Transcript
Jennifer Berglund 00:04
Welcome to HMSC Connects!, where we go behind the scenes of four Harvard museums to explore the connections between us, our big, beautiful world, and even what lies beyond. My name is Jennifer Berglund, part of the Exhibits Team here at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and I’ll be your host. 126 years ago, a ship captain removed a sacred totem pole from its homeland in the Gitxaała Nation in British Columbia. It was illuminated and put on display on a wharf in Boston, but was subsequently taken to and displayed within Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. It remains there until December of 2022 when the Gitxaała Nation, and the Peabody worked together to repatriate it to its community of origin. Today, I’m speaking with Dustin Johnson, a member of and Cultural Program Manager for the Gitxaała Nation, and Kara Schneiderman, the Peabody’s Director of Collections about the process and meaning of both bringing and sending such an important piece of cultural heritage back home. Here they are. Dustin Johnson, and Kara Schneiderman, welcome to the show.
Dustin Johnson 01:37
Thank you for having us.
Kara Schneiderman 01:39
Thank you.
Jennifer Berglund 01:43
Dustin, how did you learn about the existence of the pole, and how did you trace it to the Peabody Museum?
Dustin Johnson 01:53
Well, I’d first seen this pole probably like 20 years ago in a totem pole’s book that was released by Marius Barbeau in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, what it was known as, back then, when I was doing my undergrad in university. And then when I moved home last year, and started this job that I’m in now, our department reached out to the Peabody Museum at Harvard two years ago. So last year, when I moved home to start this work, this is my main project. I’m actually from the same clan that the pole belongs to, and the same house, and so it was the highest priority for me and reaching out to our Elders and our Hereditary Chiefs was like the first path to really understand the history of the pole, the crest, which house it belongs to, where it stood in the community, the connections between the other neighboring communities. That’s how I came to know about this pole. It wasn’t just last year, it was many years in the making for me.
Jennifer Berglund 02:52
What is the significance of the pole for your family, in particular, your clan?
Dustin Johnson 02:58
It’s huge because our clan is the Head Chiefs of our nation have always been from the Killerwhale Clan from the Gisbutwada, and to have one come home is very significant because we haven’t had like our Head Chiefs, our highest ranked chiefs that oversee this entire nation, we haven’t had one for almost 20 years. And it’s kind of like laying in a dormant state and then having a pole like this from our clan come home is kind of like a wakeup call in igniting the flames of our traditional laws. So that was really inspiring to our Elders. Our oldest Elder in our clan is 97, and she was one of the ones that unveiled the pole when it was brought home. And that meant so much, and she shared only in our language. She never shared in English in public. When one of our last chiefs, in about 1946 he passed on, he was one of the last of the true high rank chiefs, and how they would have meetings, like Hereditary Meetings, in his house. They’d come together and all of the different councilmen, all the different Hereditary Leaders would be discussing how to build a pole. They were making one for a certain feast or a certain purpose and the way they did it traditionally. So that was really amazing for her to share that story, and it only would have happened like when she shared that in out language that she was so grateful to see this while she’s still alive, while she’s still with us, and how it might have been, back in those days, almost 100 years ago, and the significance of this. So for us, it was like a reawakening of our traditional laws and inspiring to other Elders that are kind of laying in wait to both to take names or to help stand up future leaders. They’re inspiring in many different funds, but that was the one that stuck out for me.
Jennifer Berglund 04:43
Kara, the Peabody Museum had this pole in their collections for almost 100 years. And it has a whole story behind it after it left the community of origin. So what did you learn about the pole when you look into its backstory, and why did you decide it was a great candidate for repatriation?
