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  • 13 - The Pole Is Back Home

  • from Part IV - Conclusions and Epilogues
  • Edited by Adam Warren, University of Washington, Julia E. Rodriguez, University of New Hampshire, Stephen T. Casper, Clarkson University, New York
  • Book:
    Empire, Colonialism, and the Human Sciences
    Published online:
    24 October 2024
    Print publication:
    07 November 2024, pp 307-310
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  • Summary

    This epilogue closes the volume by inviting us to reflect on the afterlives of culturally significant items when they are returned to the original Native communities. Examining Harvard University’s Peabody museum’s return of a totem pole to the Gitxaała Nation in late 2022 followed by a ceremony in the museum a few months later in Spring 2023 Soto Laveaga ponders what it means to close “a circle that should never have been opened” as a member of the Gitxaała Nation described. How will narratives of troubling encounters like this one be narrated in the future when a coda explains that, hopefully, an object has been returned? How will museums curate spaces vacated by objects that were never meant to be exhibited on walls or in cases? Moreover, how will the stories be told when ancestrally powerful objects imbued with living spirits return home? As we enter a new era of repatriation centered on respect and reciprocity, this epilogue reminds us that when it comes to collecting, the human sciences, and Indigenous people the story remains far from finished.