CULTURE BEHIND GLASS

Reflecting on the issue of museums, Indigenous artefacts and repatriation

Totem Hall is the central exhibit in the Royal BC Museum's First Peoples gallery • ROYAL BC MUSEUM

ALISON TEDFORD

What is the value of the custom of keeping culture behind glass and who does it serve? These are important questions. According to the Government of Canada’s Survey of Heritage Institutions, there were 9.5 million visits to B.C. museums in 2017. Nationally, more than 872,000 people had memberships to museums.

There are nearly 310,000 cultural artefacts and 1,176 ancestral remains in B.C.-based heritage institutions, and 26% of Canadian heritage institutions report that they house Indigenous cultural artefacts.

The federal report indicated a 5.9% profit margin for B.C. museums in 2017, but the pandemic brought closures and travel restrictions that created a need for government assistance in maintaining essential services, and to support reopening when restrictions lifted. Even pre-pandemic, museum revenue didn’t just come from visitors — it also came from government funding and grants.

Recently announced plans to close the Royal BC Museum in Victoria for seven years have sparked debate. In a Times Colonist op-ed published earlier this year, Melanie Mark — B.C. minister of tourism, arts, culture and sport — spoke to how the museum facilities were at the end of their useful life, seismically unsound and at risk in the event of disaster. Combined with the presence of asbestos and gaps in accessibility, the province plans to replace the facility, which has been in use since 1967 but has not been upgraded, renovated or significantly repaired.

Much of the debate has centred on the role and value of museums, what they should house and what they should return. Repatriation is far from a new concept, but in examining whether museums should be funded and whether they should exist, what happens to the items is up for discussion.

Beyond the specific issue of the Royal BC Museum, in a time of reconciliation, there is value in addressing the complicated history of heritage institutions and how items got to be in them in the first place. There is also a need to consider the challenges that may exist in returning these items.

The Royal BC Museum’s service plan for 2021-22 speaks to the fact that “this work requires careful and often lengthy consultation, the development of mutual trust and adequate funding for staff and technical support. Repatriation requests are always honoured, but, for varied and often complex reasons, these requests often take many years to reach fruition.”

The complexities of repatriation aren’t unique to the Royal BC Museum.

“The need for resources is there for all participants within repatriation. The work that is required on the parts of families to bring pieces home and to do it in a good way, the protocols that need to be followed and all that that entails, that requires resourcing,” explains the Museum of Anthropology’s director Susan Rowley. “Of course, museums are always under-resourced, but I think there's an imbalance there that I would say communities and individuals are less resourced than museums are.”

Rowley says the repatriation process is part of a larger opportunity for relationship building, along with collection access and loans. “A really important aspect of that is looking at the building of relationships, and in some cases, the continuation of long standing relationships, redressing historical wrongs, looking at things through a different perspective, challenging the museum as an institution to look at its colonial history and to rethink who we are, to be proactive about changing so that we are working with community, looking and talking to community about community needs and desires and ways that the museum can be in service of community,” she says.

Karen Aird is the founder of Indigenous Heritage Circle, has been on the board of the Royal BC Museum and has worked with the Museum of History. She says that repatriation and related work is often undertaken by community volunteers, and that there’s a lack of consistent, stable funding to support the process.

Aird points to the work of Indigenous Knowledge keepers who have cultural responsibilities to those who have passed on and how their work needs support, too. She also says import and export laws need to be changed to facilitate the return of cultural items. “The work for repatriation has to also support Indigenous law and protocol, and the articulation of it and communities’ decision making around it,” Aird says.

The process of repatriation, Aird says, “should be done in the way that communities want to do it. I don't think it should be a process that's imposed upon people. Some of the timelines and the slim funding that you get for it is an incredible barrier.”

In looking at the custom of culture behind glass, we have an opportunity to see our own reflection, and take a long look at our relationships with cultural institutions, with communities, with the responsibility to honour community wishes and the duty to protect what is being displayed.

