Indigenous leaders urge reburial of Beothuk remains in Newfoundland

Amanda Gear · CBC Radio

· Posted: Jun 26, 2025 11:47 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 27

Perched atop Signal Hill, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, regular tours often recount the assemblage communicative of St. John's — a communicative of European settlers forging caller lives connected distant shores.

Yet beneath the echoes of assemblage triumph lies an adjacent deeper story: 1 of the Beothuk, the Indigenous radical of Newfoundland whose voices were mostly silenced by colonization.

Indigenous leaders successful Newfoundland and Labrador are calling for the instrumentality and reburial of 2 Beothuk ancestors, Demasduit and Nonosabasut, whose remains person been successful retention for much than 2 centuries.

Now nether the attraction of The Rooms provincial depository archives successful St. John's, discussions are nether mode astir their last resting spot connected their ancestral land.

"They were stolen, they were taken, they were sedate robbing and it's agelong overdue for them to travel backmost wherever they belong," said, Mi'sel Joe, accepted main of Miawpukek First Nation.

A past of tragedy

Nonosabasut, a Beothuk leader, was killed by European settlers during a convulsive clash successful 1819 adjacent Beothuk Lake successful cardinal Newfoundland. His wife, Demasduit, was captured soon thereafter. She gave commencement to their child, lone for the babe to perish days later.

Although attempts were made to instrumentality Demasduit to Beothuk Lake that summer, she succumbed to tuberculosis successful January 1820 and was laid to remainder beside her hubby successful a elemental coffin.

Decades later, Scottish explorer William Cormack located their gravesite and brought their remains to the National Museum of Scotland — an enactment that historians present recognized arsenic sedate robbing. For astir 200 years, the remains were kept successful Edinburgh earlier being repatriated to Canada successful 2020.

"She was taken distant from her location and her babe kid violently by colonists and aboriginal she and her hubby had their skulls removed from their grave,"  said Leahdawn Helena, a Mi'kmaw playwright primitively from Bay St. George, N.L. "It's conscionable an all‑around truly tragic bid of events."

Helena's extended probe into the lives of Beothuk women, astir notably featured successful her play-turned-book Stolen Sisters, resurrects the different marginalized narratives of Indigenous women earlier and aft colonization. Her enactment revisits the communicative of Demasduit, whose beingness and suffering reflector repeated patterns of dispossession and violence.

"I deliberation it's truly exemplary of a cosmopolitan Indigenous acquisition of colonialism… a communicative that repeats implicit and implicit again with conscionable arsenic overmuch tragedy, conscionable arsenic overmuch loss, conscionable arsenic overmuch violence," Helena said affirms, highlighting however the Beothuk acquisition aligns with Indigenous histories crossed the globe.

Remembering the Beothuk

The Beothuk were the archetypal inhabitants of what is present known arsenic Newfoundland. They predominantly resided in cardinal Newfoundland, adjacent the Exploits River and Beothuk Lake.

Travel wrong their land homelands was facilitated by birchbark canoes, and ample sedentary camps were interspersed with seasonal encampments on rivers and lakes. Their sustenance was drawn from the onshore and sea: they harvested fish, hunted caribou and oversea animals, and gathered berries and roots.

The Beothuk were a hunting and sportfishing radical whose seasonal movements were intimately tied to the availability of resources. In outpouring and summer, families dispersed retired on the seashore to food and gather, portion successful the autumn they moved inland to hunt, trap, oregon signifier caribou drives on rivers and streams.

To conscionable their subsistence needs, each set required entree to a ample and varied territory affluent successful earthy resources, according to N.L.'s Heritage project. In the aboriginal 1600s, for instance, the Beothuk — who interacted and traded with John Guy of the English colony astatine Cupids — gathered seabirds, eggs, and food on the shores of Trinity Bay. In Placentia Bay, they fished for salmon successful the Come-by-Chance River and apt hunted the plentiful harbour seals connected adjacent islands.

In a distinctive taste practice, the Beothuk adorned their bodies, clothing, and tools with reddish ochre, earning them the misnomer "Red Indians" by aboriginal European explorers — a word present recognized arsenic derogatory.

Through displacement, disease, nonaccomplishment of earthy resources, and convulsive encounters with settlers passim the 17th to 19th centuries, the Beothuk colonisation dwindled dramatically. With nary transmission of civilization and nary caller generations to transportation connected traditions, the Beothuk are often referred to arsenic culturally extinct.

The path to repatriation

The repatriation process began successful 2015 erstwhile Chief Mi'sel Joe initiated a run to instrumentality Beothuk remains to their homeland. This effort gained momentum with enactment from the provincial and national governments and respective Indigenous organizations, including the Nunatsiavut Government, Innu Nation and Qalipu First Nation. 

"There's cipher astir to talk for the Beothuk radical astatine this time. And idiosyncratic has to commencement a process of bringing those remains backmost to this onshore wherever they belong," said Chief Joe.

Today, the remains of Demasduit and Nonosabasut are held astatine The Rooms successful St. John's. While the carnal repatriation is complete, Indigenous enactment is guiding the process to find their last resting place.

A statement from the bureau of Scott Reid, Newfoundland's Minister Responsible for Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation, said that they are leaving it successful the hands of the Final Resting Place Circle to find wherever Demasduit and Nonosabasut volition beryllium buried and that the state "will not dictate to them timelines arsenic this is an Indigenous‑led process."

In the meantime, Demasduit and Nonosabasut proceed to hold successful the vault astatine The Rooms. 

This communicative is portion of a question bid from Unreserved called Unmapped. The bid invites america to look for the Indigenous beingness successful immoderate of the astir iconic question destinations astir the world. Meet the radical who are nurturing assemblage and raising the visibility of Indigenous pasts, presents and futures.