Last year, the provincial government announced $500,000 worth of grants to assist First Nations communities to track down and bring home ancestral remains, “artifacts” and other items from museums and collections from around the world. The program allocated up to $30,000 to more than 20 communities to begin the work of bringing these items of cultural significance back to British Columbia.
Prior to the announcement, I met with Ministry officials to highlight some of the opportunities to improve the outcomes and increase the return on the investment of this important work.
It is important work. In fact, as I have characterized it to my colleagues in government, I believe that repatriations and language revitalization are the two most important actions a government that is serious about reconciliation should be investing in.
Fighting to bring them home
The reality that Indigenous people and communities have to fight to get the remains of their ancestors returned to their community is shameful. Many of the items stored away in the archives of museums around the world are part of sacred ceremonies and rituals that are critical to the spiritual well-being of Indigenous peoples and communities.
As one of the applicants to the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) program said to me at the application deadline, the $30k is a nice gesture however it is going to be 5-10% of the total budget that it is going to cost the community to convince a museum to return the bodies of their ancestors. The remaining 90-95% of the budget is funded by “robbing from Peter,” skimmed from other budgets for education, health and other important community building projects and programs. This funding is really just a tease. Hey, take a look at what you might be able to get if you had the budget.
I’m raising this because I had the opportunity to talk with an archaeologist about another project that she was contracted to work on. The funding ran out and now the community is just a little further down the road than they were when they started. Advanced, but far from done.
There are some massive cultural implications. For example, in many Indigenous communities, once this work is began it cannot stop until it is complete. Another aspect overlooked by the colonial mindset is that it’s not appropriate to do this kind of work for money. In this day and age, because of the time it takes and the cost of research and travel, that is almost impossible. The bad feelings and sadness is overwhelming.
Generational effort
There are stories about repatriation efforts taking two decades of persistent effort to be completed. In some cases where you have dedicated people, that works out fine; however, it’s not unusual for the project started by one person to be completed by their children or grandchildren.
Let’s be real, nobody is going to turn down the funding, but the program is cruel. It’s just enough for the government and museum to get a positive news hit and falls just short of helping anyone be successful. It might push a group over the top if they have been working on a project for a long time but there is little chance it is enough to power a project of any complexity.
I did offer government and the museum an alternative.
There a few things that need to be acknowledged at the outset. The core services in Indigenous communities in British Columbia are underfunded. Much of the funding that comes to the communities are for programs, similar to the program announced by the RBCM, and the program funding is usually less than what is needed to complete the work. Additionally, there are a lot of reporting requirements to assess accountability both within the community and for the government program and administrators.
Also, many of the repatriation efforts are undertaken by passionate community members and well-meaning volunteers. While they may be supported by experts like archaeologists and anthropologists, they are also informed by elders, storytelling and anecdotal evidence. Few, if any, have experience working, or building relationships, with curators, collection managers and museum administrators or governing boards to negotiate the successful return of their sacred items.
Build a team and resource them
With that as the foundation, my recommendation was to build a repatriation team within the RBCM. I recommended this team be fully funded and staffed with experts who live and breathe museums and collections. Supported by researchers and a well-equipped group of all the various “ists” that are needed to prove a case, one of the fundamental underpinnings of this proposal is that it is as focussed on relationship building as it is on the science.
From my experience, museum people are skeptics of non-museum people. So, when the latter are negotiating with the former, it’s a big hill to climb. What if it was the people from the RBCM who were building long-standing, trusting relationships with other museums around the world? It’s very likely they already have established relationships. Just think how much further our money would go if the people negotiating the safe return of their ancestors were not having to re-create the wheel every time.
As I see it, this program puts the correct people in the correct spot to be successful. Indigenous communities work with the RBCM Repatriation Team to identify and locate items that need to be repatriated. The team then works with the other museums on behalf of Indigenous communities to secure the items to be repatriated who then connects with the Indigenous community to bring them home.
Matching words with actions
Seems like a pretty basic solution to a problem that continues to tear Indigenous communities apart. As I have said repeatedly, the government’s actions on language and repatriations are key indicators to me of their willingness and the depth of their engagement in reconciliation. Nothing rips apart a community worse than stripping their language, putting the bodies of their ancestors on display in a museum and locking their most sacred tools of spiritual ritual in boxes in the basement of far away buildings.
I hope the overall grants program was more successful than the update I received from one of the successful applicants to this well-meaning but far-from-good-enough idea. I’m open to have my skepticism proven wrong. Nevertheless, I believe that we can build a more efficient, more collaborative, more cost-effective program that has a better return on our investment and an even more positive return on our effort, all while minimizing the volume of tears shed in Indigenous communities across the province.
Photo credit: “Field Museum, Chicago” by “Lisa Andres” used under “CC BY 2.0” license.
Gilakasla! for your words….for this analysis and problem solving guidance. May others in and out of governments and museum boards read this and make the changes you’ve outlined above.