Overview
- During an audience in Rome, the Vatican transferred 62 items from its ethnological collections to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops as a gesture of “dialogue, respect and fraternity.”
- The CCCB says it will pass the artefacts to National Indigenous Organizations, which will oversee their reunification with the specific communities of origin.
- The collection was assembled for the 1925 Vatican Missionary Exhibition and includes notable items such as an Inuvialuit sealskin kayak, wampum belts, masks and war clubs.
- An Air Canada flight is scheduled to bring the items to Montreal on Dec. 6 before they move to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau for condition checks, cataloguing and identification.
- The church-to-church gift model and the Vatican’s description of the objects as past “gifts” face criticism from Indigenous leaders and scholars, who seek direct community access, ceremonies before movement and a fuller accounting of what remains in Vatican holdings.