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Nika Collison
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Nika Collison
2018-10-18 11:12
Haw'aa.
[Witness speaks in Haida]
My name is Jisgang. My English name is Nika Collison. I'm the executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum and co-chair of the Haida Repatriation Committee.
Haw'aa to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
Haw'aa to Mr. Bill Casey for his vision and to all who have done a great amount of work on Bill C-391.
I would also like to take a moment to thank and recognize Mr. Saganash for his work on Bill C-262.
At the second reading of Bill C-391, Mr. Casey stated that he is open to anything that will make the bill better. I appreciate this opportunity to provide insight into Haida repatriation experiences and respond to the bill as it sits right now.
As museum professionals and human beings, we carry the responsibility to effect societal change by mainstreaming Canada's dark history with indigenous peoples while actively working to set things right.
In the indigenous and mainstream museum world, the path toward reconciliation has been shaped by what my Haida Nation calls Yahguudangang, the act of paying respect. The Haida Nation sees this work, more commonly known as repatriation, as based upon mutual respect, co-operation and trust. Yahguudangang has brought a new depth to our nation's healing and our ability to heal with others. It provides opportunity for western museums to become voluntary agents of change rather than the physical evidence of Canada's genocide against first peoples.
Saahlinda Naay, Savings Things House, also known as the Haida Gwaii Museum, is the result of one of the earliest acts of making things right—or reconciliation—in the museum world. It was a vision of both the Haida citizens and Canadian friends residing on our islands that brought this place into being, which opened in 1976. In 2007, we opened the Haida Heritage Centre, which expanded our museum. It was created for our people but also created to share. This is our gift to the world.
Since most of our treasures left Haida Gwaii during the height of colonial regimes, our museum didn't have much of a collection to begin with, but Haida and settler families generously donated Haida heirlooms. The Royal British Columbia Museum, under the lead of then curator Peter McNair, showed support by returning some monumental poles for our museum's opening. This quiet act of repatriation is probably the earliest in Canada. It was not required by law or policy. This act was done because of the humanity this one person brought to our table.
The Haida Gwaii Museum has since grown to include a considerable collection of treasures, mostly gained from private donations, purchases and long-term loans, as opposed to museum repatriation. We also present new works, as we are a living culture. We are not simply an institution. We are a part of the institution that makes up today's Haida society and the greater Canadian society.
In the mid-1990s, the repatriation of ancestral remains became a primary focus of our people. To date, over 500 of our ancestors have been brought home from museums and private individuals from across North America, and one from the U.K. This work has taken over 20 years and well over a million dollars in cash, sweat labour and in-kind donations.
When we visit these museums to bring our ancestors home, we also visit our cultural treasures and other containers of knowledge, such as archives. We bring the diaspora of our people's lives home through imagery, audio recordings, collection notes and the recreation of pieces, and through the physical, emotional and spiritual connections that forever bind us. A few times, family heirlooms have come home from these museums. We are now ready to bring more home.
Around the same time that we began to focus on our ancestors, the 1992 “Task Force Report on Museums and First Peoples” came out. This report has had a very important influence on relationships between indigenous people and mainstream museums, but it's the past four decades of knocking on doors, patience and relationship-building by our people that have been pivotal in having the Haida world and the museum world come together to make things right.
NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of the United States, has played an important role there and, in a roundabout way, for us as well. The first cross-border repatriation of one of our ancestors was spurred by NAGPRA. Legally, the museum was not required to work with us because we are not a federally recognized U.S. tribe, but they wanted to see our relative come home. When we contacted the next couple of U.S. museums, they wanted to repatriate through our Alaskan relatives in order to align their process with NAGPRA, but these ancestors came from Haida Gwaii, and eventually the museums agreed.
England is far behind Canada in repatriation, with many mechanisms—or lack of mechanisms, depending on the situation—to prohibit such work. Despite this, through relationship-building and a lot of other hard work, we were able to bring home an ancestor from the Pitt Rivers Museum in 2010. The British Museum has changed its act to allow for repatriation of human remains, and we will be bringing home an ancestor from there imminently.
What we found in working in Yahguudangang is that you can instil a policy and/or laws around repatriation, but true Yahguudangang, or repatriation and reconciliation, is not fully achieved without respectful, genuine nation-to-nation relationship-building. We want people to want to give our relatives back and to see our treasures come home. We want people to want to make things right, and want to find a way forward together, not because they have to. Repatriation is the most important work I've been involved in around the work of reconciliation. The work is beyond monumental. It costs time and healing, and it involves everyone in our nation and our friends.
I'm worried about running out of time, so just give me a second here.