Kara Schneiderman 05:08
The pole was collected in about 1897 by a captain, Absalom Freeman, who was the master of a steamer chartered by the New England Fish Company. And in 1917, when the pole was acquired by the Peabody Museum, he wrote a letter detailing the circumstances under which he had purchased it. He reported that missionaries had all the poles and house posts in the village cut down and pressured the community to dispose of the poles. The letter speaks about the reluctance of community members to sell the pole but eventually they did. It was purchased during an era of the potlatch ban in Canada when many cultural practices and traditions were illegal, and it made its way from the northwest coast of Canada to Boston, where it was displayed at T Wharf at the New England Fish Company for several years until 1917 when it was requested to be donated to the Peabody by our then Director C. C. Willoughby. The New England Fish Company made the donation and around that time is the point where we get the captain’s letter detailing the circumstances under which he acquired the pole. So when the Gitxaała Nation reached out to learn more about Peabody collections, we looked at its provenance and it clearly fell within the scope of a policy that we were working to implement on the return of cultural items from the Peabody’s collections. This policy was implemented in December of 2022, and that letter alone documented that it met so many of the criteria that made it a candidate for repatriation to the origin community. It was removed from the community in circumstances of duress, the community at some level protested the removal or would have been likely to do so that’s pretty clearly documented in the letter where Freeman says that he had a difficult time getting community members to agree to sell the pole. It is inalienable community property, in this case, the property of a clan, and its removal had detrimental effects on the cultural practices and spiritual well being of the community. It also, at the Peabody, is really dissociated from the culturally responsive care that it needs. We can preserve an item like this, as a museum does, but not the way the community itself does. So when we issued our new policy, and looked at the history of the pole, how it came to the Peabody, what its initial purchase had looked like, it very quickly became evident that it was absolutely a candidate for repatriation to the Gitxaała Nation.
Jennifer Berglund 08:11
If you’re comfortable describing the context, what was happening from the community perspective during that time?
Dustin Johnson 08:34
In that time, in that era, was what are people call our darkest days of colonialism and genocide, and in the two, three decades leading up to that decade 1897 and in the 1860s, when the smallpox really spread in our community, and we had no immunity to foreign diseases, and tuberculosis and other diseases like that are running rampant, and according to many different sources, up to 80% of our population was decimated, and our people couldn’t keep up with the burials. And there were like mass burials, even where like where I am right now, there were mass burials. So at that time, we had rapid population decline, then also the onset of colonialism from missionaries and religious zealots, like William Duncan, also other missionaries that were more like directed at Gitxaała. And we had some really strong Hereditary Chiefs that kept resisting colonialism and conversion to Christianity, and one of our chiefs from Gisbutwada from the Killerwhale Clan actually resisted right up until he passed. And he burnt two churches down that were built by two different missionaries, and it wasn’t until he passed that the community was kind of forced and by police gunpoint actually convert to Christianity. And one of the things that the missionaries demanded was that all poles be cut down and burned. Not just poles but the was fronts, roads or anything of cultural significance that are deemed as pagan, heathen, devil worship, whatever. And the poles that represented our history, you know, represented crests, they represent the clan, the families, and the origins, and this one was saved. There was only, I think, three that were around that time that were still left. And this one was saved because of its importance to the clan and to the Nation, and it was significant for our Elders to bring this up, because this is a discussion that hasn’t really been brought up in our community for a while, and then coming out of COVID pandemic, and kind of analogies to, you know, losing a lot of people to illnesses, foreign illnesses, that was discussed. And it was also discussed the need to bring home our ancestors, our ancestral remains, that are, you know, laying in different museums, and, you know, on the basement shelves of different institutions being studied for whatever purposes. And when we were talking about that, we were talking about the pole and analogies were made that the pole is like one of our ancestors and bringing home the pole is like bringing home one of our great past Chiefs, bringing home our dead Chief, and bringing them back to our community. And when that analogy was made, we had a committee that was working on and said, you know, this feels too much like a funeral, we need to bring back the joy and the spirit of success and inspiration. And the committee said, well, it feels like that, but it’s just going to be the reverse of a funeral, because we’re actually bringing back something that stood during the darkest days of colonialism and surviving during that time, surviving genocide, but also the strength of our ancestors and keeping something like this for us, saving it for us. And when we had those great chiefs that fought to keep our culture alive, protect our territory, and have an identity still intact, and that inspired a lot of our Elders and some of our Elders that don’t, and Hereditary Leaders that don’t always come to meetings don’t always come to feasts, public events, they all came together, and shared cultural knowledge and best practices for doing something like this. And this was the first time our nation had done this, and so it was kind of a new thing. So they had a discussion in a traditional perspective, using protocols on how to handle it, and when they came up with a great response and a great solution for handling this. And that really reignited a pride in the whole Nation and the community that came together. And so having the hall and the gym packed, both buildings packed the way they were hasn’t been seen in several years. It was really inspiring to have, that the energy that was in both buildings and in the community was something that hasn’t been seen for a while, so the pole coming home really brought that energy and spirit back to the Nation.
