Members of the Tseycum First Nation of British Columbia reclaimed 55 ancestors from the American Museum of Natural History on Monday.

Chief Vern Jacks and his wife, Cora, led the Canadian delegation to New York City for the ceremony. It was Cora who spent years tracking down the remains of ancestors that were taken from Vancouver Island and sold to museums across the world.

“He dug our people up and sold them to museums on all four corners of the earth,” Chief Jacks, 63, told The New York Times. “What happened to ‘rest in peace’?”

The ancestors were taken in the late 1800s and early 1900s by archaeologist Harlan Ingersoll Smith. He sold bodies for $10 and skulls for $5, Jacks said.

The Tseycum First Nation plans to ask the Field Museum in Chicago to return other Salish ancestors.

Get the Story:
After 100 Years, Tribe’s Ancestors Head Home (The New York Times 6/10)
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