Over five dozen items belonging to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis are one step closer to returning home.

Following three years of negotiations, 62 cultural items previously held in Vatican museums and vaults for a century are on their final leg to return to Canada.

“It is a positive step toward reconciliation,” said Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN).

“It wasn’t easy, but I’m glad that they’re coming home. Our residential school survivors, our elders, our chiefs have been calling for that for a long, long time.”

The majority of the items are still unknown, but 14 items are of Inuit provenance, including an Inuvialuit kayak used to chase beluga whales, one is Métis and the remaining belong to First Nations across Canada.

Last week, the AFN sent a delegation of elders, knowledge keepers and residential school survivors to Rome to hold ceremonies while the items were being packed for transport. They left Vatican City by truck for Frankfurt, Germany, earlier this week and will arrive by plane in Montreal on Saturday afternoon.

A delegation from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and four First Nations youth are accompanying the items on the flight.

Representatives from the AFN, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) and Métis National Council (MNC) will welcome their arrival.

“We’re very proud to be a part of what is a very historic repatriation,” said Natan Obed, president of ITK.

He said the kayak, for example, is one of only five known to exist.

“The idea that we can examine this kayak, we can appreciate it, understand it more, will also lead to the reintroduction of kayak making,” Obed said.

Collected by missionaries

The 62 items were among thousands of objects originally sent to Rome between 1923 and 1925 for a world exhibition organized by Pope Pius XI, who invited Catholic missionaries to send materials from Indigenous Peoples around the world.

The items were repatriated through a church-to-church transfer, through the Vatican to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, in November. Obed said negotiations for the repatriation began in 2022 and originally centred around the return of the kayak but later grew to a partnership between ITK, the AFN and Métis National Council.

The boxed items will be transported by truck to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., where they will be examined.

“As temporary caretakers, we embrace our responsibility to safeguard these items with the utmost care, ensuring they remain accessible and respected as communities prepare to welcome them home,” Caroline Dromaguet, the museum’s president and CEO, said in a statement.

Manitoba Métis Federation excluded 

The Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF), which left the MNC in 2021, was not included in the repatriation process. President David Chartrand said he hopes the sole Métis item returned will be stored at its Métis National Heritage Centre, which is slated to open in 2027 in Winnipeg. 

Chartrand said he views the repatriation as “goodwill” on behalf of the church but noted that the items returning to Canada today represent only a small portion of Indigenous items at the Vatican.

“There’s up to 10,000 items that they have under their watch in their museums and in their storages and different places they’re keeping them,” he said. “That’s a teeny raindrop in the bucket.”

Chartrand said the MMF will write to the Vatican to see what items belong to Red River Métis and also the circumstances of how they ended up there.

“You don’t take the gift back unless that reputation has been damaged or mistrust has been broken,” he said.

“I will not insult the previous leadership back in 1800s or early 1900s, if they did give a gift in honour, because we are very closely associated with the Catholic Church.”

More work to be done

Earlier this week, chiefs and delegates at the AFN special chiefs assembly in Ottawa passed a resolution to create a First Nations-led task force to develop a national repatriation strategy.

“There’s more work to do,” Woodhouse Nepinak said.

“We have to bring people together to make sure we go line by line every time artifacts get returned that they’re going back to their rightful owners.”