After years of negotiations starting with a visit by the late Pope Francis in 2022, the Vatican repatriated a wealth of Indigenous cultural treasures that were unveiled this week in a warehouse belonging to the Canadian Museum of History. The institution in Gatineau, Quebec—around a 2.5-hour drive west of Montreal—is currently storing the 62-object handover while Indigenous elders and experts take stock of each piece and investigate its origins.
As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), Vancouver Archbishop Richard Smith, representing the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said at a news conference on Tuesday, “We recognize that reconciliation is not a single event but a long journey, one that requires humility, perseverance and above all the willingness to listen.”
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The objects returned were first sent to Rome for a world exhibition organized by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and remained there until Pope Francis called for their repatriation a few years ago and the recently anointed Pope Leo XIV followed through on the act.
The objects with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis roots include a kayak made with driftwood and seal skin that was once used to hunt beluga whales. At the news conference, Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said, “You’ll have to imagine that in the 1920s, this particular kayak would have been essential to the wellbeing of a family and of a community.” He added: “The idea that we can examine this kayak, we can appreciate it, understand it more, will also lead to the reintroduction of kayak making.”
Of the return of the objects, whose futures are now being deliberated closer to home, Obed said, “I think this is also something as a part of reconciliation. The norms that you have for your institutions are not necessarily the norms that we have in our society about how we respect our living history, our items of cultural significance. The ways in which we connect are often very literally physically—to touch and to feel.”
