Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

[Lucy Bell, Head, First Nations and Repatriation Department, Royal British Columbia Museum]

Okay.

[Witness speaks in Haida]

Good afternoon, friends. My name is Lucy Bell. I come from the Haida Nation and I work at the Royal BC Museum.

Haw'aa. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I'll begin with a little bit of the background of why you've probably called me here today.

I'm one of the founding members of the Haida Repatriation Committee on Haida Gwaii. More than 20 years ago, I was an intern at the Royal BC Museum. That's where I learned about human remains being in museums, and I learned there were more than 500 of my ancestors in museums around the world. I took that message home to my Haida community, thinking I could tell them that our ancestors were in the museum. They told me to get busy and start repatriating my ancestors. It took well over 20 years to track them all down and bring them home.

Many, many years later, I started working at the Royal BC Museum as the head of the first nations and repatriation department. With the provincial government's support, the museum responded to the calls of the TRC, UNDRIP and the task force, and really wanted to move the museum in a stronger repatriation direction. My team has been working for about two years now with a renewed focus on repatriation.

The Royal BC Museum has been repatriating for many decades. We are one of the two museums in Canada that repatriate under treaty, and we have been repatriating ancestral remains, belongings and intangible heritage.

I'll mention some of the changes we made in the last couple of years.

We recently revised our indigenous collections and repatriation policy to be more open to repatriation. One of the changes that I'm most proud of is that we changed the policy to say that anything taken during the anti-potlatch law from 1885 to 1951 is considered to have been acquired under duress and is up for repatriation.

Another change we've made is that we've really amped up our repatriation and our work toward repatriating intangible heritage. That means that our very extensive collection of audio recordings, linguistic recordings and cultural recordings is being digitized and provided to communities.

We recently launched a repatriation granting program, with the support of the provincial government, and we've been supporting 21 B.C. indigenous communities in their repatriation journeys. We also support treaty repatriation, and on average two to three nations come to the table with the museum every year.

We are in the middle of creating a repatriation 101 handbook. Knowing that there are not that many nations actively involved in repatriation, we knew we could support them by giving them some tips on how to repatriate.

Today I'll mention a few points.

I had the advice of CEO Jack Lohman, curator Martha Black, and archaeology collection manager Genevieve Hill, and we've come up with a few suggestions. I'll mention a few that I wrote down.

It's important that the strategy that's created be created by and with indigenous peoples and with museums. It's important to bring both to the table.

From my experience repatriating from the United States, we found the NAGPRA law to be very restrictive. By the time we got to the museums, the museums felt really rushed and forced. They were quite tired, and they were feeling obligated to repatriate. It was a big strain. I would recommend the way the Haida repatriation movement went, which was to use the task force report in a much friendlier way. We would bring that document and say, “We're here to work in collaboration and in friendship with you.” That seemed to go a lot further for us than the NAGPRA law.

Something we're facing here with our granting program is that repatriation does take time and it does take money. With the Haida repatriation movement, we estimate that it probably cost us about $1 million to repatriate 500 of our ancestors. That's money we had to raise ourselves.

There are some other things we wanted to speak to. A few definitions could be worked on, ensuring that “ancestral remains” are mentioned in the strategy of the bill and ensuring that “intangible heritage”—i.e., language recordings—is included. It's probably a good suggestion to use the term “indigenous”. Asking museums to be more public about their collections, and more public about having ancestral remains in their collections, will be important as well.

Finally, I would say that repatriation does take time. Reporting out takes time. It is just an absolutely slow and thoughtful process. It took 20 years for the Haida to bring home over 500 ancestors. In British Columbia, with so many nations here, that's what we're understanding here at the museum, too. It takes time and it takes people and it takes resources.

Those are my main points today. Haw'aa for the opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much for that.

We will now go to President Clément Chartier, please.

[Clément Chartier, President, Métis National Council]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, members of the committee.

I begin this presentation with a statement of whom I am referring to when I use the term “Métis”. That is the historic Métis nation based in western Canada—a distinct people with a distinct history and language, Michif; a national flag that is over 200 years old; a significant population; and a defined geographic homeland. It is the people or nation that took both political and military action to defend its people and territory.

