(Vatican) The Vatican Museums are home to some of the world’s most magnificent works of art, from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to Egyptian antiquities, plus a pavilion filled with papal chariots. But one of the museum’s least-visited collections has become its most contested as Pope Francis’ trip to Canada approaches.
Posted at 8:43 a.m.
The Vatican’s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum, located near the food court and just before the main exit, houses tens of thousands of artifacts and works of art made by indigenous peoples from around the world, including a large part was sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for an exhibition in the Vatican gardens in 1925.
The Vatican says the feathered headdresses, carved walrus tusks, masks and embroidered animal skins were gifts to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the global reach of the Church, its missionaries and peoples’ lives natives whom they evangelized.
But indigenous groups in Canada, who were shown some items from the collection when they traveled to the Vatican last spring to meet Pope Francis, are wondering how some of the works were actually acquired and what other items might be stored for decades without being exposed to the public.
Some say they want them back.
“These pieces that belong to us should come home,” said Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council, who led the Métis delegation that asked Pope Francis to return the items.
The return of indigenous and colonial-era artefacts, a pressing debate for museums and national collections across Europe, is one of the many agenda items awaiting Pope Francis on his trip. in Canada, which begins on Sunday.
The main purpose of the trip is to allow the Pope to apologize in person, on Canadian soil, for the abuses that Indigenous peoples and their ancestors suffered at the hands of Catholic missionaries in residential schools.
More than 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada were forced to attend these publicly funded schools, in an attempt to isolate them from the influence of their homes and cultures. The goal was to Christianize them and assimilate them into mainstream society.
Official Canadian policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries also aimed to suppress Indigenous spiritual and cultural traditions in the country. Government agents confiscated items used in the ceremony and other rituals, and some of them ended up in museums in Canada, the United States and Europe, as well as in private collections.
It is possible that the indigenous peoples gave their works to the Catholic missionaries for the 1925 exhibition or that the missionaries bought them. But historians question whether the items could have been offered for free given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions and the government’s policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called ” cultural genocide”.
“By the power structure at that time, it would be very difficult for me to accept that there wasn’t coercion in those communities to get those items,” said Michael Galban, of the Washoe Nations and Paiutes and director and curator of the Seneca Art & Culture Center in upstate New York.
Gloria Bell, a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and assistant professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, agrees.
“Using the term ‘gift’ just hides the whole story,” said M.me Bell, who is of mixed-race ancestry and is finishing a book on the 1925 exhibit. . »
Katsitsionni Fox, a Mohawk filmmaker who served as a spiritual advisor to the First Nations spring delegation, said she saw items belonging to her people that needed to be “reclaimed,” or brought back to the country of origin.
“You can feel they’re not where they belong, where they want to be,” she said of the wampum belts, war clubs and other items she documented with. his phone’s camera.
The Inuit delegation, for its part, inquired about a kayak in the collection.
The Vatican Museums declined repeated requests for an interview or comment.
Opening the renovated Anima Mundi gallery space in 2019 with artifacts from Oceania as well as a temporary exhibition on the Amazon, Pope Francis said the objects were maintained “with the same passion reserved for masterpieces. work of the Renaissance or immortal Greek and Roman statues”.
You might miss the Anima Mundi if you were to spend the day in the Vatican Museums. Official tours don’t include it, and the audio guide, which features descriptions of around 20 museums and galleries, completely ignores it. Private guides say they rarely take visitors there, as there is no explanatory text on the display cases or walls.
Margo Neale, who helped curate the 2010 Vatican exhibit at the Anima Mundi as director of the Australian National Museum’s Center for Indigenous Knowledge, said it is unacceptable that Indigenous collections today lack knowledge. informative labels.
They don’t get the respect they deserve […] “said Mr.me Neale, a member of the Kulin and Gumbaingirr nations. “They are beautifully displayed, but are culturally diminished by the lack of recognition of anything other than their ‘exotic otherness’. »
In Victoria, British Columbia, Gregory Scofield amassed a community collection of approximately 100 items of beadwork, embroidery, and other Métis crafts that he tracked down and acquired through online auctions and through travel and made available to scholars and Métis artists.
Mr. Scofield, Métis poet and author of the forthcoming book Our Grandmother’s Hands: Repatriating Metis Material Artsaid any discussion with the Vatican should focus on granting indigenous scholars full access to the collection and, ultimately, returning the items home.
“These pieces contain our stories,” he said. These coins hold our history. These pieces contain the energy of these ancestral grandmothers. »