Jennifer Berglund 12:53
You and the community did a lot of preparation in preparing to get a pole back home. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Dustin Johnson 13:06
Several years ago, our repatriation committee was formed, and last year when I moved home, and this was the main priority, main project of mine, I was instructed by our Elders and Hereditary Leaders to form a subcommittee specifically for the pole, and we met frequently over the month leading up to April when the pole was returned to community, it was almost every week, sometimes twice a week. And we referred back to our Elders and Hereditary Leaders different steps of logistics in the process of bringing the pole home, and the plans changed because too many factors were involved, too many people, contractors were involved, and the Elders and Hereditary Leaders said just bring it home. We originally were going to have the pole temporarily placed in a museum in Prince Rupert, in the town closest to us. But you know, Elders and Hereditary Leaders in community said that so much has happened to us, so much has happened to this pole, the way it was desecrated, the condition, the context in which she was taken from us, just bring it home and we’ll know what to do with it. And that’s what they said. They said that in English, and they said that in our language. And we were kind of taken aback by that, the committee, but we said “Okay, well, we will listen and you know, that’s going to change all of our logistics, all of our plans. We’ll have to quickly shift and find other ways to take care of it.” But we did that, and it was really a huge learning curve for us because like I said, the first time we’ve done this as a nation, but we pulled it off and it really brought us together. And then it was just the spirit and energy when the pole like physically touched down in community that was so worth it just to have everything come together right at the end.
Jennifer Berglund 14:44
As part of the return process, the Peabody Museum hosted some Gitxaała Elders at the museum. Kara, you describe what that experience was like? What it was like to host the Elders at the Peabody and to prepare the pole to send it back home?
Kara Schneiderman 15:07
The return marks the first international repatriation of a cultural item for the Peabody. So it was really a very important event for us. The actual return of the pole took a lot of logistics. It’s a very large item, so we had to look at how best to pack it so that it could be safely returned and how to ship it to Canada, since it obviously involves passing it through customs at an international border, we worked a lot with the Nation to figure out how to most effectively make that happen. And it was quite a bit of logistics to be handled by our registration department and a lot of collaboration on the basics of packing and shipping it for return. The event that took place at the Peabody took place after the pole had been shipped back. Elders and other representatives came to the Peabody, and it was, I think, a learning experience for both of us. It’s not the first time the Peabody has worked with repatriation ceremony, but again, it was the first international one that we had worked on, and so there was a lot of back and forth logistics to be worked out. The group came to undertake some research with the collection and look at other items that could be from Gitxaała, so part of it was a visit to the collections with the Elders and others. And then part of it was an event held in our gallery, and it involved all the logistics you can imagine, some simple things like arranging for food and dealing with it when the food didn’t show up correctly, to finding places where the Elders could change into their ceremonial regalia, and really working through, as best we could, to figure out how the event would work so that we could make sure that everybody’s needs were addressed. In the end, I think it was an incredible experience for all of us at the Peabody. The event itself was one of the first ones that the entire staff was able to attend, and I think that brought different meaning to the entire staff who were able to experience the ceremony and the event and speak with Elders and representatives from Gitxaała. It really helped to bring home how important this was as our first international repatriation of a cultural item for all of our staff. So it really was a chance for everyone to participate at some level. So I think it was very much a learning experience for us as well, and a lot of collaboration went into making sure that the event was meaningful for everybody.
Jennifer Berglund 17:54
Dustin, I’d love to hear a bit more about that experience from your end.