To be clear, I am not referring to the modern-day plethora of the hundreds of thousands of people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, particularly in eastern Canada, who now claim to be Métis, using that term as an adjective and being of mixed ancestry with potential or tenuous claims to some faraway Indian ancestor. This adjective or mixed-ancestry use of the term “Métis” does not relate to the Métis nation, which is a distinct indigenous people, a polity and full-fledged rights-bearing indigenous people with its own distinctive culture and rights, which are inherent in that fact.

Today I am here to address Bill C-391, a proposed act respecting a national strategy for the repatriation of aboriginal cultural property. It is expected that this proposed act will provide for the development and implementation of a national strategy to enable the return of aboriginal cultural property to indigenous peoples in Canada, something now desperately needed. The sense of urgency that the Métis nation, the Inuit and the first nations peoples are feeling is evidence that indigenous peoples want to reclaim their cultures and heritage. While indigenous cultural revitalization also includes languages and land, cultural property held by others is a fundamental component of cultural renewal and reclamation.

From the birth of the Métis nation, visitors to this land appreciated the beauty of our material culture and collected and kept it as works of art. This was the time when some semblance of fair trade and commerce was taking place, as indigenous peoples and settlers exchanged goods and services. The colonization and oppression that followed this dynamic put the power to own and possess indigenous material and culture in the hands of the newcomers. This included limiting and eradicating food sources, restricting freedom, denying land ownership, and curtailing business, trade and commerce.

The Métis are often touted as the middlemen or women of the fur trade era. We were once a vibrant and successful connection between the first nations and the newcomers. However, this too diminished as the Métis nation was dispossessed of land and forced to disperse. It forced many or most Métis families into abject poverty, hiding and denying their identity for cultural safety. This was coupled with over a century of shaming indigenous peoples through unfair treatment, one-sided historical records, relocation, outlawed spiritual practices, heavy-handed assimilation tactics, and numerous other forms of discrimination.

Having to choose between feeding your children and keeping culturally significant property was no choice at all. Forced relocation meant taking only what you could carry. The kind of infrastructure that allowed those in more stable environments to enjoy cultural practices and make cultural property could not exist under these conditions.

Métis women were essential to the family's economy. Métis women made their best and most beautiful cultural property to be bought and collected by others, while at the same time it was impossible for Métis families to keep and enjoy what they made.

The kind of work available to Métis men included sporadic and difficult labour endeavours at very low wages, and these men were considered more fortunate than others. Providing for a family through harvesting plants and animals was absolutely necessary. It was a laborious and time-consuming endeavour.

We ask ourselves what kind of cultural property might be there if these hardships had not been foisted on indigenous peoples and, in particular, the Métis nation. What kind of effort did it take to covertly maintain our culture and to continue to pass on the cultural arts for which we became so well known? In fact, we were known as the “flower beadwork people”.

We are grateful to those who could, and hold no malice to those who could not in order to survive. Some people with origins elsewhere may think to themselves, “I don't know the songs and dances of my ancestors, and I can't make any of the material culture either, so what's the big deal?” The big deal is that the vast majority of Canadians have a country of origin from which to reclaim any part of their culture, your culture. It wasn't outlawed or suppressed as it has been here in Canada for indigenous peoples. It hasn't suffered from decades of indifference and shaming, which drove many people to the cultural safety of letting their traditions go in order to survive.

When we look at the care and attention given to the cultural property of those who were free to make and collect it, and how long they have had this privilege, we can only imagine what might have been if indigenous peoples—in our case, the Métis nation—had had the same freedom and opportunity. The most precious and beautiful items would have been kept as cherished family heirlooms. They would not have been sold or taken. These items would not be mislabelled or unlabelled regarding who the artisan was or the indigenous nation from which they originate. They would certainly not be in keeping houses other than our own.

As an example of proving the provenance of potential cultural items that may be subject to repatriation, in August I joined an organization of a number of American states' ambassadors, indigenous leaders and others on a tour of the Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian, in Washington, D.C. In one of the displays of the bonnets, a piece caught my eye, a beaded baby bonnet with distinctive Métis beadwork. The caption stated, "Plains Cree (Prairie Cree) baby's cap/hat, circa 1910, Saskatchewan, Canada”. Anybody from the Métis community looking at that knows it's of Métis origin. This is a potential case of having Métis art labelled wrongly, as the suppression of Métis rights and existence was, at that particular period, being visited upon the Métis nation.

Bill C-391 is a good first step for Canada to reconcile these injustices. It will serve to make way for indigenous peoples to reclaim their cultural property and to guide all involved in processes that should ultimately make everyone feel that this is the right course of action. The repatriation of aboriginal cultural property is going to speed up the process of cultural renewal for indigenous peoples. It will reflect a time Canadians should not be proud of, and support a time in which Canadians can take great pride.

