Museums, natives band together to bring artifacts home

Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Federal heritage officials, museum curators and aboriginal leaders
are scrambling to create a multimillion-dollar war chest to purchase
and repatriate the world's most prized private collection of native
Canadian artifacts - a treasure of sacred objects from 19th-century
British Columbia that is set to be sold in three weeks at a landmark
auction in New York.

The famed and controversial Dundas Collection - for years the focus
of a high-profile struggle between its British owner and the
Canadian Museum of Civilization - was acquired in 1863 by Scottish
clergyman Rev. Robert Dundas at Metlakatla, a Tsimshian First Nation
settlement near Prince Rupert, B.C.

Now the property of the missionary's great-grandson, London retiree
Simon Carey, the collection includes several masterpieces of West
Coast artistry and is deemed by B.C. native leaders ''as significant
to Canadian heritage as the Group of Seven.''

One of the artifacts to be offered at the Oct. 5 sale by Sotheby's
is a ''magnificent'' shaman's mask described by the auction house
as ''an extraordinary world-class work of art'' and which is
expected to fetch up to $1 million US.

A ''rare and important'' war club and a stunning clan hat carved in
the shape of a frog - each worth about $500,000 - stand out among
the 56 other relics, which comprise a collection with ''unparalleled
artistic and historic value'' and a total price estimated at more
than $3 million US.
But, even as officials from the Department of Canadian Heritage,
three museums and Tsimshian tribal leaders work to pool acquisition
funds and co-ordinate bidding strategies, experts fear the historic
collection will be split up and sold to deep-pocketed private
collectors in the U.S.

''We're certainly aware of the rapid approach of the date,'' Andrea
Laforet, director of ethnology and cultural studies at the Museum of
Civilization, told CanWest News Service. ''The reality of the
situation is that public institutions in Canada are not situated
financially in such a way that they can find $4 million or more.''

In May, the federal government and the Royal Alberta Museum shared
the $1.1-million cost of purchasing most of the items from a rare
collection of artifacts gathered by an eccentric Scottish earl who
travelled to the future Saskatchewan and Alberta in the mid-1800s.

Now the Gatineau, Que.,-based Museum of Civilization - along with
the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria and the Museum of
Northern B.C. in Prince Rupert - is negotiating to tap a
repatriation fund managed by the Canadian Cultural Property Export
Review Board, a federal agency run by the Department of Canadian
Heritage, to buy some or all of the Dundas Collection. ''All of the
people who care about it deeply are working together,'' said Susan
Marsden, curator of the Museum of Northern B.C, adding that
Tsimshian leaders ''asked me to try to get the collection for this
museum.''

The objects - many of which were given up as part of the Metlakatla
tribe's conversion to Christianity by Anglican missionary William
Duncan - have been viewed in the past as politically sensitive
because of their traditional religious significance and how they
were obtained by Dundas, who visited Duncan's backwoods mission in
October 1863. The detailed journal Dundas kept of his encounter with
the Metlakatla natives and his acquisition of the carvings has
exponentially bolstered the historic importance of the collection.
Most of the objects had belonged to Tsimshian grand chief Paul
Legaic before he converted to Christianity and was required, by
custom of the era, to give up objects connected to the ''pagan''
practises of traditional native spirituality.
Legaic had nearly killed Duncan when the missionary arrived at
Metlakatla, but later embraced the Gospel.

''I paid a visit to the wife of the chief Paul Legaic,'' Dundas
wrote in his 1863 journal. ''He it was who nearly took Mr. Duncan's
life at the head of the medicine band attacking the school. They
were both baptized last April. Legaic was the wealthiest of the
Tsimsheeans at Fort Simpson. He has lost everything, has had to give
up everything by his conversion to Christianity. It was with many of
them literally a 'forsaking of all things to follow Christ.'''

First Nations in Canada have increasingly demanded that museums
around the world return any artifacts associated with sacred rituals
in the communities from which they were collected.

Earlier this year, Metlakatla band chief Harold Leighton called for
the entire collection ''to be returned to where they came from.''

But James Bryant, a spokesman on cultural issues for the nine allied
tribes of the Tsimshian of B.C., says the nation's strategy now is
to ''fully support'' the museums' bid to buy as much of the
collection as possible.

''These artifacts should return to Canadian soil.''
In May, Carey told CanWest News Service that he would be thrilled to
have a coalition of museums or a ''mega-rich Canadian'' purchase the
collection outright and return the artifacts to their country of
origin.

But he hotly rejected the idea that the objects ''ought to be given
back for free because it is part of Canada's heritage.''

He added at that he is ''fed up'' after 35 years of hearing harsh
words from some native leaders about the collection's true
ownership, and enduring ''bureaucratic hitches''
and ''pusillanimous'' penny-pinching by Canadian museum officials
whom he blames for scuttling the collection's sale and repatriation
years ago.

In 1995, Carey and George MacDonald, the former head of the Canadian
Museum of Civilization, traded public barbs over failed negotiations
to have Canada reclaim the Dundas artifacts.
''In a few weeks your great-grandfather was able to collect the
treasures of many lineages who were bent on salvation,'' MacDonald
scolded Carey at one point. ''Clearly (he) never imagined the pieces
he collected would be worth millions some day.''

The controversy surrounding the objects has forced several
postponements of the auction over the years, and a planned
international exhibition to showcase the collection in 2000 was
reportedly scheduled without Canadian stops for fear the items might
be seized by the government.

''This time it does seem to be for real,'' said Marsden, adding that
if the museums don't succeed at securing the items at next month's
auction ''it would be a real loss to the Canadian public.''
© CanWest News Service 2006