Opinion: Re-examining repatriation efforts among the First Nations

Monday, January 3, 2011  

"Twenty years ago in Canada, the Assembly of First Nations and the Canadian Museums Association formed a joint task force to discuss concerns over the display and ownership of Native spiritual materials, human remains and objects of cultural significance. The two organizations had been prompted to meet by the international boycott of the exhibit The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples, prepared by Calgary’s Glenbow Museum in conjunction with the 1988 Olympics.

Although the protest began as a tactic to settle a Cree land claims dispute, the focus quickly turned to an examination of standard museum practices. The joint task force report, Turning the Page, did not recommend national legislation, but a collaborative spirit to resolve these contentious issues. Despite the different approaches to contemporary relationships between museums and indigenous peoples, the history of collecting ethnographic and archaeological items developed similarly in the United States and Canada.

Some stories from the history of anthropology, such that of an Inuit boy named Minik, are horrific. In 1897, explorer Robert Peary brought seven-year-old Minik, his father Qisuk, and several other Inuit from Greenland to New York. Franz Boas of the American Museum of Natural History had requested Peary bring him an Inuit in order to study their culture. Several of the Inuit party, including Qisuk, shortly contracted tuberculosis and died. To placate Minik who wished to see his father buried in the proper traditional Inuit way, the museum staged a fake burial, all the while planning on placing Qisuk’s body on display after cleaning his flesh from his bones. In 1906, Minik learned the grisly truth from newspaper reports."

Get the Story:
Michelle A. Hamilton: Native American Repatriation at 20 (History News Network 1/3)