[Member spoke in Cree]
[English]
Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to be here to speak to this private member's bill.
It is important that we consider what story is told, who tells that story, and how it is told. We often hear the phrase that history is the story of the victorious, those who have won the battle, but Canada, we know, is perhaps a different country that is unusual and special in the history of man, for we have created a very pluralistic society for many Canadians. As Steve Heinrichs, a friend of mine, said, “It's all about relationships. It's all about how we relate to each other.”
I am very proud of the work of the member for Cumberland—Colchester, who put forward Bill C-391, an act respecting a national strategy for the repatriation of aboriginal cultural property. The bill seeks to provide for the development and implementation of a national strategy to enable the return of aboriginal cultural property to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.
I believe the government must work to ensure the protection of important aspects of Canada's heritage. The Government of Canada must facilitate the repatriation of indigenous cultural property through financial support, and it must do so in a timely way. The government must continue to examine the bill and find ways to ensure that it is implemented with indigenous peoples.
This bill, in my estimation, is consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is consistent with articles 11 and 12 of UNDRIP, which we have just approved today in the House at third reading.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended the implementation of UNDRIP and a national review of museum policies and practices to determine their compliance with UNDRIP.
I would like to quote article 11:
Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and revive their cultures and tradition.
Governments will work with indigenous peoples to ensure indigenous property rights to their cultures, knowledge, spiritual and religious traditions are respected, and to address cases where these have been used without free, prior and informed consent.
Article 12, on the right to spiritual and religious traditions and customs, says:
Indigenous peoples have the right to practice their spiritual and religious traditions. Governments will, with indigenous peoples, ensure that indigenous peoples are free to practice, protect and revive and keep alive their cultures, spiritual, religious and knowledge traditions.
These are very noble objectives.
I have a friend whom I have not had a chance to talk to in a number of years, but when I was at the University of Manitoba, we had excellent and very profound conversations over the role of museums and how museums shape our history. We know there was a great debate in this Parliament when the Museum of Civilization's title was changed to the Museum of Canadian History. We know that how we tell these stories is very important.
Ruth B. Phillips, who wrote Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums, writes, “Critical writing on museums during the past two decades has produced a widely accepted understanding of the ways in which nation-states have historically used these institutions”—museums—“to educate their public to desired forms of social behaviour and citizenship.”
This is a long history, and we have been talking about indigenization of cultural artifacts for a very long period of time.
In 1988, during the Calgary Winter Olympics, the Glenbow Museum had a wonderful display on indigenous peoples, but it was not without controversy.
Most writers on this topic know that The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada's First Peoples was a point of departure and change within the Canadian state about how museums work with indigenous peoples. For instance, Bernard Ominayak, chief of the Lubicon First Nation said in 1986, “The irony of using a display of North American Indian artifacts to attract people to the Winter Olympics being organized by interests who are still actively seeking to destroy the Indian people seems painfully obvious.”
In response, Duncan Cameron, director of the Glenbow Museum, wrote, “I believe that it is this Olympic connection which will draw attention to the real concerns of Canadian Native peoples, as it is in the context of the exhibition that the richness and depth of Canada's Native culture will be emphasized.”
Stuart Hall later wrote—in 2005, because sometimes these debates go on for very many decades in academia—“The exhibiting of “other cultures”—often performed with the best of Liberal intentions—has proved controversial. The questions 'Who should control the power to represent?' and 'Who has the authority to re-present the culture of others?' have resounded through the museum corridors of the world, provoking a crisis of authority.”
It is important that this crisis of authority continue. It is not simply about indigenous people taking back and never sharing; it is about how we build relationships together and how we work together. I do not believe there is any indigenous nation or people who would say, 'We don't want to work with museums around Canada and around the world', but “nothing without us” is an important phrase.
This work has been going on even in Winnipeg. I was at the University of Winnipeg for a funding announcement on indigenous knowledge on a research project for Dr. Reimer. It was called the Six Seasons of the Asiniskow Ithiniwak.
In 1993, the remains of a 25-year-old Cree woman were found. She had lived 350 years ago near the South Indian Lake. The community-led archaeological research resulted in Elder William Dumas writing an award-winning book, Pisim Finds Her Miskanow. This also led to working with Dr. Reimer from the University of Winnipeg to create a research project with the goal of reclaiming the Rocky Cree language, history, and culture. We eventually did an interview in which we talked about it, and it can be found on Facebook if people are interested.
This was about a community taking charge of its own knowledge, its own story, to ensure that what the community needed was put first and foremost. It was not about the Museum of History in Ottawa and Gatineau taking charge or, in the case the member for Cumberland—Colchester talked about, a museum in Victoria in Australia taking charge, but about truly indigenous communities saying, “This is how we believe the story should be told.” Who better to tell a story than the person who has lived it?
Ruth Phillips, who wrote that book, said:
Since the late nineteenth century, one of the most important collections of Mi'kmaq and Huron-Wendat art from what are now New Brunswick and Quebec has lain largely unregarded in a large urban museum on the opposite side of the globe from its communities of origin. Consummate examples of Native North American textile and sculptural art, the clothing, textiles, wampums, and carved pipes in the collection accompanied the aspiring young writer and amateur ethnologist Samuel Douglass Smith Huyghue in 1852 when he emigrated to Australia to take up work as a government clerk in the Ballarat gold mines.
He had gone to New Brunswick and bought a number of artifacts and objects and essentially gave them to a museum in Australia. This Mi'kmaq community would like some of these artifacts repatriated so that they can be displayed and bring pride to the indigenous Mi'kmaq community in New Brunswick.
This is important, because this bill would enable us to develop a strategy. Australia, incredibly enough, actually already has a strategy on this, and they should have been repatriated many years ago.
I talked about the work that was going on at the University of Winnipeg. These remains were eventually re-buried, but if we had continued to follow old practice from the 19th century, the bones of this 25-year-old indigenous woman would have remained in storage, disturbing her spirit and the peace of the community.
I support this bill, I believe many Canadians support this bill, and I hope other members support the bill. I understand there is a bit of controversy, but as with The Spirit Sings exhibit at the Calgary Olympics in 1988, controversy sometimes can help move us forward, because it increases the amount of debate. It makes sure that everyone understands that people hear about this issue and we come to some form of conclusion and consensus about the way forward.
I wish to express my thanks.
[Member spoke in Cree]
[English]