Photo: 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.

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.

Read the full article here.