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VICTORIA — Generations of B.C. tourists on visits to New York have been struck by the connection between their home province and one of the most extraordinary exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History: the great canoe hanging in its grand gallery.
Great canoe, longest of its type still surviving. Made by craftsmen from multiple tribes & sold to AMNH ~1881. http://t.co/sb5dlA3TlT
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Astrotweeps: Rachael (@astrotweeps) April 17, 2015
Nineteen metres long. Carved from a single Western red cedar in British Columbia in the late 1870s. Credited to Haida and Heiltsuk artisans. Believed to be the largest surviving example of a northwest coastal dugout canoe of that era.
Premier Christy Clark made a point of mentioning the great canoe Tuesday as she launched a proactive effort to persuade museums in the U.S. and elsewhere to repatriate cultural artifacts and human remains taken from B.C. First Nations.
“It is time to give them back,” Clark told reporters, who gathered in the totem hall of the Royal B.C. Museum for the announcement marking National Aboriginal Day.
But even as she pledged to be as “persistent and persuasive” as could be in buttonholing the Americans — starting with President Barack Obama — she acknowledged B.C. is facing an uphill fight to get back some of the more prominent items on the list of possibilities.
Largest canoe #scavengerhunt #amnh #nuviza ift.tt/1s9IHbG http://t.co/uS3FqDbOPO
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Xiao Chen (@Xiaoness) December 07, 2014
The great canoe, for instance.
“That may take us longer to get back,” Clark conceded.
Indeed, when someone in the supporting cast for the premier’s press conference was asked for more details about the canoe, that person said that it was mentioned mainly for purposes of illustration, not because it is likely be returned any time soon — if ever.
The canoe is an integral part of one of the American Museum of Natural History’s oldest collections, assembled by no less a historical figure than Franz Boas, the founding father of American anthropology.
Far from being taken from British Columbia by illegitimate means, the canoe was “purchased,” according to the museum website.
“After the museum purchased the canoe in 1881, native people paddled it south to Victoria. The canoe travelled to Port Townsend, Washington, aboard a schooner. A steamer took the canoe to Panama, via San Francisco. The Panama Canal was not yet built, so the canoe crossed the isthmus by rail. Another ship carried the canoe up the Atlantic coast to New York. The long, arduous journey ended in 1883 when a horse-drawn wagon brought the canoe from the dock to the museum.”
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Canoe!!! #nuviza #scavengerhunt #amnh http://t.co/9GsEMwlytV
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Vicky Zhao (@VickyyZhao) December 07, 2014
Where it has resided ever since, becoming such a renowned part of the AMNH that visitors routinely say “meet at the canoe!” when attending with family and friends.
Not likely will New Yorkers be prepared to give it up. And one has to note as well that repatriation can be an onerous process, even where B.C. First Nations have a clear-cut case on moral and ethical grounds.
Clark’s press release mentioned several instances where museums in the U.S. and elsewhere have agreed to return human remains and cultural belongings of aboriginal peoples in B.C.
There, at the top of the list, was “ancestral remains returned to the Tseycum First Nation from the American Museum of Natural History in 2008.”
The line item didn’t begin to do justice to the effort. Starting in the late 1990s, Cora Jacks, whose husband Vern was chief of the Tseycum First Nation, began researching the whereabouts of human remains removed 100 years earlier from burial cairns in the band’s traditional territory on the Saanich peninsula.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito Grand Chief Ed John speaks as Jack Lohman, Museum CEO, (far left), Minister Peter Fassbender, Premier Christy Clark, and Shane Gottfriedson, Regional Chief of B.C. Assembly of First Nations look on during an important announcement regarding ancestral remains and belongings of cultural significance during a ceremony at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria, B.C., Tuesday, June 21, 2016.
Through sheer persistence, she finally in 2005 managed to trace the remains of some 55 members of the First Nation to the storage shelves of the natural history museum in New York.
In light of what the museum now maintains about its purchase of the great canoe, I would note what Jacks discovered about how it obtained those human remains. She turned up documentation indicating that anthropologist Harlan Ingersoll Smith (a member of the same expedition that delivered the canoe) was paid $5 per skull and $7 to $10 for a full skeleton.
On a visit to @AMNH, welcomed by The Great Canoe! #UpperWestSide #UWS http://t.co/EhopJHqi
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LANDMARK WEST! (@LandmarkWest) February 03, 2012
Once Jacks had followed the trail to New York, there followed a lengthy effort to persuade the museum to give them up. Then came a round of fundraising to get enough money for a delegation of band members to travel to New York and retrieve them.
Not until the passage of another three years and the expenditure of $150,000 were the bones of the Tseycum ancestors flown to B.C. and properly interred in the aptly named Journey Home cemetery in North Saanich.
Granted, the moral case is strongest for return of those most questionable takings of the 19th century tomb raiders: human remains. But as Royal BC Museum CEO Jack Lohman acknowledged Tuesday, there’s a growing sentiment around the globe for repatriation of indigenous cultural artifacts of every kind.
The museum has long since begun returning holdings from its own collection and, where possible, borrowing them back. Now it will be taking a more proactive role in helping First Nations track artifacts that have left the province and help negotiate their return. It will also offer itself as a temporary repository for such treasures until First Nations develop the means to preserve and protect them on their own.
All in all, a good way to mark the 20th anniversary of the establishment of National Aboriginal Day. But it is probably a safe bet that many more years will pass before B.C. First Nations are able to regain more than a fraction of what they lost to the world’s museums and private collectors.