Bridging the native artifact gap

New partnerships are being tested to bridge the gap between thousands of objects stolen, bought or traded from Canadian indigenous communities and the British museums that now hold them.

 

Many of the 16,500 artifacts in 23 British institutions, revealed this past weekend by a Toronto Star investigation, have not been accessed by native Canadians in hundreds of years.

The 31 human remains identified as possibly Canadian could be returned using the new U.K. Human Tissue Act.

 

But there is no legal basis for the return of 182 items from graves and hundreds of sacred ceremonial objects held in Britain.

 

Now a handful of British curators are approaching Canadian native communities in what has been described as a "caring and sharing" approach. Laura Peers, curator of the Americas collection at Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, helped write the first protocol agreement between a British institution and a First Nations community in Canada.

 

Oxford has one of the largest collections in Britain of Canadian objects, including photographs, which often have their own complex histories.

 

In 1925, the museum’s Beatrice Blackwood took 33 pictures of Kainai people on Alberta’s Blood Indian Reserve. Peers and Alison Brown from the University of Aberdeen took copies of the photographs back and set up a formal working relationship so everyone could learn from the history of the community and how it was studied 75 years ago.

 

Peers, originally from Uxbridge outside Toronto, said there has been little contact between British museums and Canadian communities until recently, often hundreds of years after objects were acquired from indigenous peoples. "We took images back to the Kainai and worked with community members to learn the meanings of images and identify people in the images," she said.

 

"We wanted to see what photos like these would mean to the Kainai people. This was part of aseries of experiments I’ve been conducting to see what we can do with collections here with communities overseas.

 

"The Kainai are unique because they have the Mookaakin Cultural and Heritage Foundation that acts to mentor outside researchers. They suggested a device called a protocol agreement, which spelled out expectations on both sides and asked us to work under guidance with this group and they had the responsibility to read a draft copy of the book we wrote, Pictures Bring Us Messages, and it worked beautifully.

 

"They never censored us in any way. It’s another part of taking control— they wanted the chance to see what we were going to say about them.There was a long process of going back, going back and going back, going over drafts, public meetings and how every single person was quoted."

 

She added: "After we agreed to work with them in this way, we couldn’t keep up with requests for interviews. Usually, people get thrown off reserves today if their research is not approved, or else nobody will talk to them."

 

But, Peers admitted, there are strong financial barriers facing Canadian communities that prevent them even visiting the objects of their ancestors in foreign museums.

 

"It’s white scholars who get grants to go to the U.K., and not aboriginal scholars," said Peers, 43.

 

"In native communities, if you’re juggling sewage infrastructure for a community versus a grant to send someone to a British museum on the tribal budget, you know what comes first."

Peers said this is where the Canadian government could be more active in making funds available to native students to travel.

 

Scholarships could allow indigenous youngsters to visit U.K. museums and study techniques from 300 to 400 years ago that might have been lost.

 

She said students would be welcome to interact with the artifacts in Pitt Rivers Museum with the help of staff.

 

Much of the earliest material history of Canada is held in foreign museums.

 

A proposed project to create a digital database between British museums and Carleton University in Ottawa failed to get funding from a U.K. trust.

 

They said the project was "too important" and should be funded by the Canadian government, added Peers.

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Canadian journalist Tristan Stewart-Robertson is a senior reporter at the Greenock Telegraph in Scotland. He can be reached at tsr@scapestreet.com