Artwork returned to First Nation
HUU-AY-AHT: Cultural works were kept by Royal B.C. Museum for more than a century
PORT ALBERNI — A five-metrewide painted wood screen and 37 hand-carved birds are among a collection of artwork returned to a First Nation after more than a century in the Royal B.C. Museum.
Huu-ay-aht First Nation on Vancouver Island is celebrating the repatriation of their cultural treasures, an act Chief Coun. Robert Dennis Sr. says proves that historic practices to erase indigenous cultures were resisted.
“We’re resilient, we’re strong and our culture is still alive,” Dennis said.
The transfer of 17 sets of artifacts from the museum to the Huu-ay-aht on Friday is a result of a 2011 deal reached between Maa-nulth First Nations and provincial and federal governments outlining rights to land, resources and other property, including cultural artifacts.
Dennis said the physical and legal transfer of the artifacts is an important part of reconciliation.
The items, which include thunderbird masks and ceremonial whaling regalia, were on display during the Huu-ay-aht People’s Assembly in Port Alberni this weekend.
Some of the items are unlike anything the community has had in its possession in recent years, Dennis said, because so much of the First Nation’s historic property was either sold or lost.
The practice of creating large painted screens for ceremonies or homes is still maintained, but Dennis said instead of wooden planks, cloth or canvas is now more commonly used as the backdrop.
The Huu-ay-aht’s traditional practices were undermined and banned through the Residential School system and other policies, including a federal potlatch ban that prohibited indigenous ceremonies.
“That is the sad part of Canadian history,” Dennis said.
Anthropologist and consultant Kevin Neary said the original owners likely donated the items to the museum in an attempt to protect the artwork from being confiscated and destroyed.
“For this screen to have come to the museum was a way of preserving it ... perhaps even with the view that at some point it may come back to the community, something that would be like putting it into a bank so that later on you could get it back,” Neary said.
Seeing the items returned this weekend was bittersweet for many in the community, serving as a reminder of what was lost.
“There is sadness in the fact that our forefathers had to give up part of their tradition and their culture,” Dennis said.
For the First Nation’s hereditary chiefs and elders, seeing the items returned was a particularly emotional experience because they were more directly affected by the policies that banned traditions, he said.