By: Gabrielle McLaren, Staff Writer
In 2012, the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology accepted a collection of stone tools a farmer had gathered along the Peace River. The condition was that these artefacts would be repatriated to the Treaty 8 Tribal Association (T8TA), an advisory group for Treaty 8 First Nations. Repatriation means returning culturally significant items to their historically rightful communities.
SFU students sorted and restored the lithics and arranged them into a virtual exhibit in preparation for their 2017 repatriation to the T8TA. The collection will be part of the first collection of the new Tse’K’wa Interpretive Centre at Charlie Lake.
SFU’s museum includes artefacts from ancient Egypt, West Africa, Bolivia, and all across BC and the Pacific Northwest coast. While SFU has worked to acknowledge the origins of their collections, not all museums have done the same — nor are they obligated to, as repatriation is a complicated and unregulated issue. British Columbia is no stranger to the repatriation of Indigenous artefacts; in 2016, the province allocated $2 million to the Royal BC Museum for efforts in repatriating Indigenous artefacts.
Historians and archaeologists must work with artefacts in coalition with their proper owners, and we need to ensure that that’s what’s happening. Canada — not just individual Canadian groups, but Canada as a whole — must do the needed groundwork to repatriate the cultural properties that need repatriation.
Of course, repatriation is an international issue. Egypt, and its Supreme Council of Antiquities, under secretary general Dr Zahi Hawass, have worked long and hard to quench the flow of artefacts illegally leaving the country following the Arab Spring, going so far as demanding the return of the Rosetta Stone, which has been stationed in the British Museum since 1802.
These claims echo the fate of many Indigenous artefacts in museums today: the Rosetta Stone’s removal from Egypt was hush-hush. Multiple versions of the story mention the stone bouncing from French to English hands, but never an Egyptian person being consulted. To Hawass, its extended stay in the United Kingdom is a relic of colonialism.
Can the same be said for, say, the First Peoples Hall in the Canadian Museum of History? The key difference here is that the Canadian Museum of History have an easily-found repatriation policy. Policies and laws are the keys to ensuring that cultural and historical artefacts are handled in an ethical way.
Some individual museums, such as the Canadian Museum of History, have worked toward strong repatriation policies. Yet no consistent legal framework for repatriation in Canada exists — except in Alberta, which passed the First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act in 2000, though not all nations are covered by the act.
However, the law itself doesn’t even apply to other Canadian provinces, let alone foreign countries. If any museum does refuse to repatriate human remains or cultural materials, very little can be done, aside from awareness campaigns, continuing pressure, and expensive lawsuits.
One big argument against repatriation is that setting precedents for it would empty museums worldwide. However, when BC provided additional funding to its Royal Museum back in 2016, Indigenous communities were not uniform in wanting total repatriation of all Indigenous items.
Some communities would be fine with museums retaining their artefacts, as long as those items were properly obtained, stored, and preserved. However, many Indigenous objects, and even remains, were confiscated from potlatches or stolen from graves. This is an especially problematic aspect, and it’s what leads to increased calls for the return of the artefacts.
So, as long as museums are ethical in their approach, they will likely still have enough for their exhibits even after returning the items whose owners choose to reclaim them.
Indigenous people should be leading all things repatriation — which they already do. For instance, the Haida Repatriation Committee has already returned and properly buried the remains of 460 ancestors and counting, and located Haida treasures to repatriate. Furthermore, in July of this past year, the Haida mountain goat moon chest was returned to Haida Gwaii after extraordinary negotiations with the American Museum of Natural History, and was used in a potlatch ceremony for the first time since 1901.
It’s good that museums, private collectors, and other independents are returning some of the items. But they shouldn’t pat themselves on the back for that, especially not if they continue to keep hoards of ill-gotten treasures in the archives. Repatriation is a process, not an occurrence. Federal and provincial governments need to facilitate that process by creating legal support and frameworks, and those laws need to be based in the best interests of Indigenous communities, as decided by those communities.
The progress already made doesn’t contradict the idea that stronger legal action by the government is necessary. We need rules and regulations that support our Indigenous communities.
Forgetting this country’s background of colonialism would be dangerous. But that doesn’t mean we should let colonialism continue to have footholds in pur museums. When items belong to people who are still around to claim them, those people should have a say in those items’ fate. It’s more important for a chest to be used by the people who made it than it is for me to be able to look at it.