There is also a need to ensure that repatriated cultural property has a home or homes to return to. In too many cases, the Métis nation does not have adequate resources to establish museums and/or cultural centres. This is slowly changing. The Manitoba Métis Federation, on behalf of the Métis nation, after a 20-year effort is in the final stages of being able to establish a national Métis museum in Winnipeg, the former site of the Red River Métis provisional government. Other initiatives are also under way.

Finally, in 2020 the Métis nation will be celebrating its 150th anniversary of joining Confederation, which was made possible by the negotiation under president Louis Riel and the passage of the Manitoba Act of 1870. We look forward to all parliamentarians, and in fact all Canadians, celebrating this historic event with us.

[Witness speaks in Haida]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

We will now be going to Ms. Aluki Kotierk, the President of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. We also have the Executive Director, Pamela Gross, with us.

Am I correct that you're going to be giving your evidence in Inuktitut? Okay. I'm going to signal to everyone to make sure they have their earpieces.

[Aluki Kotierk, President, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.]

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you. I considered speaking in English, but I am now going to speak in Inuktitut, since you have an interpreter. I'm very proud that I'll be able to talk in my language, in Inuktitut, while I'm in Ottawa.

There are two things I'll be talking about in regard to Bill C-391 and respecting Nunavut. Briefly, I will say that when I'm reading this bill, it indicates that artifacts can be used for educational purposes. This is very important, in my view. It is very important to us Inuit that Inuit artifacts be inside Nunavut, which they are not. They are housed somewhere else.

The young people should see their own way now in Canada. There is a history of shame for being indigenous people. When we see up close the intricate stitching of the Inuit and how they put tools together—for example combs and other tools—it reminds us how indigenous Inuit were distinct from other people. They were ingenious. This would be the case in Nunavut.

This is a commendable aspiration, as we have nothing in Nunavut. This plan would be very useful to us if there were to be a museum in Nunavut. At the moment, how are we going to use the repatriated cultural property? My concern is that despite the national strategy, there is no facility, and no appropriate measures to protect this cultural property have been implemented.

As we know, Nunavut became a territory in 1993 as a result of the Nunavut agreement, specifically article 4. It's been 25 years since the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act received royal assent from the Canadian Parliament.

In Nunavut, there is no territorial heritage centre that can house Inuit cultural property. As such, there are more than 140,000 Nunavut artefacts in storage, including here in Ottawa. The Government of Nunavut has been spending millions since 1999 to store them outside of Nunavut. The need for such a facility was included in the Nunavut agreement. Article 33.2.4 states:

There is an urgent need to establish facilities in the Nunavut Settlement Area for the conservation and management of a representative portion of the archaeological record.

In addition, to highlight the need for facilities, the Nunavut agreement established the Inuit Heritage Trust, which is tasked with the safekeeping and safe use of property entrusted to it.

The establishment of a territorial facility has been in the works with the Nunavut government since 2001. In 2006, Nunavut Tunngavik, the Inuit Heritage Trust, and the Nunavut government announced that the territorial facility would be located in Iqaluit. With many competing infrastructure needs, the project was shelved in 2011, and funds that had been budgeted for this were redirected to other projects.

The sense of Inuit is important to us. In 2014, the Inuit Heritage Trust had been working with the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation on the heritage centre project with the intention of bringing home Nunavut Inuit artifacts and building the facility on the Inuit's own lands.

Currently, the creation of the Nunavut heritage project is estimated at a cost of $70 million to $90 million. At our annual general meeting in 2017, Nunavut Tunngavik committed $5 million toward this project, and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association committed the same—$5 million for this new heritage centre to be built inside Nunavut.

Thank you very much for listening to my comments.

[Pamela Gross, Executive Director, Kitikmeot Inuit Association, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.]

[Interpretation]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I am from Cambridge Bay.

[English]

I am happy to be here. Thank you for the opportunity and for having us here. My name is Pamela Gross. Hakongak is my Inuinnaqtun name, given to me by my grandmother, and I'm named after one of her cousins.

I am representing the Inuit Heritage Trust, which is under article 33 in the Nunavut agreement. I'm a trustee for the trust, and I also work at the Kitikmeot Heritage Society. In Inuinnaqtun, we call it Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq. It is a non-profit organization in Cambridge Bay that works to preserve, protect and promote Inuit culture.

