When the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) announced that it had been “working closely with Indigenous Peoples on key issues of significance, including artifacts, many of which are currently in the care of the Vatican Museums,” it seemed like a long-awaited gesture of justice. For Indigenous communities, whose sacred items were taken under the banners of faith and empire, this moment carries profound emotional and spiritual weight.
Rome, October 22, 2025, Megan Williams, CBC News
Yet behind the ceremony of return lies a political choreography. A source told CBC that the handoff is structured as a “church-to-church” donation — from the Vatican to the Canadian Bishops — allowing the Holy See to avoid setting a legal precedent of returning cultural objects directly to nations or communities. The same model was used when the Vatican “donated” fragments of the Parthenon Marbles to the Greek Orthodox Church in 2023, carefully sidestepping the issue of state restitution. In this case, the understanding is explicit: the Canadian Bishops will pass the artifacts on to the Indigenous Peoples from whom they were taken.
The pieces in question — an Inuvialuit kayak from the Western Arctic, a Haida Gwaii face mask, beaded skin moccasins, birch-bark etchings, and an ivory and sealskin sculpture of a dog sled — were originally sent to Rome in 1925 for a world exhibition organized by Pope Pius XI. Catholic missionaries were instructed to ship “examples of Indigenous life” from the regions where they worked. Some 100,000 such objects arrived — many stripped from communities in an era of forced conversion, cultural suppression, and, in Canada, the brutality of the residential school system. Most were absorbed into the Vatican’s permanent collection, stored away in the Anima Mundi ethnological section of the Museums.
Interview with Bobby Cameron - Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations
Nearly a century later, and a year after Pope Francis’s so-called “penitential” trip to Canada—when he apologized for some members of the Church’s role in the residential school system—the Vatican has acknowledged the importance of restitution. But words, like apologies, have their limits. This “donation” is framed as benevolence rather than redress, an act of goodwill, not responsibility.
As Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron told CBC in May 2025: “Every single one of those artifacts are sacred items, crucial for the healing journey for many residential school survivors.”
These are not artifacts. They are pieces of life, of continuity, of ceremony. Their exile to glass cases in Rome symbolized the violence of erasure. Their return, even filtered through institutional diplomacy, is an act of resurrection.
What Does it Mean for the Gallery
We were not directly involved in this process, yet we have long advocated for it. Through our work and public statements, the Gallery of Human Migration has consistently called for the restitution of sacred cultural objects to their rightful custodians. Rocco Maragna’s correspondence with the Vatican—urging transparency and the return of these items—was part of that ongoing moral effort.
After years of research and repeated approaches, Rocco Maragna, architect and president of the Gallery, succeeded in sending a letter in November 2011 to Father Nicola Mapelli, curator of the Ethnological Department of the Vatican Museums, proposing an exhibition dedicated to First Nations artifacts from Canada—a Vatican-based or travelling show that the Gallery would fund. In the following years, Rocco visited the Museums several times, meeting with Father Mapelli and Vice-Director Arnold Nesselrath, who showed him the collection. (Here are Rocco’s pictures)
In March 2014, building on those earlier exchanges, Rocco met in Ottawa with Monsignor Luigi Bonazzi, Apostolic Nuncio to Canada, reinforcing the call for a respectful return of the artifacts. Three months later, in June 2014, he met in Rome with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who expressed his support for the initiative. By September 2014, Rocco was invited to submit an official proposal to Director Prof. Antonio Paolucci. Despite the initial enthusiasm, Paolucci later withdrew his support, and the proposal was shelved.
Yet the advocacy endured. Rocco’s efforts planted one of the early moral seeds of what we now witness—the long-awaited return of these sacred pieces to their original communities.
So, while this decision was not ours to make, it speaks to the very principles we have defended: that justice requires not only apology but also the material return of what was taken. We celebrate this moment with conviction and gratitude—not as participants, but as witnesses who have long hoped to see this act of restoration take shape.
When the Huron-Wendat First Nationhonoured our Gallery for its commitment to cultural respect and collaboration, it was a reminder that restitution begins with relationship—and with listening.
We recommit ourselves to working with communities, rather than only speaking about them. We honour Indigenous voices as the primary carriers of their own stories, objects, and meaning.
We see this moment as encouragement — accessible proof that change is possible; that institutions long shaped by colonial legacies can make genuine gestures of justice; that the work of decolonizing spaces of memory, museum-care, and cultural stewardship is real, urgent, and within reach.
A Thread Rewoven
The Vatican’s gesture, cautious and politically framed as it is, nonetheless opens a door. Through that door, we glimpse a different way of relating — one that restores rather than claims, that listens rather than categorizes.
For Indigenous communities, these returns are acts of homecoming. For the rest of us, they are moral lessons. Justice, even when wrapped in diplomacy, is still justice. And every repatriated object—every kayak, mask, and moccasin—carries with it a truth that no institution can contain: that memory cannot be owned, only honoured. This is not charity. It is a return long overdue.