Dustin Johnson 18:00
It was very memorable experience going on that trip, to be in Peabody at Harvard, and see where the pole stood for 100 years and then at the wharf where it was initially. And we asked our Elders and our Hereditary Leaders who best to bring on this trip and who best to represent the Nation for this occasion, and our main University and museum was Harvard, I was so focused, and we visited three other institutions afterwards. We decided on seven that were going, and originally we had like a dozen, but the costs were very expensive for us to travel that far back, so we had to carefully pick who we could best bring to represent the Nation at that time, who was available, and the significance of that and of the Elders that came on this trip said that was, you know, it’s a once in a lifetime trip, and they will never forget that. And it was great that way we all came together for that occasion, and I still watch the videos and look at the photos of our time there at the Peabody, and you know, I wish I could come back again and one of the Elders, Margaret, was just asking me the other day, “Oh, hey, when are we going back to the East Coast again?” And I was like “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know of anytime soon but that was an amazing, amazing experience.”
Jennifer Berglund 19:08
One thing that I just want the audience to understand is how difficult the journey was, how difficult it was to plan the logistics for getting the pole home. Dustin, can you describe a little bit about where you live, where the pole came from? What is the environment like there and how do you get to where you are?
Dustin Johnson 19:29
This community is La̱x Klan, this is the main winter village of Gitxaała Nation. There’s many other communities that we have traditionally, they’re not occupied. This is the only one that is still occupied and our Nation, our Elders show that our Nation is the longest continuously occupied community on the coasts in this community alone for at least 5000 years, but our Nation has had a presence and been carbon dated, geographically dated for at least 15,500 years in this area. So a lot of ancient history in where we stand, and our community is one of probably the most remote communities to get to on the coasts, about 45-50 kilometers away from the nearest town, Prince Rupert, so there’s no highways, it’s on the island. And often, the ocean swells and the wind on the Hecate Strait are very strong. Sometimes the wind would knock out electricity, and given in January, last January we went for a whole week without electricity. So we have to rely on wood stoves, different ways to prepare for that, and even in the 80s, we didn’t have running water. So we really had to still adapt to like living off of the land and be more self-sufficient in that way. We don’t have regular transportation back and forth to Prince Rupert or Kitimat unless you have a boat and sea planes fly, but often, if it’s too foggy or the weather is too rough, there’s cancellations. But you can’t get to and from the community every day unless you had your own or your family had a boat. And even then, I was looking at archival documents in my office, we just found some old documents from the 1950s, where a community had a global competition. So they rode from here to Prince Rupert, and that took like, eight to ten hours just rowing and especially during swells when the waves are up to 10-12 feet high, it’s a huge challenge. So those kinds of factors weigh into how remote our location is. Other communities like Bella Bella, Haida Gwaii, do the same in that we’re not as westernized as their communities are because of how easier it is to get to their communities compared to ours. And their Elders, their Chiefs have always known of our Nation, we have always had a presence on the coast, so just the fact that we were able to bring something so far away, literally from the other side of that continent was a huge milestone to do that, in this time and age was really key for us because we’ve been losing a lot of Elders in the past 10 years, and I remember 2012 around those years, more than half the Elders that were lead Knowledge Keepers and the Wise Elders had the really old school teachings and the older dialects of our language of our past, so we only have less than half of them left today. But the ones that are still have with us, we’re so grateful, so honored to be able to go on this trip and to see the pole come home. And that was really inspiring to see that, you know, to have that moment for them, to share that. And to see that happen in their lifetime it’s really inspiring, but it’s also a wakeup call, you know, we need to do more to bring back more of what’s been taken from us, more of us are out in the world, but also to bring our people back as well so it’s inspiring others to come home to be a part of this.
Jennifer Berglund 22:40
Can you describe what it was like to experience the ceremony of the pole coming home?