I've been working in heritage for a number of years. I have had extensive role models and been able to work with the Inuit Heritage Trust throughout my university career. It is very important that we have a museum in Nunavut, so we can repatriate our artifacts that are housed in Ottawa and Winnipeg and bring them home for our people to use and to learn from in our home communities.

Iqaluit is the potential home of our territorial museum. It's a gracious pledge from Nunavut Tunngavik and the QIA that they have each pledged $5 million toward building a museum. It's been almost 25 years since the Nunavut agreement was assented to. It would be a great opportunity for us, as we are the only jurisdiction in Canada that does not have a territorial museum.

If you were to come to our territory—and I'm not sure who has been there before—you would see that we do have a few museums, such as the one I work at, but we do not have a territorial one. In the past several years, we have been able to regain a lot of our cultural pride. We're shifting our identity. We're reclaiming who we are in various ways. One really great way is by looking at old artifacts and taking our elders to museums. I've taken elders to Denmark, for example, to look at collections that are stored there because we don't have the opportunity to look at them in our own home community.

We need to learn that knowledge and have that knowledge retained in our culture to keep that identity. When you think of Canada and you ask people what they think of Canada, they'll often think of the inukshuk, the kayak and the igloo. Those are all important pieces that our ancestors worked hard to create with their ingenuity. Those tools and the objects that are stored within those tools—the knowledge, the wisdom, the words, the language—are all a vital part of our identity and who we are.

We are proud to be Canadian. We would like to have the opportunity to have more of our culture showcased in our communities and be used as lesson tools.

The first step for Nunavut is to have a territorial museum and have our objects brought back home. As mentioned, 140,000 objects are stored in Ottawa and Winnipeg. Those are ones we would like to have in our communities and use as tools to pass on to the next generation.

Quanaqqutit for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

We're now beginning our question and answer period with Mr. Hogg, please.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you very much, witnesses, for telling your stories with respect to repatriation and the issues associated with it. Certainly, we want to develop a strategy that looks at and is helpful for informing and leading repatriation.

We had a previous witness from Haida Gwaii. Ms. Collison talked about some of the negotiations that have taken place. She said that they want people to want to do the right thing and to be able to engage. Are there some values or principles that should be reflected in this that would encourage that type of thing so people see what we're trying to do? Maybe it could be in terms of a value statement that reflects the history and the need to do it, in a way that pulls out a little more of that, so that people who might be holding on to indigenous artifacts might understand that it's a little more than just a bill or a piece of legislation. It's something that tells a story or starts to reflect that. There might be a preamble that would help with that.

I'll ask Ms. Bell to respond to that first.

[Lucy Bell]

For the Haida repatriation, Nika probably spoke to it. The Haida word Yahguudangang means “respect”, and with everything that we did with our ancestors, we always came back to that one word.

As you can imagine, having to repatriate hundreds of human remains is a strange thing. That's not a normal thing that anybody would have to do. We were often asked by the media, for instance, if they could come and film us as we were caring for our ancestors. We were asked if the staff members could participate. Really, there were just a lot of questions that were new to us. We always had to come back to the word “respect” and ask our colleagues as well to understand the meaning of true respect. That just made the path so much clearer for us and for our colleagues.

As I mentioned before, using the task force report really speaks to collaboration and friendship between museums and indigenous peoples. We really stood by that. We asked the museums to honour that as well. We were kind of joking about it at work the other day. We're Canadians; we're known as a friendly country, so this act should reflect that. To work in friendship is an important thing that we need to do with this.

Haw'aa.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Yes, and we concur with that. We want to have something in this that does reflect the respect that you and Nika talked about. I'm just trying to frame that in some phraseology. Specifically, she described some negotiations they were going through that seemed to be much more toward a legalistic approach than a principles or values approach. I'm trying to find the balance between those and how we might reflect that in the phraseology we're going forward with.

Do the other witnesses have any comments with respect to that in terms of how this legislation could reflect more appropriately the values and principles rather than just actions?

[Clément Chartier]

In addition to what's already been said, I would think that it's important in this day of reconciliation that Canadians are.... They are becoming more understanding and educated about various indigenous peoples and nations, but there's still quite a ways to go to educate the public.

