The Nisga'a Museum: Repatriating Indigenous belongings and keeping culture alive

Back on the auto tour, a self-guided drive through Nisg̱a’a Lands that blends natural features with cultural teachings, I make a stop at #7, Wilp T’aam Lax- Sankw’ax, or the park’s Visitor Centre. I learn that this was the first provincial park to offer visitors the opportunity to see the landscape’s natural features through an Indigenous lens. It’s this subtle shift in perspective away from the colonial viewpoint that invites you to look at land and culture more holistically and begins to give you a sense of the deep connection the Nisga’a people have to their lands.

Arriving at stop #16, Wilp-Adokshl Nisga’a, or the Nisga’a Museum, I’m greeted by Kaitlyn Stephens, one of the museum’s youth tour guides. Most staff at the museum are Nisga’a, and as more young people become trained in museum work, it’s expected eventually all will be. Stephens begins the museum tour by saying the facility opened in 2011 as part of the treaty agreement and was purpose-built to house the over 300 ancestral items that were repatriated from the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Royal BC Museum. She explains that the items on display are more than art pieces; instead, they are physical representations of her culture and contain everything from moral lessons, to spiritual teaching, to information about the Nisga’a way of life. 

The Indigenous people in BC and across Canada endured many horrors with colonization. They were decimated by illness, removed from their ancestral lands, and had their cultures outlawed. Part of the criminalization of their cultures included the removal or destruction of all outward signs of their spirituality, heritage, and art. For the Nisga’a people this meant their monumental house and memorial poles were toppled and taken by missionaries and federal Indian agents who sold them to traders. Smaller items—from the sacred to the everyday—were also sold away in an effort to force the Nisga’a to assimilate.

Stephens says that some of her people tried to hide regalia and other ancestral items, but they were caught. Everything that had been hidden was collected and burned. So she says they became better at hiding things. “They took the house poles that had been cut down and turned them inward inside their homes. They also buried things,” says Stephens. “People still find things that were hidden.” Then she shows me an old record player. “We even used their technology.” She explains that when her ancestors sang their own songs, someone would be on lookout, and “they’d quickly put on a record if someone came.”

Learning from Stephens, as she explains the items in the museum, you begin to understand why the tours are given by Nisga’a youth. While having the opportunity to learn about the Nation directly from a member helps build understanding between cultures, it’s what’s happening for the young museum staff that’s even more important. “We’re a museum focused on storytelling,” says Theresa Schober, the museum’s director and curator. “So the youth are often teaching as they learn.” Something she says helps young people build pride in their culture as well as a connection to their elders.

While introducing visitors to the Nisga’a culture is important (“Where would you rather learn about the Nisga’a? Here, or in an Institution in Europe?” asks Schober), she says this is just one small part of the museum’s role. “These are cultural belongings that were removed from the valley from the late 1800s through the early 1900s.” Schober continues, “The museum gives citizens the opportunity to interact with their own ancestral possessions.” Schober explains that in the low season, the museum closes to public tours to give the Nisga’a people the opportunity to reconnect with their belongings and privately re-establish their sacred cultural relationships–something that’s essential to their healing.

So, just as Tait did, McNeil searches for clues in historical photographs and paintings, while using current photos from MOA to trace Oye’a’s and Tait’s carved lines. As he talks, McNeil picks up one of the arms from Hagwi’look’am ts’im-aks. He was never able to get a good photograph of the box Hagwi’look’am ts’im-aks held. Instead he has an old photo showing the badly done copy of the original—but he says he got permission from the pole’s ancestral owner to “Nisga’a it” and carve it so the formline is correct. Now, he says, the next challenge is to build the hinged arms from nothing more than a photograph. “None of the carvers I’ve talked to know how to do it (make the hinged arms). It’s not been done for 200 years.”

“But they say, I’ve got it,” he continues, “So I’ll follow protocol and trust in the process. I’ll believe that the ancestors left me enough clues to keep going forward.”

 “When this pole goes up, it’s going to tell the story of who we are all over again,” says McNeil. “So in carving it as a replica (the ancestors) are actually teaching me, as a carver, how to tell a story I didn’t know.”

Although McNeil says he’d rather have the original pole brought home, because culturally it’s considered his ancestor, he believes that like having access to the items in the museum is important, working to raise the new replica pole is a vital step in the process of his Nation’s healing. “Our great aunts always said that when our poles come home…when our belongings come home…all the stories and our identity will come back to us.” 

He continues, “So by trying to copy our artwork, by following the laws and protocols, by sharing it with the youth, some of what was lost comes back.”