Dustin Johnson 22:46
Originally, it was going to stand in the museum in Prince Rupert at the Museum of Northern B.C., and all this changed that logistically changed that and said, we’ll just bring it straight home instead, don’t have it in town. And we can’t stand it up until we’re ready to have it stood up in our own Longhouse in our own culture center and Big House. So that was a year away, like we won’t have that until next year so we said, “Okay, we’ll bring it home, but it’ll have to lay down because traditionally, you can’t have a pole like that stand unless you’re ready to have a big feast, really invite all the Chiefs from neighboring communities and give out gifts, all the protocols that go with that. So the Elders and Chief said that we’ll have some kind of event in Prince Rupert but it’ll just be a smorgasbord dinner. It won’t be a traditional feast the way that we normally do in community. There’s different protocols when you have enough use in community versus when you have it outside. And a Potlatch is a really big feast, a yaawk, where you invite the neighboring Chiefs, dignitaries from everywhere else to attend, that’s kind of held off so that’s the final step for setting up the pole, a pts’aan in our community. When we have our own, a wiiwalp or da’ax, or Big House, and that’s where it’s going to be stood up. So it’s still laying kind of in rest until that moment happens. So when we brought the pole to Prince Rupert, it was still in a box. It was still in that big crate that was shipped from the Peabody, and it was left in the box, but our Elders and our Chiefs still blessed it, they still traditionally breathed life back into it, walking it back to the territory, even though it’s not in our community, that’s still part of our territory, or shared territory with the Tsimshian Nation, and acknowledging that it’s right at the doorstep of being home, even though it’s in a crate to welcome it back to the territory. And some of our Elders are people in Prince Rupert with aren’t unable to come home due to like medical or other issues were able to see it before it actually came directly home to Laxklan. So we had a banner made, full color, large banner showing what the pole looks like, and that was hung inside the Russell Gamble Memorial Gym at the Civic Center. And that was symbolic because Russell Gamble was our last highest rank Hereditary Chief, he passed in 2005 or 2006, of the same clan that pole that belongs to, so he was the Head Chief. Some of the photos you could see, there’s a picture of him in his basketball jersey, like must have been in the 50s or 60s, hanging right next to where the banner is, where we had the banner hanging from a basketball hoop. And it’s symbolic because he was the last Hereditary Chief and here’s a pole that belongs to the same clan. That was why that venue was chosen because of those connections, but also because of not being able to have it open, like being able to have it in Prince Rupert, but at least making that kind of effort to include people there. And when we brought it home two days afterwards, unveiling it, we had it carried in all the way from the wharf and walking by the Hereditary Chiefs on and our drum and dance group, you know, sharing our songs and dances all the way from the dock to the hall, and stopping along the way were one of our other highest rank Chiefs, the one I mentioned earlier, who resisted Christian missionaries who made up those last days where his house was, and one of our Elders told a story about what his house was like, and the strength of his position and his teaching. And then we went to the hall, and we carried it into the hall and had the blanket on top of it. It wasn’t until when the four Elder Matriarchs removed the veil to unveil and show the community what the pole looks like, and it was a huge moment and very emotional for a lot of people. A lot of people were crying, were very emotional and just awestruck by seeing something like that come back to us, and pack that hall. And I’ve never, ever seen a packed to that degree and it hasn’t been since then. I wish I could relive this. But yeah, the energy and spirit of that day, on April 17, when it was home here was amazing. Hopefully we can do that again, but that was something that really kind of re-sparked a fire in our Nation to be more active in our culture, to bring more people home, and bring more nłuut’isk back. We started using that word, nłuut’isk, to refer to what people call artifacts, so like blankets, Chilkat blankets, ceremonial masks, and headdresses. Even stone tools, like everyday items, we’re referring to as nłuut’isk, which is treasures, something that is treasured, that’s priceless, is valuable, instead of the word artifact, and some of our people still use that word, and then that’s fine, but we started using that word after having the pts’aan home because of how valuable it is and how sacred it is. So that’s why we shifted on direction of our Elders and Hereditary Leaders living here in community to bringing it straight home and not having it unveiled until it was here. And it was a difficult shift we had to do, because a lot of people living in Prince Rupert wanted to have it there so they could all see it on a regular basis. But we had to listen to our Elders and Hereditary Leaders here, and encourage others to, you know, to come home to be a part of it. And they did you know, that was amazing that the way it really unified the Nation that day.
Jennifer Berglund 27:43
That’s such a beautiful story and such a beautiful illustration of why these things that museums historically understand to be objects, and are often referred to as objects are so much more than that, and don’t belong in the museum, right? They belong home, because as you said, they are family members. Kara, from your perspective, did your idea about how these things that are referred to as objects in museums, did it bring home for you the significance of these items within their cultures of origin? What did you learn from that experience?
