A longhouse post originally taken from the Gitxaala Nation around 138 years ago, near Prince Rupert, B.C., is being repatriated to the territory from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.
The black and red, three-metre tall, 180-kilogram house post has been shipped from Harvard University’s Peabody Museum in Massachusetts and is expected to arrive in Prince Rupert in March.
The post depicts a grizzly bear of the sea and her cubs, which are the two main crests of the house within the nation. The house post was one of the four posts that stood in the Grizzly Bear longhouse.
Christian missionaries threatened and forced Indigenous leaders to convert to Christianity while destroying their cultures, according to the Gitxaala Nation. The house post was sold “under duress,” in 1885.
Gitxaala Nation’s cultural program manager, Dustin Johnsons, said its return is an emotional one that will help connect the community to their ancestors.
“If the Peabody Museum didn’t take care of it — it would have been completely lost,” he told Global News.
“So it’s bittersweet because it was desecrated when it was cut down and also when it arrived in Boston as they inserted rods and lights inside. It’s a priceless treasure for our people. Bringing home our item is a symbol of pride. We are still here, our people are still here.”
He said the nation hosted a meeting after word that the Peabody Museum at Harvard had agreed to return the post. Some elders, including a 96-year-old member, recalled the dark history of the destruction of their culture.
“The trauma that they’ve seen, the sadness from seeing the great-great-grandparents being forced to cut down poles and burn them because of the Christian missionaries and the colonial government,” Johnson said. “So, this one coming back is symbolic of reclaiming our belongings, but also asserting our place back in the world.”
Gitxaala Nation also released a statement regarding the repatriation.
“The house post is the surviving section of the original totem pole that was cut down and burned along with many other totem poles and Gitxaała cultural belongings. This surviving portion of the totem pole was saved by Gitxaała ancestors and stored inside the longhouse of the Gitnagun’aks. This was during the period of the potlatch ban in Canada when many aspects of First Nations’ culture and governance had been made illegal under colonial law and when First Nations people were struggling to survive amidst genocide,” Gitxaala Nation staff said.
Jane Pickering, a Peabody Museum director, acknowledged the house post’s “dark history” in an interview. A fishing company used the post as a decorative object in a “completely inappropriate” manner, Pickering said.
“It came into the museum’s possession in 1917, it was brought back from a New England fishing company. The director of the museum of the time requested that the pole be donated and the company agreed,” she said.
Pickering said it wasn’t until the museum was contacted by the Gitxaala Nation in 2021 to return the post that they learned of its “incredibly symbolic cultural value.”
The Gitxaala Nation will be holding a big celebration in April to celebrate the standing up of the house post.
Johnson said the post is one of 73 items the nation is trying to return home.
“And that’s what we know of at the moment, but there are still many out there,” he said.
The Museum of Northern British Columbia will care for the house post until the completion of the Gitxaała Cultural Center and Museum in 2024 in the village of Lax Klan (Kitkatla BC).
— With files from Canadian Press
Comments