Mid 19th Century Totem Pole Returns Home Summer 2023

LONDON.- Almost 100 years ago, a hand-carved totem pole was cut down in the Nass Valley in the northwest of Canada’s British Columbia.

The 36-foot tall pole had been carved from red cedar in the 1860s to honor Ts’wawit, a warrior from the Indigenous Nisga’a Nation, who was next in line to become chief before he was killed in conflict.

A Canadian anthropologist, Marius Barbeau, oversaw the removal of the memorial pole in the summer of 1929, while the Nisga’a people were away from their villages on an annual hunting, fishing and harvesting trip, according to the Nisga’a government.

Barbeau sent the pole to a buyer more than 4,000 miles away: the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh — today known as the National Museum of Scotland.

This week, after a decades-long campaign by members of the Nisga’a Nation, the memorial pole finally began its long journey home.

A Nisga’a delegation in traditional red and black robes crossed the grand gallery of the museum on Monday, passing a Japanese Buddha, a Sudanese sculpture and a feast bowl from the Pacific, before finally reaching the totem pole, where they performed a spiritual ceremony to prepare it for its journey back to Canada.

The Nisga’a believe that the pole has a spirit embedded in it and do not consider it an object but a living being, according to Amy Parent, whose Nisga’a name is Noxs Ts’aawit. Monday’s ceremony consisted of putting it to sleep before it started its journey home.

“We have a living family member that’s been imprisoned within a museum,” said Parent, an associate professor of education at Simon Fraser University. She added that the pole deeply connects them to their history.

Other museums in Britain have returned or pledged to return items from their collections, but Monday’s was among the first repatriations of items from British national institutions, according to a spokesperson from the National Museum of Scotland. https://artdaily.cc/news/161805/Totem-pole-taken-94-years-ago-begins-4-000-mile-journey-home