By Philip Pullella
VATICANCITY – Canadian indigenous leaders looking for an apology for the Catholic Church’s position in infamous residential colleges the place kids the place abused additionally need to begin a dialogue on the return of native artefacts held within the Vatican Museums.
“My view is that we must always sit down with Church officers and start discussions about repatriation,” Phil Fontaine of the Sagkeeng First Nation and former Nationwide Chief of the Meeting of First Nations (AFN), advised Reuters.
Fontaine, 77, was a part of an AFN delegation that spoke to the pope privately for 2 hours on Thursday. They need Pope Francis to journey to Canada to make an official apology there for the colleges the place indigenous kids had been abused and their tradition denied..
Fontaine and different contributors mentioned the return of artefacts additionally got here up in three conferences with the pope this week.
In 1925, Pope Pius IX held a world exposition of indigenous artefacts, displaying greater than 100,000 objects, most despatched to the Vatican by Catholic missionaries from world wide.
Practically half of them later shaped a brand new Missionary Ethnological Museum in Rome and had been transferred to the Vatican Museums within the Nineteen Seventies.
One merchandise the delegates noticed is a kayak fabricated from wooden and sealskin by the Inuvialuit individuals of the Mackenzie Delat of the Western Arctic and believed to be between 100 and 150 years previous.
Whereas one Inuvialuit chief final yr demanded its instant return to Canada, Fontaine known as for a peaceful, studied answer to repatriation.
“Now we have to determine the place we wish these to go and the way they'll be protected, what sort of setting they are going to be positioned in,” Fontaine advised Reuters in St. Peter’s Sq..
“There are museums all around the world with indigenous artefacts from Canada and so this needs to be a really concerned dialogue with many alternative jurisdictions,” he mentioned.
That must embrace figuring out if objects had been presents or taken with out permission, he mentioned.
“It isn’t distinctive to the Catholic Church however that doesn't prohibit the Catholic Church and its highest authorities from starting discussions on what to do about these artefacts and their repatriation to Canada,” he mentioned.
The Vatican Museums usually lend objects to different establishments and have mentioned the kayak may go on tour after it's restored.
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