Kara Schneiderman 28:24
Yes, definitely. It’s interesting, because we are now starting to think at the Peabody about some of the language that we use that is related to traditional museum field concepts of collection stewardship, words like “object,” “artifact,” “collection,” “storage room,” and thinking about the impact that those words have on communities when they come to the museum, given the histories that they bring with them, when they come to see these items that were once part of their community. It also very much played into our development of a policy around the return of cultural items from Peabody collections, because we didn’t just want it to be a policy around colonial taking or unethical collecting. That is certainly a huge part of it, but we also wanted it to be a policy that looked at culturally responsive care that museums can preserve items that we can have proper climate control, that we can catalog them and make them accessible and care for them and conserve them, but for many items in museum collections, there’s this aspect of care that can only come from the origin community. And the item itself can never truly be preserved at a museum no matter how professional that museum is, because it’s dissociated from that aspect of care that a Western-based museum simply can’t bring, which is the cultural care that the item or items need. So it definitely has made us think more broadly about how we approach our relatively new model of ethical stewardship that we’ve embraced over the past several years, where we’re really thinking about the ways in which we work with communities, that we share authority for the care of an interpretation of collections, and really recognizing that sometimes that absolutely means that to properly care for an item, it has to be returned. And I think this is a perfect example, the type of item that yes, we could have kept it at the Peabody, we could have preserved it, we could have displayed it, we could have provided access to it. But it simply isn’t the same, as you heard from Dustin, of the role that that item plays for the community itself, and the completely different level of care that the community can bring to this poll.
Jennifer Berglund 30:52
So here’s the question for you. The Peabody has so many items that are probably as significant to different cultures around the world, but the repatriation process, the logistics, the paperwork, all of it, it can be a very long process. So now that the Peabody is changing the stewardship model, there must be a bit of a queue for all of these items that need to eventually go back home. What does it look like to spiritually care for those items while they’re in this queue?
Kara Schneiderman 31:32
Yeah, that’s a great question. Yes, the policy that allows us to proceed with repatriations internationally and also returns of cultural items in the United States but outside of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which the Peabody has been active in for many years is really relatively new. It was implemented in December, and we were able to implement the policy because of some guidance provided by Harvard University around how it’s collecting units could think about requests for the return of cultural items. So the policy itself is relatively new. We have done one other return outside of NAGPRA in the United States. And we do have quite a few that we’re working on. It is a long process. It’s meant to be a careful process, one in which we look at the provenance and or history of an item, how it came to the museum, who’s making the request for the return, what they have argued is their position as to why something should be returned. Even that can be challenging for a community to be asked to have to explain why an item should be returned. So I think it is something that we have a policy in place, but now it’s a matter of working through and slowly but surely working on other international repatriations to start moving forward and seeing how the policy plays out, and working with community members to say what works, what doesn’t work, how we can adjust. I hope that as we start doing more and more of these repatriations, and the policy becomes better known that we’ll have more requests. And I think in terms of the question of stewardship, while the collections are still at the Peabody, this is also something that we’re actively working on. We have a staff working group that is working towards expanding policies that we’ve had for many years around how communities provide input to the ways in which collections are stewarded. We’ve long partnered with communities to make sure that we were storing and caring for and handling collections in accordance with their wishes. And we’re working now on expanding those procedures so we can do even more of that. It’s definitely a long process for us, especially given the Peabody’s long history as an institution with a colonial collecting history, but I think returns such as the repatriation of the pole, and others that we’re working on are a good starting point for us to learn more from communities about what we can do well, what we need to change. So I think that the partnerships that come out of it can only improve the ways in which we steward collections. And so I think it’s a slow process. It’s still a learning process for us. But I think it’s also promising in terms of overall being able to better care for and steward collections, whether they stay at the Peabody or ultimately are repatriated.
Jennifer Berglund 34:30
Dustin, I’m curious to hear your perspective on this. Based on your experience of the return of the pole, and what you learned through that, being a member of the community, how would you like to see these items, these important items, cared for while they are waiting to return home?
