskets back is because weaving is a dying art form, and we want to motivate a lot of our younger people to pick it back up,” he says.

“We need to have examples for them.”

LOST TREASTURES UNCOVERED

Blaney’s journey with the process began in 2022, following an unexpected request from Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology to view its repository of items and determine whether any of it belonged to the Tla’amin Nation, and should be returned.

Many museums only display around three to five per cent of their collections at a time, with the remainder often stashed away in storage. Tucked away in the MoA’s archives, Blaney found a set of totem poles that were believed to have been burned up in the Great Fire of 1918.

They had been missing, he says, for decades.

Spurred on by the find, Blaney visited the Museum of Vancouver, and discovered woven baskets and other smaller belongings, 11 items in total, that he requested to return home.

Blaney says he harbours no animosity to the museums and institutions that have housed his Nation’s items for so many decades.

“My great great grandmother used to sell her baskets for a loaf of bread, and there would be trade for things like children’s shoes and clothes,” he says.

“We understand that a lot of these items weren’t taken from us, but they were bought.”

He acknowledges that for many other First Nations that may not be the case, and when acquisitions of such Indigenous artefacts from collectors and anthropologists were carried out, they were often done so without the knowledge of the relevant Indigenous communities. That in itself is reason enough for why they should be returned, he says.

It is still important to have a First Nations presence in museums, for educational purposes, he says, but museums will have to work with individual First nations to attempt to strike the correct balance.

“When people from around the world go to visit the Museum of Vancouver, they still need to have that piece of history there so that people can still learn about us,” he says.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

As far as education is concerned, Fortenay says the museum’s collecting practice has shifted to be Vancouver-focused to now collecting contemporary Indigenous items that support local Indigenous artists. The pieces, she says, still “demonstrate the strength and continuity of traditions” of First Nations communities in B.C.

With their “small budget” for purchases granted each year, museum curators have collected weavings made by the likes of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) artists Chief Janice George and Buddy Joseph, Musqueam artist Debra Sparrow and the Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s Angela George.

Donations from recent years include a set of ski passes designed for Seymour Mountain by Tsleil-Waututh artist Olivia George, and a bentwood box, designed by artist Maynard Johnny Jr. to commemorate the 215 suspected children’s graves found at a former residential school in Kamloops.

“I encourage museums to work within their local First Nations communities to write these stories,” says Blaney.

“Often you have anthropologists, not Indigenous people, writing this history for us, but it’s really important for us to be sharing our own stories of our own histories.”