{"id":16366,"date":"2025-12-09T19:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/09\/inuit-cultural-items-unveiled-at-museum-of-history-following-journey-from-vatican\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T19:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:43:10","slug":"inuit-cultural-items-unveiled-at-museum-of-history-following-journey-from-vatican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/09\/inuit-cultural-items-unveiled-at-museum-of-history-following-journey-from-vatican\/","title":{"rendered":"Inuit cultural items unveiled at Museum of History following journey from Vatican"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>CanadaAfter their arrival on a snowy tarmac in Montreal Saturday, a number of Inuit objects among the 62 cultural items belonging to First Nations, Inuit and M\u00e9tis and repatriated from the Vatican were unveiled at the Canadian Museum of History on Tuesday.Century-old kayak would have been \u2018essential\u2019 to Inuit community before taken to Vatican, says Inuit leader Verity Stevenson  \u00b7 CBC News  \u00b7 Posted: Dec 09, 2025 3:25 PM EST | Last Updated: less than a minute agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Darrel Nasogaluak, elder and chair of Tuktoyaktuk Community Corp., left, and Duane Smith, chair and CEO of the Inuvialuit Regional Corp., unveil a traditionally built Inuvialuit kayak, at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., on Tuesday. (Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press)After their arrival on a snowy tarmac in Montreal Saturday, a number of Inuit objects among the 62 Indigenous cultural items repatriated from the Vatican were unveiled at the Canadian Museum of History on Tuesday.For a century, the items were held in Vatican museums and vaults until efforts to return them to their original communities began in earnest following Pope Francis\u2019s visit to Canada in 2022.They are among thousands of objects originally sent to Rome between 1923 and 1925 for a world exhibition organized by Pope Pius XI, who called on Catholic missionaries to send materials from Indigenous people around the world.The 1925 exhibition Vatican Missionary Exposition featured, by some accounts, 100,000 relics from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.In a warehouse of the museum in Gatineau, Que., on Tuesday, Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, stood before an Inuvialuit kayak used to chase beluga whales. PHOTOS | Indigenous leaders expose culturally significant items returned by Vatican:The kayak, hand-built from driftwood, sealskin and sinew, is one of a dozen or so items of Inuit provenance in the collection and one of only five such kayaks known to still exist, according to Obed.\u201cThe 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 Saturday.On Tuesday, he called the item \u201cthe centrepiece\u201d of the original repatriation efforts. He explained that it had for a long time been the only item Indigenous groups had seen prior to the Catholic Church identifying the more than five dozen others from First Nations, Inuit and M\u00e9tis.It will take time for Indigenous elders and experts to examine the items and determine where they came from and to whom they belonged. The Canadian Museum of History has agreed to safely store them throughout that process, Obed explained.It\u2019s not entirely clear how the kayak \u2014 or the other items for that matter \u2014 ended up in the hands of the Vatican, he said.A close-up up of a traditionally built Inuvialuit kayak during an unveiling at the Canadian Museum of History on Tuesday. The selection of Inuit items were returned from the Vatican this past weekend after more than 100 years. (Kate Kyle\/CBC)\u201dYou\u2019ll have to imagine that in the 1920s, this particular kayak would have been essential to the wellbeing of a family and of a community,\u201d Obed said, calling it \u201cone of the most essential tools\u201d of an Inuit hunter.Obed said some museum workers or curators may have bristled at the sight of Inuit touching the kayak and its paddle with bare hands as it was unboxed.\u201cI think this is also something as a part of reconciliation,\u201d he said. \u201cThe norms that you have for you institutions are not necessarily the norms that we have in our society about how we respect our living history, our items of cultural significance. The ways in which we connect are often very literally physically \u2014 to touch and to feel.\u201dNasogaluak, centre, answers questions with Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, as a selection of Inuit items, including an Inuvialuit kayak, are unveiled at the Canadian Museum of History on Tuesday. (Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press)Saturday, Indigenous leaders said that while the 62 items\u2019 return was an important part of the repatriation process, they expect that process to continue.\u201cToday is another important step, but it\u2019s far from the end,\u201d said Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.\u201dWe recognize that reconciliation is not a single event but a long journey, one that requires humility, perseverance and above all the willingness to listen,\u201d Archbishop of Vancouver Richard Smith, representing the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said at the news conference.With files from Ka\u2019nhehs\u00ed:io Deer <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CanadaAfter their arrival on a snowy tarmac in Montreal Saturday, a number of Inuit objects among the 62 cultural items belonging to First Nations, Inuit and M\u00e9tis and repatriated from the Vatican were unveiled at the Canadian Museum of History on Tuesday.Century-old kayak would have been \u2018essential\u2019 to Inuit community before taken to Vatican, says [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,1047,1],"tags":[116,1046],"class_list":["post-16366","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\/16366","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=16366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}