Dustin Johnson 34:50
The most important thing is not to be further desecrated, so cared for, preserved in a respectful way. Like the pole was repainted, that was not the original paint on it. And then the holes that were drilled into it to illuminate light from inside the base of the midiik, the grizzly bear. That was a desecration, so that’s why, when we brought it home, that’s when the Elders said, when they first heard about that, they said, “Oh, just bring it home where I’ll take care of it.” We’ll have to run it through like one of our cleansing ceremonies, to cleanse it of the way that desecrated, to breathe life back into it, but also to treat it as a sacred being, something that’s sacred, and to approach it in that way, to show that but also to use our medicines and we’re doing that and encouraging other people in the Nation and community to know the importance of that. And that goes back to calling it nłuut’isk or pts’aan in our original language, in our words, because our words in our language have different meanings and concepts that always can’t be translated so clearly or directly into English. With translations, there is always something that gets lost or misplaced in there. And in many different ways, the cultural revitalization is to bring something home right in this way. And this wasn’t easy for us. The shipping costs was $31,000 American, just just for the pole shipping, and then all of the logistics included on that. And our departments mostly all run on grants. So far, repatriation projects mostly are funded by grants. So it’s not sustainable, so that really kind of put pressure on the Nation and the administration to contribute to make sure that this happens in a way and to realize the significance, the historical impact of bringing home at the time repatriating something of this magnitude. So it really sparked more of an interest in other departments and in other people in our Nation to take this more seriously. And to see that, you know, there’s so much of our people and our culture that’s just not represented, very surface level, you know. We have 1000s of public nłuut’isk of treasures that are out there, and this pts’aan was chosen as the first one to come back because of how significant it would be. I mean, currently have 80 identified as nłuut’isk, that’s undisputed. And the challenge with that is a lot of that is on notes from like collectors and people that were taking all of our treasures back in the 1960s, 70s, even up until the 1940s, in our darkest era of colonialism. And there’s more credence given to their notes compared to our own Elders and our own stories where we can go to the dark and the history of the class origins, the names associated with a pole, with a gwishalaayt (or ‘Chilkat blanket’). And traditionally, those take hours to tell the whole story in our language, it would take a long time to recount the entire history of what each item would represent and how it factors into the host group, the clan, the nation, the related houses, the related clan, so many factors that come into all those interconnections and it reawakened those connections. And when we had the pole home, we later on, the following month, we had an exhibit of nłuut’isk cultural treasures that are in community right now. A lot of families still hold on to different items, that people would call artifacts, and what we call nłuut’isk that never left for their home, never left families. And some of them are just old photos, some are stone tools, boxes, blankets, and things like that. And just to share with the rest of the community, you know, these are things to be taken more seriously and then treated as something sacred ha’wałks. And that really came out when we had the pole home, and many Elders talk about that, you know, how important is to make this decision in our culture. And that’s why the pole was chosen as the first nłuut’isk to come home because of how much of a presence that has in your community. And even now, after talking about this, I want to after this call go down and go visit it, so it makes me miss it. I mean, I’m only down the road from where it is we know, but just being in its presence, you feel a spirit. That’s why it was treated in the way that it was with such respect because we haven’t done this. This is the first time bringing home something like this. And it just showed the Nation, the rest of our community, you know how much more work we have to do to bring home everything else. It was a great wake-up call for us because you know, this is the start of many more to come.
Jennifer Berglund 39:09
From your perspective, what was the most important lesson you learned from this whole experience you and the Peabody?
Kara Schneiderman 39:15
I think this experience from start to finish really shows that repatriation isn’t something that museums need to be afraid of. That returning cultural items like the pole to origin communities, it doesn’t deplete a museum’s collection. It doesn’t take something away from the museum because it’s replaced with the relationship that you build with that community. And the process that we worked through with the Gitxaała Nation showed that this can be a positive event for the museum and a positive event for the Nation. And that that relationship we now have is just as important and brings just as much meaning to the Peabody’s role as an educational institution. And it certainly gave us a great model of how we can collaborate with other communities on international repatriation and further our commitment to ethical stewardship and shared authority. So I think what we’re left with is not the absence of the pole, but the presence of a relationship with the Gitxaała Nation. That and during the ceremony, the Nation presented us with their flag to hang in our gallery where or near where the pole may have stood. And I think that flag will forever be the symbol of this relationship and the importance of this repatriation to all of us and to the Peabody as a starting point moving forward with building other relationships and pursuing other repatriations.
