Seven members, including Nisga’a Nation Chief Earl Stephens, traveled from British Columbia and are scheduled to meet with staff, curators and politicians at the National Museum of Scotland on Monday.
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“This will be the first time members of the House of Ni’isjoohl will be able to see the monument with our own eyes,” Stephens said in a press release. “This visit will be deeply moving for all of us.” The Nisga’a totem pole, also known as the Ni’isjoohl memorial pole, was hand-carved in the 1860s. It depicts the story of Ts’wawit, a warrior who was next in line to become chief before being killed in a conflict with a neighboring nation. Story continues below ad The nation said the pole was taken in 1929 without consent by ethnographer Marius Barbeau while members were away from their villages for the annual hunting and food-gathering season, and was later sold to a museum in Scotland. Amy Parent, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Education and Governance at Simon Fraser University and a representative from the nation, said returning the object would mean restoring a part of the nation’s cultural identity.
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“I want our kids to wake up every day and not have to look so hard for a story about who we are,” she said in an interview. He said the representatives plan to discuss their “exact intentions” with museum and government officials to request that legal title to the pole be transferred to the nation. “At this point, they’ve been positive about their communication with us and their desire to make sure they’re culturally respectful of hosting our delegation,” Parent said. “We’re trying to be cautiously optimistic about the conversation that will unfold.” Parent said this is not the first time representatives of the Nisga’a Nation have traveled to Europe in an effort to locate and recover its cultural artifacts. He said a group had visited the National Museum of Scotland in 2018 but had been told the pole was too fragile to remove. Story continues below ad
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However, Parent said she later discovered it had been moved when the museum underwent recent renovations. “Leading Canadian experts have determined that the pole is in good enough condition to be moved and would not hesitate to say that it could withstand the journey back to Canada and back to our nation,” he said. This led to their decision to travel back to the UK in the hope of retrieving it, he said. “I think they can help us rewrite history through this act of reparation,” Parent said. “It’s the Scottish Government’s chance to show the world that UNDRIP really is more than symbolic.” The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, was established in 2007 as a framework of minimum standards for the survival and well-being of Indigenous Peoples worldwide. It is a resolution, however, and not legally binding.
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National Museums Scotland, the body that oversees the museum, said in a statement that it “welcomes open dialogue and encourages collaboration with communities for whom the objects in the collection are of particular importance”. Story continues below ad “We look forward to hosting a delegation from the Nisga’a Nation to the National Museum of Scotland to view the monument, share information about it and share the process for considering requests to transfer artifacts,” he said. Parent said the nation also hopes the Scottish government and National Museums Scotland will tackle the bill to return the totem pole to B.C. “The burden shouldn’t be on us as a family or as a nation to have to pay for his return,” Parent said. If they succeed in repatriating the pole, the nation said it plans to set it up inside the Nisga’a Museum, which houses more than 300 other cultural relics. 2:13 Inmates at BC Penitentiary Carve Totem Pole as part of Truth and Reconciliation Project Inmates at BC Penitentiary Carve Totem Pole as part of Truth and Reconciliation Project This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 20, 2022. Related News © 2022 The Canadian Press