Lucy Bell
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Lucy Bell
2018-10-18 12:05
Okay.
[Witness speaks in Haida]
Good afternoon, friends. My name is Lucy Bell. I come from the Haida Nation and I work at the Royal BC Museum.
Haw'aa. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I'll begin with a little bit of the background of why you've probably called me here today.
I'm one of the founding members of the Haida Repatriation Committee on Haida Gwaii. More than 20 years ago, I was an intern at the Royal BC Museum. That's where I learned about human remains being in museums, and I learned there were more than 500 of my ancestors in museums around the world. I took that message home to my Haida community, thinking I could tell them that our ancestors were in the museum. They told me to get busy and start repatriating my ancestors. It took well over 20 years to track them all down and bring them home.
Many, many years later, I started working at the Royal BC Museum as the head of the first nations and repatriation department. With the provincial government's support, the museum responded to the calls of the TRC, UNDRIP and the task force, and really wanted to move the museum in a stronger repatriation direction. My team has been working for about two years now with a renewed focus on repatriation.
The Royal BC Museum has been repatriating for many decades. We are one of the two museums in Canada that repatriate under treaty, and we have been repatriating ancestral remains, belongings and intangible heritage.
I'll mention some of the changes we made in the last couple of years.
We recently revised our indigenous collections and repatriation policy to be more open to repatriation. One of the changes that I'm most proud of is that we changed the policy to say that anything taken during the anti-potlatch law from 1885 to 1951 is considered to have been acquired under duress and is up for repatriation.
Another change we've made is that we've really amped up our repatriation and our work toward repatriating intangible heritage. That means that our very extensive collection of audio recordings, linguistic recordings and cultural recordings is being digitized and provided to communities.
We recently launched a repatriation granting program, with the support of the provincial government, and we've been supporting 21 B.C. indigenous communities in their repatriation journeys. We also support treaty repatriation, and on average two to three nations come to the table with the museum every year.
We are in the middle of creating a repatriation 101 handbook. Knowing that there are not that many nations actively involved in repatriation, we knew we could support them by giving them some tips on how to repatriate.
Today I'll mention a few points.
I had the advice of CEO Jack Lohman, curator Martha Black, and archaeology collection manager Genevieve Hill, and we've come up with a few suggestions. I'll mention a few that I wrote down.
It's important that the strategy that's created be created by and with indigenous peoples and with museums. It's important to bring both to the table.
From my experience repatriating from the United States, we found the NAGPRA law to be very restrictive. By the time we got to the museums, the museums felt really rushed and forced. They were quite tired, and they were feeling obligated to repatriate. It was a big strain. I would recommend the way the Haida repatriation movement went, which was to use the task force report in a much friendlier way. We would bring that document and say, “We're here to work in collaboration and in friendship with you.” That seemed to go a lot further for us than the NAGPRA law.
Something we're facing here with our granting program is that repatriation does take time and it does take money. With the Haida repatriation movement, we estimate that it probably cost us about $1 million to repatriate 500 of our ancestors. That's money we had to raise ourselves.
There are some other things we wanted to speak to. A few definitions could be worked on, ensuring that “ancestral remains” are mentioned in the strategy of the bill and ensuring that “intangible heritage”—i.e., language recordings—is included. It's probably a good suggestion to use the term “indigenous”. Asking museums to be more public about their collections, and more public about having ancestral remains in their collections, will be important as well.
Finally, I would say that repatriation does take time. Reporting out takes time. It is just an absolutely slow and thoughtful process. It took 20 years for the Haida to bring home over 500 ancestors. In British Columbia, with so many nations here, that's what we're understanding here at the museum, too. It takes time and it takes people and it takes resources.
Those are my main points today. Haw'aa for the opportunity.
Catherine Cole
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Catherine Cole
2016-06-16 9:07
CAM has also initiated a project in Africa on how to develop policy and legislation on human remains management, an issue of concern to Canadian museums as well.
Our international internships, supported by the Young Canada Works program, are invaluable for the interns and host museums, but they're underfunded. We also have an introduction to museum studies that we offer through distance learning, which benefits people in remote communities who are unable to participate in professional training.
In closing, I would like to draw to your attention how CAM plans to commemorate Canada 2017 as it addresses particular issues and challenges facing museums and the broader heritage sector.
Next year in Calgary we'll hold a two-day study tour of Blackfoot heritage sites in southern Alberta, a one-day indigenous heritage round table to create an action plan in response to the UNDRIP and the TRC, and a two-day international symposium on heritage and nationhood. These events will showcase Canadian heritage to the world, contribute to the debate about indigenous heritage, and provide opportunities for Canadian museum professionals to learn from the experience of others internationally.
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