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The Repatriation of the G'psgolox Totem Pole: A Study of its Context, Process, and Outcome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2011

Stacey R. Jessiman
Stacey R. Jessiman
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, Vancouver, Canada. BA(Hons.) Stanford University; JD, University of Toronto. Email: srjessiman@alumni.stanford.edu
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Extract

In July 2006, after 77 years at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, the 134 year-old G'psgolox totem pole was welcomed home to Kitimaat on British Columbia's northwest coast by the Haisla First Nation. The event was important not only because it was among the first voluntary repatriations by a foreign museum of a cultural artifact to a North American aboriginal community, but also because it marked the end of a negotiation process that had been long and challenging and yet ultimately, according to the parties involved, mutually beneficial and restorative.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , August 2011 , pp. 365 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2011

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