Utoo Radio and Other News Sources - March 30, 2024) - The Vatican's museums have held a Kanehsatà:ke, Que., wampum belt for 200 years, some 2,000 miles across the ocean.
The Algonquin, Nipissing, and Mohawk made the belt in 1831. It was returned to Canada for 51 days last year and immediately appeared in a Montreal museum in the fall before returning to the Vatican vaults. Indigenous organizations want it and an unknown number of other relics back.
The Globe and Mail reported that the Holy See, the Catholic Church's government, has only briefly returned one Indigenous object to Canada in recent years.
Inuit, Métis, and First Nations leaders met with the Pope in Rome in March 2022 to discuss Catholic-run residential schools' atrocities.
Vatican authorities showed participants an exhibition of anthropology artifacts to promote recovery. They included carved West Coast face masks, Cree-patterned leather gloves, a Gwich'in infant belt with numerous colours, and a unique, 100-year-old Western Arctic Inuvialuit boat.
Anima Mundi curator Father Nicola Mapelli told delegates he wanted to learn more and get their ideas for giving back to local communities following the viewing.
Indigenous Canadians wanted to return home when images and word spread about what the delegates observed.
Last April, Pope Francis used "Thou shalt not steal" to emphasize atonement when asked about returning Indigenous products to Canadian communities on the papal plane. "Then there's the return of Indigenous things—this is going on with Canada, at least we agreed on that," stated.
He stated, "Wars and colonization sometimes make people decide to take good things from the other side." Making things right benefits everyone. Don't grow used to collecting money from others!"
The Globe and Mail reported that dozens of interviews with Indigenous curators, professors, politicians, art historians, cultural leaders, former delegates to Rome, and residential school survivors found little change since the delegates' visit two years ago.
It was reported that no cultural objects were returned to their communities, except for the 1831 wampum belt, which was given to the McCord Stewart museum in Montreal for seven weeks. There was no evidence that Vatican officials visited Canada, and no one interviewed heard the Vatican discuss this issue with Indigenous groups in the past year.
The Anima Mundi's website contains over 80,000 artifacts and pieces of art, but Indigenous experts say it's difficult to access and inventory the collection. are trying to repatriate items to their original nations because younger people like them. Last year, the Geneva Museum of Ethnography returned a medicine mask and turtle rattle to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy after being stolen.
The Vatican received several items recently. Three mummies returned to Peru in 2022. Three marble sculptures were returned to Greece last year.
Vatican gifts include several Native American items. The Vatican inventory lists the 1831 wampum belt as a gift to Pope Gregory XVI. A power imbalance at the time makes some experts question the Vatican's frequent usage of "gift."
Pope Pius XI funded the 1925 Vatican Missionary Exposition to showcase "the most obscure tribes in the remotest regions of the earth."
Over 100,000 items were on display, many donated by missionaries worldwide at the pope's request. The government stored 40,000 "gifts" for pontiffs. The museum still labels most displays as gifts.
As Canada banned many Indigenous cultural activities, some were taken to the Vatican.
West Coast potlatch ceremonies were forbidden by the federal government from 1885 to 1951 as a harsh approach to combine the church and government. That period, masks were traded or burned.
Vatican catalogue describes Haida or central B.C. Early 1900s face mask. The original notes called it "a mask related to the potlatch ceremony." It briefly mentions the event but doesn't state it was prohibited. Some pieces are touchable and breakable.
"They look like stolen things to me," said First Nations University Regina assistant professor of Indigenous fine arts Audrey Dreaver. Religious leaders, police, and the government burnt or removed rattles, pipes, and drums during the Sun Dance prohibition.
The CCCB said the 1831 wampum belt is the only cultural object returned and that no Vatican Museum officials have visited Canada. After discussing return with the Vatican, the CCCB was urged to ask Vatican officials.
Canadian Heritage spokesperson David Larose stated the government "prefers direct dialogue between Indigenous communities and custodial institutions (like the Vatican Museums) and backs more openness about Indigenous artifacts held in collections abroad."
The department "remains available to facilitate repatriation initiatives between Indigenous communities and custodial institutions as appropriate" and will collaborate with the Canada Border Services Agency.
It helped Gregory Scofield bring things home. The author brought Métis stories and artifacts to the West Coast.
"It's really important that people have the chance and access to learn from the grandmother pieces," traditional commodities manufactured by women, said a University of Victoria assistant professor of literature. Dr. Scofield, a Red River Métis, wrote Our Grandmothers' Hands: Repatriating Métis Material Art about them.
He said seeing them is crucial to learn about how they were created and what they were made of, as well as how they depict Indigenous life at the period.
Stop thinking of them as riches or history. We must tell ourselves these stories. Because those are our narratives.
The Gatineau, Que., Canadian Museum of History has returned over 1,000 ancestors' remains, burial goods, and cultural objects. Director of repatriation and Indigenous relations John Moses, whose father experienced a residential school, said the museum gives communities that request an inventory of its collections.
Similar outreach has been done by foreign museums to Indigenous Canadians. British Columbia's Nisga'a. received a Scottish National Museum totem pole. It was recovered last year after being stolen in 1929.
The Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in Derbyshire, England, transported a cut slate platter to Haida Gwaii alone in 2022. T
"Repatriation may change lives," says researcher and Woodland Cultural Centre director Heather George of Brantford, Ontario. Parents and children of residential school graduates value proof. Its "is so important to their healing, to supporting their memories, and to their understanding of what happened in their lives."
She believes sensation connects you to your ancestors. By connecting us to that period and society, it defines us. All of things are crucial for community mental health and recovery.
Regina's cultural goods make Cree Audrey Dreaver happy. Their purpose and power to help us make us stronger is due to our long history of how we present ourselves and how we relate to each other, the land, and all living things.
Dreaver believes colonization took identity, independence, and power. Repatriation returns lost and stolen items.
She adds the Vatican "is a strong institution." Returning items could make a difference.
