Indigenous leaders call on new Pope to return thousands of artifacts

Aishwarya Dudha · CBC News

· Posted: May 16, 2025 8:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) is calling for the Vatican to instrumentality ineffable First Nation artifacts taken from Indigenous communities during the residential schoolhouse era.

The FSIN, which represents Saskatchewan's First Nations, has previously formally requested the repatriation of items including ineffable pipes, medicine bundles, ceremonial regalia and different taste objects presently housed successful the Vatican Museums successful Vatican City. 

FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron has renewed that request in airy of Pope Leo XIV's caller assignment arsenic caput of the Catholic Church.

"Every azygous 1 of those artifacts are ineffable items there, important for the healing travel for galore residential schoolhouse survivors," Cameron said successful an interrogation Wednesday.

Indigenous leaders from Saskatchewan were portion of a delegation that went to the Vatican successful 2022 to conscionable Pope Francis. For that visit, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops arranged for a radical of First Nations, Métis and Inuit delegates to meet Francis at the Vatican, and spot immoderate of the artifacts during backstage tours of the Vatican Museums.

They included an Inuvialuit kayak inactive held astatine the Vatican Museums, on with thousands of different Indigenous artifacts.

Cameron said each point enactment backmost successful the hands of Indigenous radical would go a agelong mode successful the healing travel of residential schoolhouse survivors.

He said determination whitethorn adjacent beryllium pictures of children whose families ne'er saw them again.

"There were galore that were tortured and beaten to decease and ne'er made it home, conscionable wholly vanished. But we cognize what happened. They were murdered," helium said.

Floyd Favel, curator of the Chief Poundmaker Museum and Gallery connected Poundmaker First Nation, astir 175 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, said successful an interrogation that the artifacts are surviving objects that are portion of Indigenous people's legacy.

"They clasp our history. They clasp our culture," Favel said. "It does fortify our nexus with the past. And we request that much these days due to the fact that our languages and our cultures, they're precise overmuch threatened."

The Catholic Church antecedently justified colonization of Indigenous radical done its Doctrine of Discovery, a ineligible concept backed by 15th-century papal bulls. Pope Francis repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023 aft decades of advocacy by Indigenous Peoples worldwide.

"We mislaid our culture, and it's successful a fragile state. When you bring backmost these objects, it volition awaken radical due to the fact that these objects are surviving entities. You could accidental spiritual energies, surviving art," Favel said.

Victoria Pruden, president of the Métis National Council, said in a connection to CBC that she is asking the Vatican to enactment with Métis knowledge-keepers to place which items successful the collection beryllium to the Métis and to instrumentality them.

"These artifacts were taken during eras of profound injustice. Their instrumentality is an indispensable measurement successful advancing reconciliation and repairing the heavy harms caused by assemblage policies, including the relation the Church played successful the residential schoolhouse system," she said.

It's a connection she'll instrumentality to Rome arsenic she attends Pope Leo's inaugural wide connected Sunday.