Museum sends artefacts home
AMUSEUM in Devon will this week return sacred artefacts to indigenous Canadians that it bought from a chief more than 100 years ago.
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter paid just £10 in 1904 for items that once belonged to Chief Crowfoot, of the Blackfoot Nation. They include a buckskin shirt and leggings, a deer hide necklace strung with grizzly bear claws, and a hardwood bow and arrow.
Today, the artefacts will be returned to their ancestral home in Canada. Chief Ouray Crowfoot and a delegation from the Siksika Nation, in Alberta, have travelled to Exeter to take possession of the items.
Following a blessing at the museum, the regalia will be packed and returned to Canada, where it will be redisplayed at Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park at Siksika, south-east of Calgary.
The museum there is built on the site where the ‘Blackfoot Treaty’ was signed in 1877, and aims to preserve Siksika cultural heritage. The location is also where the former owner of the items, Chief Crowfoot, died in 1890 and is buried.
As of 2021, the Siksika Nation registered population was 7,565, with 4,136 living on the reserve where the museum is based. The handover comes after years of campaigning by the tribe to return the items, which initially saw the Exeter museum claim the Blackfoot could not preserve the delicate items.
The current Chief Crowfoot said: “Bringing these items back home to Siksika is a historic event. Many items left Siksika and other nations and were scattered across the globe. Now the tides are turning and these items are finding their way back home.
“Crowfoot’s entire essence is in and around Blackfoot territory and this is where his belongings should be housed. We are building strong relationships with curators at several museums as well as private collectors in an effort to bring items such as the ones coming home back to their rightful place.
“There are many more Blackfoot items still in need of being claimed and repatriated back to their rightful homeland. To me, it is not as important how these items left Siksika, but what is important is how we bring them back home.”