Indigenous cultural belongings return to Canada from Vatican after long journey
CBC
More than five dozen items belonging to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis are one step closer to returning home.
Following three years of negotiations, 62 cultural items previously held in Vatican museums and vaults for a century landed at Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport just before noon on Saturday.
"It is a positive step toward reconciliation," said Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN).
"It wasn’t easy, but I’m glad that they’re coming home. Our residential school survivors, our elders, our chiefs have been calling for that for a long, long time."
The majority of the items are still unknown, but 14 items are of Inuit provenance, including an Inuvialuit kayak used to chase beluga whales, one is Métis and the remaining belong to First Nations across Canada.
Last week, the AFN sent a delegation of elders, knowledge keepers and residential school survivors to Rome to hold ceremonies while the items were being packed for transport. They left Vatican City by truck for Frankfurt, Germany, earlier this week before arriving in Montreal on Saturday morning.
A delegation from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and four First Nations youth accompanied the items on the flight.
Representatives from the AFN, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) and Métis National Council (MNC) welcomed their arrival. Elder Ka'nahsohon Kevin Deer, from Kahnawà:ke, and federal MP Steven Guilbeault, who represents the Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie, were also in attendance.
"We’re very proud to be a part of what is a very historic repatriation," said Natan Obed, president of ITK.
He said the kayak, for example, is one of only five known to exist.
"The idea that we can examine this kayak, we can appreciate it, understand it more, will also lead to the reintroduction of kayak making," Obed said.
The 62 items were among thousands of objects originally sent to Rome between 1923 and 1925 for a world exhibition organized by Pope Pius XI, who invited Catholic missionaries to send materials from Indigenous Peoples around the world.
The items were repatriated through a church-to-church transfer, through the Vatican to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, in November. Obed said negotiations for the repatriation began in 2022 and originally centred around the return of the kayak but later grew to a partnership between ITK, the AFN and Métis National Council.
The boxed items will be transported by truck to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., where they will be examined.
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