Haw'aa.
[Witness speaks in Haida]
My name is Jisgang. My English name is Nika Collison. I'm the executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum and co-chair of the Haida Repatriation Committee.
Haw'aa to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
Haw'aa to Mr. Bill Casey for his vision and to all who have done a great amount of work on Bill C-391.
I would also like to take a moment to thank and recognize Mr. Saganash for his work on Bill C-262.
At the second reading of Bill C-391, Mr. Casey stated that he is open to anything that will make the bill better. I appreciate this opportunity to provide insight into Haida repatriation experiences and respond to the bill as it sits right now.
As museum professionals and human beings, we carry the responsibility to effect societal change by mainstreaming Canada's dark history with indigenous peoples while actively working to set things right.
In the indigenous and mainstream museum world, the path toward reconciliation has been shaped by what my Haida Nation calls Yahguudangang, the act of paying respect. The Haida Nation sees this work, more commonly known as repatriation, as based upon mutual respect, co-operation and trust. Yahguudangang has brought a new depth to our nation's healing and our ability to heal with others. It provides opportunity for western museums to become voluntary agents of change rather than the physical evidence of Canada's genocide against first peoples.
Saahlinda Naay, Savings Things House, also known as the Haida Gwaii Museum, is the result of one of the earliest acts of making things right—or reconciliation—in the museum world. It was a vision of both the Haida citizens and Canadian friends residing on our islands that brought this place into being, which opened in 1976. In 2007, we opened the Haida Heritage Centre, which expanded our museum. It was created for our people but also created to share. This is our gift to the world.
Since most of our treasures left Haida Gwaii during the height of colonial regimes, our museum didn't have much of a collection to begin with, but Haida and settler families generously donated Haida heirlooms. The Royal British Columbia Museum, under the lead of then curator Peter McNair, showed support by returning some monumental poles for our museum's opening. This quiet act of repatriation is probably the earliest in Canada. It was not required by law or policy. This act was done because of the humanity this one person brought to our table.
The Haida Gwaii Museum has since grown to include a considerable collection of treasures, mostly gained from private donations, purchases and long-term loans, as opposed to museum repatriation. We also present new works, as we are a living culture. We are not simply an institution. We are a part of the institution that makes up today's Haida society and the greater Canadian society.
In the mid-1990s, the repatriation of ancestral remains became a primary focus of our people. To date, over 500 of our ancestors have been brought home from museums and private individuals from across North America, and one from the U.K. This work has taken over 20 years and well over a million dollars in cash, sweat labour and in-kind donations.
When we visit these museums to bring our ancestors home, we also visit our cultural treasures and other containers of knowledge, such as archives. We bring the diaspora of our people's lives home through imagery, audio recordings, collection notes and the recreation of pieces, and through the physical, emotional and spiritual connections that forever bind us. A few times, family heirlooms have come home from these museums. We are now ready to bring more home.
Around the same time that we began to focus on our ancestors, the 1992 “Task Force Report on Museums and First Peoples” came out. This report has had a very important influence on relationships between indigenous people and mainstream museums, but it's the past four decades of knocking on doors, patience and relationship-building by our people that have been pivotal in having the Haida world and the museum world come together to make things right.
NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of the United States, has played an important role there and, in a roundabout way, for us as well. The first cross-border repatriation of one of our ancestors was spurred by NAGPRA. Legally, the museum was not required to work with us because we are not a federally recognized U.S. tribe, but they wanted to see our relative come home. When we contacted the next couple of U.S. museums, they wanted to repatriate through our Alaskan relatives in order to align their process with NAGPRA, but these ancestors came from Haida Gwaii, and eventually the museums agreed.
England is far behind Canada in repatriation, with many mechanisms—or lack of mechanisms, depending on the situation—to prohibit such work. Despite this, through relationship-building and a lot of other hard work, we were able to bring home an ancestor from the Pitt Rivers Museum in 2010. The British Museum has changed its act to allow for repatriation of human remains, and we will be bringing home an ancestor from there imminently.
What we found in working in Yahguudangang is that you can instil a policy and/or laws around repatriation, but true Yahguudangang, or repatriation and reconciliation, is not fully achieved without respectful, genuine nation-to-nation relationship-building. We want people to want to give our relatives back and to see our treasures come home. We want people to want to make things right, and want to find a way forward together, not because they have to. Repatriation is the most important work I've been involved in around the work of reconciliation. The work is beyond monumental. It costs time and healing, and it involves everyone in our nation and our friends.
I'm worried about running out of time, so just give me a second here.