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yesterday

Vatican’s 62 Indigenous Artifacts Arrive in Canada, Go on Display Before Return

Pope Leo XIV’s handover starts a community-led process for documentation, conservation, return.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, right, along with representatives from various First Nations receive a kayak and other indigenous artifacts at Trudeau Airport in Montreal, on Saturday, on December 6, 2025.
National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak speaks during a press conference welcoming 62 Indigenous cultural artifacts on their arrival from the Vatican in Dorval, Quebec, Canada, on December 6, 2025.
Isaiah Bernard of Potlotek First Nation, Isaiah Andersen from Winnipeg, Katisha Paul of the Lil'wat and Tsartlip Nations and Peyal laceese of the Tsilhqotin Nation embrace after a press conference welcoming 62 Indigenous cultural artifacts on their arrival from the Vatican in Dorval, Quebec, Canada, on December 6, 2025.
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Overview

  • Boxes carrying the items landed in Montreal on Saturday and have been transferred to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, where a selection is being shown Tuesday.
  • The collection includes a rare Inuvialuit sealskin kayak and other pieces linked to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities that had been in the Vatican’s Anima Mundi collection for a century.
  • The Vatican and Canadian bishops say the artifacts were gifted back to Indigenous communities, following a three-year campaign endorsed by Pope Francis and formalized by Pope Leo XIV.
  • Indigenous leaders welcomed the repatriation as a meaningful step and emphasized that broader reconciliation efforts must continue.
  • Many objects were first taken to Rome for the 1925 Vatican Mission Exposition, a provenance the Vatican describes as gifts but which historians and Indigenous groups dispute, noting the lack of a public inventory and the small share returned compared with wider holdings.