An indigenous community in Canada has had a historic totem pole returned to them from a British museum. The Ni’isjoohl memorial pole, measuring 11 metres high, was purchased by Canadian ethnographer Marius Barbeau in the 1920s who sent it oversees. However, now, almost a century later, it has been repatriated to the Nisga’a Nation community between the Nass Valley in British Columbia. This is believed to be the first time a totem pole has been returned from a British museum to an indigenous community and could set a precedent in the wider museum repatriation movement.
Dr Amy Parent, whose great-great grandmother had commissioned the pole in 1855, told the BBC how Barbeau’s team had simply taken it, saying “We never gave him permission to steal our pole.” Marius Barbeau took pictures of certain artefacts to send to various museums, one of which was offers to buy the Ni’isjoohl memorial pole by the Royal Scottish Museum, now known as the National Museum of Scotland. After Barbeau obliged, the pole was shipped over 6,700km to Edinburgh where it had been on display since 1930.
The return effort began last year when a delegation, including Dr Parent visited the museum and formally requested the return of the pole. A deep connection was formed between the Nisga’a Nation and the Scottish representatives who reached a decision without any conditions. The artefact was carefully manouvred out of a museum window and flown across the Atlantic to BC by the Royal Canadian Air Force. The pole will be permanently displayed in the Nisga’a Museum.
The repatriation of the Ni’isjoohl pole could set a precedent in a broader repatriation movement gaining steam around the world, as indigenous communities and nation states ask museums to return artefacts. For the indigenous communities in Canada, these repatriation requests carry extra significance given historical policies in the country meant to erase indigenous language and culture – policies since deemed a “cultural genocide”. “The theft of their ritual items was part of that process,” says Chip Colwell, an anthropologist and museum repatriation expert. Being able to get those items back, he added, “is fundamental to their survival as indigenous people
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