{"id":15406,"date":"2025-12-06T18:08:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T21:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/06\/indigenous-cultural-belongings-return-to-canada-from-vatican-after-long-journey\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:08:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T21:08:45","slug":"indigenous-cultural-belongings-return-to-canada-from-vatican-after-long-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/06\/indigenous-cultural-belongings-return-to-canada-from-vatican-after-long-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous cultural belongings return to Canada from Vatican after long journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Indigenous\u00b7BreakingA delegation from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and four First Nations youth accompanied 62 the cultural items on a flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Montreal.  62 items arrived at Montreal airport on SaturdayKa\u2019nhehs\u00ed:io Deer  \u00b7 CBC News  \u00b7 Posted: Dec 06, 2025 6:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 6 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.A delegation of First Nations, Inuit and M\u00e9tis elders, leaders and federal politicians welcome the 62 cultural items on the tarmac of the Montr\u00e9al-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport on Saturday after they arrived from the Vatican via Frankfurt, Germany. (Christine Tremblay\/Radio-Canada)More than five dozen items belonging to First Nations, Inuit, and M\u00e9tis 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 landed at Montr\u00e9al-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport just before noon on Saturday.\u201dIt is a positive step toward reconciliation,\u201d said Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN).\u201dIt wasn\u2019t easy, but I\u2019m glad that they\u2019re coming home. Our residential school survivors, our elders, our chiefs have been calling for that for a long, long time.\u201dThe 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 M\u00e9tis 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 before arriving in Montreal on Saturday morning.A delegation from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and four First Nations youth accompanied the items on the flight.The Inuvialuit kayak, which was housed at the Vatican Museums, is unloaded in a box from the plane by workers in Montreal on Saturday. (Christine Tremblay\/Radio-Canada)Representatives from the AFN, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) and M\u00e9tis National Council (MNC) will welcome their arrival.Representatives from the AFN, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) and M\u00e9tis National Council (MNC) welcomed their arrival. Elder Ka\u2019nahsohon Kevin Deer, from Kahnaw\u00e0:ke, and federal MP Steven Guilbeault, who represents the Montreal riding of Laurier\u2013Sainte-Marie, were also in attendance.\u201dWe\u2019re very proud to be a part of what is a very historic repatriation,\u201d said Natan Obed, president of ITK.He said the kayak, for example, is one of only five known to exist.\u201dThe idea that we can examine this kayak, we can appreciate it, understand it more, will also lead to the reintroduction of kayak making,\u201d Obed said.This Inuvialuit kayak, seen during a private tour of the Vatican Museums by Indigenous delegates from Canada in 2022, has been held by the Vatican for a century. (Marie-Laure Josselin\/Radio-Canada)Collected by missionariesThe 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 M\u00e9tis National Council.The boxed items will be transported by truck to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., where they will be examined.\u201dAs 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,\u201d Caroline Dromaguet, the museum\u2019s president and CEO, said in a statement.Manitoba M\u00e9tis Federation excludedThe Manitoba M\u00e9tis Federation (MMF), which left the MNC in 2021, was not included in the repatriation process. President David Chartrand said he hopes the sole M\u00e9tis item returned will be stored at its M\u00e9tis National Heritage Centre, which is slated to open in 2027 in Winnipeg.Manitoba M\u00e9tis Federation president David Chartrand speaks during a news conference in August. (Spencer Colby\/The Canadian Press)Chartrand said he views the repatriation as \u201cgoodwill\u201d 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.\u201dThere\u2019s up to 10,000 items that they have under their watch in their museums and in their storages and different places they\u2019re keeping them,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a teeny raindrop in the bucket.\u201dChartrand said the MMF will write to the Vatican to see what items belong to Red River M\u00e9tis and also the circumstances of how they ended up there.\u201dYou don\u2019t take the gift back unless that reputation has been damaged or mistrust has been broken,\u201d he said.\u201dI 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.\u201dMore work to be doneEarlier 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.\u201dThere\u2019s more work to do,\u201d Woodhouse Nepinak said.\u201dWe have to bring people together to make sure we go line by line every time artifacts get returned that they\u2019re going back to their rightful owners.\u201dABOUT THE AUTHORKa\u2019nhehs\u00ed:io Deer is a Kanien\u2019keh\u00e1:ka journalist from Kahnaw\u00e0:ke, south of Montreal. She is currently a reporter with CBC Indigenous covering communities across Quebec.With files from Juanita Taylor, Kate Kyle<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indigenous\u00b7BreakingA delegation from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and four First Nations youth accompanied 62 the cultural items on a flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Montreal. 62 items arrived at Montreal airport on SaturdayKa\u2019nhehs\u00ed:io Deer \u00b7 CBC News \u00b7 Posted: Dec 06, 2025 6:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 6 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 5 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,1047,1],"tags":[116,1046],"class_list":["post-15406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indigenous","category-ontario","category-uncategorized","tag-indigenous","tag-ontario"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}