Jennifer Berglund 40:41
Dustin, same question for you. What do you think the most important lesson was that you learned from this process?
Dustin Johnson 40:50
There’s so many different answers I’d have for that, like logistical things and how to maybe make the process smoother if we re-did it. But I wouldn’t change anything because of how amazing the energy was on that day, like the actual day when we had it home in community. I hope it’s not once in a lifetime, but I hope we can revisit that and have that kind of spirit back in the community again. It just was a wake-up call for me that, you know, there’s more work to come, and this was the foundation upon which our entire repatriation project will be looking to that as an example. It really set the standard for what else is to come home. And a phase that our Elders came up with was “Łaluluyeltgn Pts’aanm Gitxaała.” We put that on a t-shirt. And we’re asking them, our Elders and Hereditary Leaders, what would be the best way to talk about this in our language. And so returning home, the totem pole was kind of a translation, is not a direct translation, but that’s roughly what it means. And “Dm Gyik Xst’oogm” was another phase means that we are returning home, everything else that’s still pending, that’s still waiting to come home. And it’s more of a challenge on us as the “Git Lax M’oon” or “Gitxaała” is another way of saying our people. “Git Lax M’oon” means “People of the Saltwater,” because our people have always been on the ocean. And a challenge for us to learn our language, learn our culture, and be more involved in our culture and different ways to enrich our Nation with bringing home things and including our own energy back into the Nation, back into standing up for culture once again. That’s one of the most important lessons, I think, for me to see something like this happen to be kind of like the catalysts for what other changes, what other returns will come home soon. And that’s what we try to strive to find, you know, traditionally how would our ancestors to do this, and that’s kind of the closest we could come to that.
Kara Schneiderman 42:42
It strikes me that Dustin’s explanation of some of the way that they welcomed the pole back is a perfect example of that level of cultural care that the museum can never offer. I was just struck when he was talking about that, and addressing the fact that it was painted and illuminated well in the past, but still, that, you know, they could have told us “We’d like you to do XYZ,” but it never would have been the same. And I think that’s a perfect example of that type of dissociation from cultural care that a museum can never really contribute to, so I thought that was a great example of that.
Dustin Johnson 43:21
One of the things that really stood out for me was on that day when it was brought into the community hall, which alone is 100 years old, built by our ancestors from traditional carpentry with their skill.
Jennifer Berglund 43:33
About the same age as the pole.
Dustin Johnson 43:34
Yeah, same age as a pole. And that’s why it was chosen to be there because of how symbolic it is. And it’s one of the last standing buildings in the community that’s built by our ancestors and still strong, still held up against a couple of earthquakes, and you know, it’s still standing strong. So much has shared even there. And when we had the blessing cleansing ceremonies, we had traditional medicines that were smoking like smudging the pole, it was the Hereditary Chief that were doing that. The whole community were given cedar branches to brush it, and afterward, some of our Hereditary Chiefs were blowing eagle down on it. But one of the children were brushing cedar branches. There was one little boy that was about two years old, and he’s a great-grandson of my Hereditary Chief. So from the clan that this pole belongs to, and just kept going around and going around on it. There’s like a really sacred connection that this little boy had with it, because of, in our culture, we believe that people are reincarnated from ancestors and previously past people. And this little boy really showed many different times, and many different feasts, and in public events, his kind of ancient spirit is his old soul coming to life. And in that moment, we saw that, and that was one of the stories that came out and I just thought about that when Kara said that. When you’re using medicines to reconnect to something like this and treat it as sacred, and then seeing the interaction, even a little two-year-old, would have something like this is really amazing.
Jennifer Berglund 45:07
Dustin Johnson, Kara Schneiderman, thank you so much for being here. This has been a wonderful conversation.
Dustin Johnson 45:14
Thank you for having us, and you’re welcome. Take care.
Kara Schneiderman 45:16
Thank you, Jennie.
Jennifer Berglund 45:21
Today’s HMSC Connects! Podcast was edited by Eden Piacitelli, and produced by me, Jennifer Berglund, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Special thanks to the Gitxaała Nation, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and of course to Dustin Johnson and Kara Schneiderman, for their wisdom and expertise. And thank you so much for listening. If you like today’s podcast, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts. See in a couple of weeks.