I would think that in a preamble there would be the notion of reflecting that indigenous peoples, being the original peoples of this land, have histories, cultures and their own nationhood and peoplehood, and there are distinctions, which I think also need to be kept in mind. Also, indigenous peoples' values are no different from anybody else's. We value what is ours and we want in many cases to rebuild what we've lost in this. I think that is something that is important.

Our cultural heritage has taken a massive assault. It takes the collective effort of all Canadians, I think, to assist in rebuilding that. Some messages along those lines I think would be helpful.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Do you have any comments you'd like to make?

[Pamela Gross]

I think one of the ways we can do this is by incorporating traditional knowledge—Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit or IQ—and working with our communities and talking with the people.

We're a growing population with growing needs. I think the biggest thing for us is being able to use those artifacts that are close to our people and our culture, working with our communities to pass on the traditional knowledge through those objects, demonstrating how they were made and how you gain so much information by using your hands, listening to elders, working to make something that is almost inherent in who we are, and incorporating IQ.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

That brings you to the end of your time.

We will now be going to Mr. Blaney, please.

[Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My first question is for Ms. Bell.

Ms. Bell, I have a very simple question. You suggested that the bill should be amended to have the expression “indigenous” instead of “aboriginal”. Can you just share with me why? I believe this is justified.

[Lucy Bell]

In Canada, “indigenous” is more inclusive of all first nations, Inuit, and Métis people. It's the move we're trying to make in British Columbia and in the Royal BC Museum. We're trying to be more proactive and respond to what community members are saying, to be more inclusive.

[Steven Blaney]

You also suggested that the bill should be amended to include “intangible assets”. I also heard “traditional knowledge”.

Is it easy for you to recover intangible assets? You have experience over the last 20 years. Has it been easy for you or have you encountered some challenges in that regard?

[Lucy Bell]

For the Haida, as we've gone out on our repatriation journeys to museums all over the world, it became more our responsibility to ask for the intangible heritage. They often thought we were only there for our ancestors. As we got a little bit more experience, we learned that it was up to us to ask, because museums were not necessarily forthcoming in saying that they also had Haida recordings and historic Haida photos. I think it was a bit of a challenge.

As you might know, museums are struggling to keep up with technology, so digitizing.... In my department alone, we have 3,000 recordings. Many of them are linguistic, reel-to-reel, so we have added about four new team members to digitize the intellectual property in the last year. It's a big job for museums.

[Steven Blaney]

I understand that you support the bill and it's important for indigenous people to repatriate. Do you see any benefit to having some of the collection being exposed in other parts of the country or internationally?

[Lucy Bell]

Of course. I think you probably know of the famous Haida carver Bill Reid, and how much attention his beautiful work has brought to the Haida and to the indigenous people of Canada. I don't think I would ever suggest that it's a clean sweep—let's repatriate everything now—because it's a complicated process and relationship.

[Steven Blaney]

Mr. Chartier, when is the Métis museum to be built? You referred to a Métis museum that would be built in Manitoba. Is that correct?

[Clément Chartier]

Yes, that's correct.

They're in the final stages of putting the resources together to enable it to take place. We feel it's imminent that it's going to be happening.

[Steven Blaney]

Okay.

You feel that you will repatriate some artifacts, obviously, for the museum. I understand you raised the issue that there are some Métis artifacts that are not recognized, as well. I understand that this new museum could help with recognizing the Métis culture and help clarify the classification of artifacts.

[Clément Chartier]

Yes. That's correct.

That will be part of the exercise. Just as an example, about three years ago, Library and Archives Canada did an exhibit called “Hiding in Plain Sight”. Basically, they were looking at their own archival work, where a lot of the stuff wasn't identified. It was basically Métis, but they have to go through all of their stuff to try to extract that.

We'd be going through similar kinds of processes because, after 100 years ago, Métis weren't really recognized anymore as people with rights; therefore we were cast aside by the federal government and made our way through life. That's changed again in the last number of years, so now it's a matter of rebuilding.

[Steven Blaney]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. Kotierk.

Ms. Kotierk, I think Ms. Gross mentioned that there were 140,000 artifacts throughout the world. I understand that there is a commitment and a necessity to have a facility in Nunavut so that people can have access to these artifacts.

My question for you is the same as it was for Ms. Bell. Do you see any benefit in having the Nunavut culture be exposed in other places of the country and the world? Do you see this bill as a way to help fix a balance between having artifacts owned by the Nunavut people and also shared to expose the Nunavut culture?