It was a historic and emotional day in northwest B.C. Friday, as the Nisga’a nation welcomed home a memorial totem pole taken without the community’s consent nearly a century ago.
The House of Ni’isjoohl memorial pole was carved from red cedar in 1860, telling the story of a warrior destined to become chief, before he died in battle.
The 11-metre pole was taken from the nation in 1929 by a Canadian ethnographer and later sold to the National Museum of Scotland. On Friday, with a procession leading the way, it was transported to the Nisga’a museum in Lax̱g̱altsʼap, 94 years after its removal.
“It marks the beginning of true reconciliation when it comes to bringing our ancestors home, bringing home our artifacts that were taken without consent,” Eva Clayton, president of the Nisga’a Lisimis Government told media.
“And it’s going to be a tremendous show of precedent setting.”
“It’s been a really, really long time and this was on our minds for quite a while now,” added Nisga’a Chief Earl Stephens.
“This is really spiritual for us. This pole is spiritual because its our ancestors, our great, great grandmother. So we had to get her back on home soil.”
A previous generation of Nisga’a tried to get the pole back in the 1990s, but were told it was too old to be moved.
Last year, a Nisga’a delegation travelled to Scotland to ask for its return. Following a year of negotiation, the museum agreed to return the pole, and arrangements were made to use a Canadian military aircraft to fly it back to British Columbia.
Amy Parent, a member of the nation and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous education and governance who was a part of the team that went to Scotland, described seeing the pole in the Scottish museum for the first time.
“We could feel it. I could feel like the room was breathing,” she said. “As soon as the pole came onto the lava beds my body just released, and I felt a sigh of relief.”
The Nisga’a Nation, which is matrilineal, is describing the pole’s return as a “rematriation.”
Parent said she hopes the process inspires other colonial institutions to “do the right thing” and proactively return Indigenous cultural items held in their collections.
“I would hope that moving forward that museums are actively seeking us out, that they are recognizing that anything that was taken during the potlatch ban from 1880 to 1951 was taken during a time of duress, taken at a time of extreme genocide we were going through, and that most of the belongings in their collections are questionable in terms of whether they should even have them in their possession,” she said.
Part of that process, she said, will require institutions to look beyond the Eurocentric way they view the items — typically thought of as artifacts, objects or forms of capital.
“For us, they are about relationships and belonging, ancestors, cultural treasures, that was the first difference that we experienced,” she said.
Theresa Schober, director and curator of the Nisg̱a’a Museum, said the negotiations with the Scottish museum involved those on the other side of the table reflecting on how their institutional policies and procedures were written from a colonial perspective.
“I think likely they have been changed through this process, and in a very positive way,” she said.
Other First Nations have since approached the Nisga’a about learning from their rematriation experience, she added.
“That’s important,” she said.
“Not from an institution’s perspective, a colonial museum explaining how rematriation or repatriation could potentially occur, but instead how the nation centred its own laws and traditions in their approach to those institutions to demand their cultural belongings back.”
The Nisga’a say two more of their poles remain in the hands of foreign cultural institutions, one in the British Museum, and one in Paris.
The nation is actively working to retrieve them as well.
“The Nisga’a are coming,” said Parent.
Last Month, a Nisga’a delegation travelled to Edinburgh to prepare the pole for its voyage back to the Nation’s territory.
The mission was a complicated one, requiring specialists to prepare and move the pole to ensure it wasn’t damaged, before it was carefully lowered into a custom-built case and flown back to B.C. in a Canadian military aircraft.
Friday’s celebrations included up to 1,000 people including members of the nation along with representatives from the governments of Canada and British Columbia, and the National Museum of Scotland.