British Columbia museums face a reckoning over the history of stolen indigenous artifacts, settler-centric exhibits

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British Columbia museums are facing a reckoning as they are faced with growing questions about the legitimate ownership of the artifacts in their possession and how they represent indigenous history in their exhibits.

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This week, the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria announced the closure of two exhibits to consult with First Nations and reconfigure its third-floor galleries to reflect a more diverse range of experiences after decades of indigenous peoples’ activism.

“Museums, which began as colonial collecting institutions, often fall into the trap of representing indigenous communities as those of the distant past and settlers as the main actors in society,” said Ry Moran, former director of the National Research Center. for Truth and Reconciliation.

“The Royal BC Museum’s decision indicates a recognition that museums have to be much more truthful and honest in the way they present history. It is time for settlers and First Nations peoples in the same land to tell their stories together, ”said Moran, a member of Red River Métis who currently works as a librarian for reconciliation at the University of Victoria.

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Troy Sebastian of the Ktunaxa Nation left his job as curator of the Indian Collection at the Royal Museum of British Columbia in February.

“The third floor of the museum has two sections,” Sebastián described on Twitter. “On the one hand, the history of British Columbia is told without the presence of indigenous peoples, while the Gallery of the First Peoples shows indigenous peoples as backward, nameless, faceless and uncivilized.”

The curator also questioned the legitimate ownership of indigenous items, including a crib board that the museum acquired in 1929 when First Nations children were forced to attend residential schools and their culture was banned.

Former Indigenous Collection curator Lucy Bell cited a toxic culture of racism in the workplace as the reason for her resignation in 2019. An investigation by the BC Public Services Agency published in June found that the history exhibits The Royal BC Museum were outdated and narrowly focused on the province’s European colonial past.

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“As long as the museum continues to possess my family’s sacred items that were taken from us during (the residential school era), I can never really leave,” Sebastian said in a Tweet.

The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission findings asked the federal government to provide funding to the Canadian Association of Museums to conduct a review of museum policies and practices in collaboration with indigenous peoples.

Sharon Fortney, curator of Indigenous Collections and Participation at the Vancouver Museum, says the museum made a concerted effort to decolonize its exhibits in the early 2000s, implementing its own repatriation policy in 2006 before the Museum Association of British Columbia to ask institutions to repatriate ancestral remains of their original communities this spring.

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“It was a conscious choice on the part of the staff, as we reflected on the notion that reconciliation sometimes conveys the feeling that two parties are coming together from an equal position, while the laws of our nation have really been skewed in favor. of settlers at the expense of indigenous peoples since the mid-nineteenth century ”.

Since then, Fortney has collaborated with First Nations curators for exhibitions including c̓əsnaʔəm, developed with Musqueam in 2015, and Haida Now, which was on display until August 2021. Admission was free for those who identified as indigenous.

Research for the exhibit saw about 40 people from the coastal community spend time with the cultural items on display, said Haida’s Kwi Jones, co-curator of the Haida Now exhibit.

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Jones said he invested his time and experience in the exhibit on one condition: “That the (Vancouver Museum) give us some of the stuff back.”

The museum agreed. So far, numerous artifacts, including a totem carved by his biological grandfather, have been returned to his remote community after lying dormant for decades in private collections.

“My aunts and uncles remember the totem,” Jones said. “It is part of the living memory of my family.”

In a push toward reconciliation, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia provides funding for indigenous groups to access its collections, either through travel or by transporting an item back to its community of origin.

“We want communities to be able to use their heritage pieces in their potlatches,” said director Susan Rowley, noting that the museum also offers free admission to indigenous peoples.

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