'Return to Sender’ – Around the World, Museums Are Relinquishing Priceless Antiquities to Their Rightful Owners
After generations of resistance, the dominoes are falling almost weekly, it seems.
I’m referring to the sometimes reluctant return of artifacts to their creators, ancient and more modern, in this New Age of cultural awareness and ethnic sensitivity.
In Canada we’re driven by the tsunami that has resulted as one of the key consequences of Truth and Reconciliation—a belated admission that our colonial mindset and governance of two and a-half centuries must change.
You’re seeing this again and again in the news so I’ll not dwell on it here.
My intent in the Chronicles this week is to focus on the growing trend of museums to surrender the priceless antiquities of the ancient worlds—treasures often held by museums far from their creators and countries of origin—but also much closer to home, right here in British Columbia.
To set the stage, here are the latest news items by their headlines:
B.C. First Nation arrives in Scotland, asks museum to return totem pole taken in 1929
Royal B.C. Museum returning museum to remote First Nation
After 138 years, house post returning to Gitxaala Nation
Nuxalk Nation celebrates return of totem pole from Royal B.C. Museum
Farther from home, some of these returns, or repatriations as they’ve been termed, are momentous:
Mi’kmaq regalia to return home to Nova Scotia after 130 years in an Australian museum
Museum: London, Athens could share Parthenon Marbles in deal
Swiss museum returns Indigenous relics
Chief Poundmaker’s pipe, saddle bag returning from Royal Ontario Museum to descendants
Rare, centuries-old jewelry returns to Cambodia
With eye on Britain, Greece welcomes back artifacts
In short, we’ve come a long way from banning, seizing and looting.
That’s next week in the Chronicles.
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PHOTO: ‘Coppers’ were among the most prized of B.C. First Nations. The Canadian government confiscated them under threat of criminal prosecution. —Author’s Collection