Indigenous artifacts returned by the Vatican to be displayed in Canada

OTTAWA, Ontario — A selection of Inuit artifacts returned by the Vatican will be displayed at the Canadian Museum of History on Tuesday, after First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders for years called for the repatriation of Indigenous items.

Pope Leo XIV gave the artifacts, including a traditional Inuit kayak, and supporting documentation to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said it would return the items to Indigenous communities “as soon as possible.”

First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders welcomed the dozens of artifacts at Montreal’s airport on Saturday. They will be displayed at the museum in Gatineau, across from Canada’s capital of Ottawa.

The 62 items ultimately will be returned to their communities as part of the Catholic Church’s reckoning with its role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas.

For a century, the items were part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known today as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.

Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens. The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.

But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time.