An important discussion that came from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concerns museums, and how to begin the vital task of repatriation of historic Indigenous artifacts. Now, the Royal BC Museum has published an in-depth handbook to help facilitate that work.
This first edition of the handbook was written by the Indigenous Collections and Repatriation Department of the Royal BC Museum and the Haida Gwaii Museum at Kay Llnagaay.
Lou-Ann Neel is one of the authors of the in-depth guideline for communities and museums.
“It was actually a recommendation that came out of a Repatriation symposium we held in 2017,” says Neel.
“We had over 200 members of the community from around the province, as well as museum professionals, and we asked them, ‘what should we do first about repatriation?’ And one of the biggest recommendations was that we need some kind of a guidebook, to walk us all through the steps because it’s such a new process for communities. It’s also a very new process for a lot of museums.
“We wanted to make it online so that we could do any updates as we go, because it is a new process. We’re learning things pretty well every day that we can do differently and that we can improve upon, but we wanted to also provide a copy to the first group of communities that approached us about repatriation, so that they could test it, and let us know if this is a format that they liked. And the feedback we received was, ‘yes, we do like the book format.’ Not all communities have access to reliable internet, so the book format became really popular, especially in remote communities.”
The Royal BC Museum has its own publishing department, and so the first edition of the handbook was released this past spring.
“What we have [in the intro to the handbook] is a little bit of history about why and how pieces landed in museums over the last 100 or so years,” says Neel. “We provide that little bit of a background so people understand what’s in museums in the first place.
“We drew on the experiences of the Haida Gwaii Museum, that has had a lot of experience in repatriation, and who authored this book, along with the Royal BC Museum.
“We put together some templates that we thought were useful, found some terminologies that people could become more familiar with, and then we also took a look around the world, to see the museums that actually have collections that come from BC, and provided a list of those museums, with their permission.
“What I’m excited about is that it changes the relationship, or really enhances the relationships that have been there for a long time. I think it brings us into a new dialogue, around how communities, and their treasures from their past, and their present treasures, are presented in museum settings. It also brings a voice, the Indigenous voice, into the museum, and, I think, tells a better story about all of those wonderful things that we see, but don’t always understand.”
Veronica Cooper