Alison Tedford is an Indigenous freelance writer and marketing consultant from Abbotsford.

ABOVE: Karen Aird is the founder of Indigenous Heritage Circle, and a former board member of the Royal BC Museum • SUBMITTED

TOP LEFT: A totem pole created by Tsawout First Nation artists Tom and Perry LaFortune for the Royal BC Museum in 2018 • PROVINCE OF

BC/FLICKR

TOP RIGHT: The existing Royal BC Museum is due for an upgrade •

PROVINCE OF BC/FLICKR

BOTTOM LEFT: The museum has thousands of objects and artefacts related to First Nations history and culture • PROVINCE OF

BC/FLICKR

EYES ON THE HORIZON

The evolving Indigenous economy in B.C.

CAROL ANNE HILTON

We are in a time of increasing Indigenous economic empowerment. Recent advances in the Indigenous economic ecosystem allow new insights into the emerging trends that are fundamental to the significant shift in the foundation of the Indigenous economy in B.C.

This past year saw the Blueberry River First Nation win a precedent-setting case, which determined that the B.C. government had breached the Nation’s historical and current treaty rights by permitting and encouraging widespread resource extraction. Hitting right in the heart of cumulative impacts, this case has opened the door for increased government responsibility in addressing treaty rights, and in the management of future cumulative impacts on nations and their territories, not just in B.C. but across Canada.

In 2016, the Blueberry River First Nation had identified that up to 73% of the Nation’s traditional territory was within 250 meters of an industrial disruption. This court case successfully connected the dots between ongoing industrial activity — such as forestry, mining, hydroelectric dams and fracking — and multiple layers of impacts on the landscape, including compounding changes to ecosystems, wildlife and ways of life to the Blueberry People. While this case was won in B.C., its implications are far reaching across Canada, and it points to a new narrative in government policy and approaches. It is not business as usual. Without appealing, B.C. has committed $65 million for the restoration of habitat and cultural use of the Blueberry River First Nation's territory. This case sets in motion a provincial overhaul of regulations and practices that do not uphold treaty rights or manage cumulative impacts for the long term.

Next in development is B.C.’s second title case with the Nuchatlaht Nation on Vancouver Island. This case is led by the Nation’s hereditary leader, Walter Michael, who is the holder of the highest traditional governance seat, with an unbroken lineage that dates back to a time before Canada or B.C. existed. In this case, the Nuchatlaht People describe how their territory’s land and aquatic resources have been managed and protected by a traditional governance system, with a continuous, sustainable management cycle of protecting the land and resources that have sustained the Nuchatlaht People for thousands of years. This system was interrupted when industrial systems were implemented by B.C. and Canada over the last 155 years. The Nation describes how this external regulation has served to enrich corporations and sectors, but has adversely affected Nuchatlaht’s access and responsibility to sacred land and food sources and ways of life, with very few benefits for the Nuchatlaht People. This case addresses the economic implications of land title — Nuchatlaht People are taking up their seat at the economic table of this province and country.

As a third example, on March 30, 2022, B.C. released a much-anticipated action plan for implementing the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). DRIPA serves as a legal structure to implement the objectives of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The DRIPA Action Plan was developed in consultation with Indigenous communities and serves to outline 89 specific action items that provincial ministries will be responsible for implementing from 2022 to 2027.

The plan reflects on four core themes to the implementation of DRIPA: self-determination and inherent right of self-government; title and rights of Indigenous Peoples; ending Indigenous-specific racism and discrimination; and social, cultural and economic well-being. The intention of this plan is to ensure local governments are prepared to participate in the critical implementation action items and to facilitate reconciliation with Indigenous communities and organizations. Again, with the implementation of DRIPA into law, it is time to advance our collective discussions and leadership in reconciliation.

THIS IS THE CHANGED DYNAMIC OF INDIGENOUS ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT — RESOURCES DO NOT GET TO MARKET WITHOUT INDIGENOUS PARTICIPATION