A delegation from British Columbia’s Nisg’a First Nation will travel to Scotland on Monday to begin discussions with the country’s National Museum to repatriate a memorial totem stolen in 1929.
“This will be the first time in living memory that members of the House of Nis’sjoohl will be able to see the memorial pole with our own eyes,” Nation Leader Earl Stephens said in a statement. “This visit will be deeply moving for all of us.”
The totem had been stolen by ethnologist Marius Barbeau who later sold it to the Scottish Museum. He got his hands on it when the Aboriginal community was away from the village during the annual hunting season, the First Nation said.
“The totem is a priceless asset that our respected hereditary chiefs have rightly called a cultural treasure. It tells of our House’s relationship with the land and with our people. To have it taken away from us is to remove a part of our cultural identity and an integral part of our nation’s history,” said Amy Parent, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Education and Governance. at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
For Ms. Parent, it would therefore be a step towards reconciliation, as the United Kingdom voted in favor of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The First Nation has already had over 300 treasures returned by the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Royal BC in September 2010.
But to date, only one totem has been successfully repatriated from a European museum.
The totem will be part of a research project to explore the production and transmission of knowledge in the repatriated Nisga’a carving tradition.