Nisga’a memorial pole starts its journey home from Scotland’s national museum

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Growing up in Edinburgh, Angus Robertson used to make regular trips to the National Museum of Scotland, where he was always mesmerized by the 11-metre-tall Nisga’a memorial pole near the main doors.

“It was imposing, something magical,” recalled Robertson, 53, who is Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture. But it lacked context. “You would have no understanding about the deeply spiritual and ancestral relevance to the Nisga’a people,” he said.

On Monday, Robertson joined a delegation of Nisga’a representatives and museum officials to begin the process of returning the pole to Nisga’a territory in northwestern B.C. It’s the first time the institution has returned an artifact – and one of the rare cases of a museum doing so in the U.K.

Eight Nisga’a members dressed in traditional regalia held a spiritual ceremony to lull the pole to sleep before it begins its long journey to Canada and the Nishg’a museum outside Terrace, B.C.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” said Amy Parent, whose Nisga’a name is Noxs Ts’aawit. The Simon Fraser University researcher’s work was instrumental in locating the pole and negotiating its return. “I was overwhelmed in terms of the significance of what we’re going to encounter, but also uplifted by the possibility of rewriting our relationship with … the National Museum of Scotland.”

The Nisga’a people believe the pole – which features depictions of great bounty, local stories and important figures – is a living being, Parent said, adding that she could feel its power from the moment she set foot in the museum on Monday.

The pole will be taken down over the next few weeks and stored in a crate. It will then travel by truck to a military airport in Scotland, where a Canadian Armed Forces plane will fly it to Terrace next month. The First Nation is planning an installation ceremony on Sept. 29.

The Scottish government is covering the $513,000 cost of taking it down and getting it to the base. The federal and provincial governments will pay the costs in Canada, which could run into in the millions, according to Nisga’a government representative Andrew Robinson, or Apdii Lax̱ha.

Parent spent years researching the pole, which dates back to the 1860s. It was commissioned to honour a warrior, Ts’awit, who was next in line to be chief when he died in battle with a neighbouring First Nation. The two share a familial connection: Ts’awit was the son of Joanna Moody, an ancestral grandmother of Parent. The pole was sold to the museum in 1929 by ethnographer Marius Barbeau while the village’s inhabitants were away. It was installed in the museum in 1930 and has remained there ever since.

The First Nation had been told more than 20 years ago that the pole was too fragile to be moved. It was also lacquered with a dark coating shortly after arriving at the museum.

A couple of years ago, Parent discovered that it had been repositioned in the museum, to the Window on the World gallery from a spot near the main entrance. That galvanized her to pursue the “rematriation” – a term the First Nation prefer over repatriation because it reflects the Nisga’a matrilineal society.

A year ago, Parent and others approached the museum about returning it. The museum did not have a policy for dealing with First Nations, only national governments.

The Nisga’a “explained to us very clearly that we have the Nisga’a treaty, and we are a nation within a nation,” said John Giblin, the keeper of global arts, cultures and design at the museum. After a few months of negotiating, the institution agreed to return the pole. It has also reworked its policies to make it easier for other groups to make a case for repatriation. The Scottish government was not directly involved in the talks, but Robertson supported the plan.

“Scotland, of course, has a very particular historical connection with Canada,” he said. “And we here need to confront the fact that not all of that history, in particular for the Indigenous peoples, was a positive experience.”

Museums everywhere have been grappling with their collections and issues surrounding decolonization, Giblin said. Officials in Nigeria have been demanding the return of hundreds of Benin bronze pieces from the National Museum of Scotland and the British Museum. The pieces date back to the 16th century and were taken by British soldiers after they invaded Benin City in 1897. Greece also has a long-running claim to the Parthenon marbles, which are also housed at the British Museum.

“Our collection came about in so many different ways, whether that was through gifts or legitimate purchase, as well as this colonial acquisition. So we have to consider all of these different things,” Giblin said, noting that the museum has 12 million objects.

The Nisga’a delegation is speaking with the museum about returning more objects, including combs, brushes and other items Scottish fur traders took from the territory while working for the Hudson’s Bay Company. They also plan to approach other museums in Britain and elsewhere.

In Edinburgh, they hope to replace the pole with artwork or other items that would help visitors to the museum understand Nisga’a culture.

“We have set an international precedent here in the United Kingdom,” Parent said. “But we also hope that museums take stronger decolonizing practices and that they don’t have to wait for us to contact them.”