In the early 1900s, Franz Bois, considered one of the founders of American anthropology, was fascinated by a large shrine associated with indigenous whaling rituals off the coast of British Columbia.
He had been sent a photograph of the shrine. The shrine belonged to a member of an indigenous group called The Mowachaht. A wooden structure was found on a small island surrounded by entanglements of cedars and spruce, protecting 88 carved wooden figures, four carved whale figures and 16 human skulls.
Boas decided to get it for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was a curator. He was driven by a concept known as “salvage anthropology.” Researchers saw how native cultural property was collected as a way to protect them from destruction as Indigenous groups plummeted.
Even back then, the acquisition was controversial. A researcher named George Hunt traveled to Yucott, a village near the shrine, and tried to buy it for the museum. According to a letter between him and Boas, published in “The Yuquot Whalers' Shrine,” Aldona Jonaitis' book on the 1999 book, the chief agreed to sell for $500.
Hunt wrote that he ultimately convinced the two chiefs to split $500 in exchange for the shrine. However, he added that the chief agreed not to take the shrine until much of the community left the island towards the Bering Sea.
In 1905, the same year the complete collection arrived in New York, Boa left the museum. The museum ultimately decided not to display the entire large shrine. Over the next 120 years, I have displayed or rented out some of the sculptures, creating a small model that looks like it was around the early 1940s and 2019. In most cases, the shrine was kept.
That loss was felt keenly by the community now known as Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation. For decades, there have been calls for the shrine to be repatriated, and we talked about its fate, but those plans never came to fruition.
Until now.
On Thursday, the track, which includes many of the works that make up the shrine, began a long journey to Vancouver Island off Canada's southwest coast, one of the most important international repatriates in the museum's history.
“We're ready to go home,” said Masha Makinna, who excluded eight generations from the chief of Mowahat, who presided over the shrine in the early 1900s. “As a community, we have a lot to heal.”
The story of the return of the shrine is largely attributed to the museum's native collections and the changing approach to the human artifacts it holds. And it involved an unlikely facilitator pair: a California-born father and son recently discovered a connection to First Nation through Ancestry.com.
Like other major American institutions, the museum has long been criticized for its history of slow progress in repatriation and outdated indigenous exhibits.
Efforts to address these criticisms have continued for years, but the museum's new president, Sean Decatur, signaled that he took it very seriously last year when he closed two major halls displaying Native American objects. He cited the “increasing urgency” that allowed museums to change their relationship with Indigenous culture.
Regarding native humans, funeral objects and other cultural items recovered in the United States, the law passed in 1990 set up protocols for museums and other agencies to repatriate in consultation with tribes and descendants. New federal regulations that reinforce aspects of the protocol came into effect last year. However, the law does not apply to international native groups.
Of the human remains that the museum still holds, more than half of the 12,000 individuals represented in 2023 came from outside the United States, and the museum reviewed its management of the human remains in its collection and emphasized its commitment to work with the community internationally in its home country.
Last year, talks about repatriation of a shrine known to others as a Whalers shrine and to refuge to the whaler ship washing machine due to its connection to cleansing rituals sparked a new emergency.
They had been going on for decades. In the 1990s, representatives from the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation visited the museum and saw the collection. They called for shrines to be returned amid a surge in activism over native repatriation.
A 1994 documentary on First Nation, dubbed “Tear Wash,” captured the view that the repatriation of shrines is a source of spiritual healing for communities seeking to save their culture and lifestyle.
“It represents our strength,” genetic chief Jerry Jack said in the documentary. He mentioned the shrine by its traditional name.
“I think it was really shocking for our people when that team was taken away from us,” he said. “It took away our spirituality.”
In the following years, there were waves of efforts to complete the repatriation, but plans continued to get stuck.
Sometimes there was disagreement among First Nation members about how to carry out the return. Museum officials did not submit many solutions.
Then, a few years ago, retired Albert Lara, who lives near Sacramento, California, began digging into his genealogy. Lara's grandfather had been talking about his indigenous heritage as a child, but the 75-year-old Lara had no idea of her connection to the Pacific Northwest until she sent a swab on her cheek to ancestry.com. The results suggested connections with members of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation.
Lara reached out to First Nation officials to contact Margaretta James, president of the local cultural society and has been involved in repatriation efforts for over 30 years.
His son, Alex Lara, remembers that he and his father asked James, “Is there anything we can help you?”
James replied, “Well, actually, there is.”
Both Laras worked with Native American tribes in California. It was considered authentic in Albert with veterans as part of the state's employment development agency and in his desire to help James.
Last April, Laras began communicating with the museum about the shrine. A letter from the First Nation CEO made them an approved representative of the group.
In the following months, a plan was put together to be the most logistically complicated part of repatriation. The goal is to return the large shrine to Yucott. First Nation has decided that a delegation of members will see it on a journey of more than 3,000 miles from New York.
On Tuesday, more than 20 First Nation members stood in a box or box containing one of the most acclaimed cultural treasures in the rooms at the Museum of Natural History's Northwest Coast Hall.
They came from a 200-person sanctuary near the village of Gold River, from elders to elementary school students. Many recall how their parents and grandparents spoke about the lost shrine.
“After hearing what my father said, anything we have belongs to this place,” said his father, who called for the return of the shrine in a 1994 documentary.
Museum officials have signed the ownership of the shrine's First Nation. Decatur, the museum's president, told the delegation the shrine was “in the museum's New York City, far from its true home.”
Representatives from the First Nation provided a series of gifts, including carved wooden masks by local artists. They sang victory songs in the language of Nuchanarus. A group of men and boys polished a package containing cedar branches, including shrines, as part of a pre-departure cleansing ritual.
Lalas flew from California, where Alex Lala oversaw the logistics of the shrine's cargo. (Transportation and delegation trips are paid by the Canadian government, which recognized the shrine as a national historic site in the 1980s.)
A century ago, it took a few months for the shrine to travel from Vancouver Island to New York City. Well, it doesn't take a week to come back.
Reluctant to place ancestral artifacts on cross-country drives, the 16 skulls were securely placed on an enhanced carry-on with First Nation members returning home and accompanied by documents to pass through security.
Transport by truck includes six large cardboard boxes and four wooden wooden boxes. The heaviest of these is nearly 400 pounds. and wooden structures that house the shrine, including towering poles, 23.5 feet tall.
These packages will be moved west by truck and then by ferry to Yukcott. From there, according to current plans, helicopter services will air the pieces to the church and will be held until the community decides at a more permanent resting spot.
“It's generally known to return to the island where it came from,” James said. “But we need to protect it.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed to the research.
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