The Vatican returned 62 Indigenous artifacts to Canada on Saturday, including items such as an Inuit kayak, wampum belts, war clubs, and masks—many of which had been in Vatican museums for over a century. The artifacts were handed over to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which plans to transfer the items to National Indigenous Organizations for eventual return to their original communities, reports Deutsche Welle. Many of the items were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries during a period marked by cultural suppression and the residential school system, which sought to assimilate Indigenous children.
Indigenous communities had requested the return of culturally significant items during Pope Francis visit to Canada in 2022. The Vatican on Saturday described the return of the artifacts as a gesture of "dialogue, respect, and fraternity," and Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand described the return as an important step toward truth and reconciliation. But some Indigenous leaders have criticized the process, arguing that communities need to be able to directly identify and reclaim their own items. Certain artifacts, like the Inuit kayak, were part of the 1925 Vatican Missionary Exhibition, while a wampum belt was sent as early as 1831.
The Vatican has maintained that items for the 1925 exhibition were gifts to Pope Pius XI, per CTV News. But historians and Indigenous groups have contended that they could have been freely offered in light of the power imbalance in Catholic missions in that period. Pope Leo should "acknowledge that these Indigenous ancestors were not gifted and the papal narrative needs correction," said Gloria Bell, who teaches art history at McGill University.
Most of the artifacts were in the Vatican Museum's ethnographic collection, now known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of dispute in the face of the broader debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods, per the AP.
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