Haisla totem returns home to B.C.
A sacred Haisla totem pole that was removed nearly 80 years ago has returned home to British Columbia.
"Exciting is an understatement," Haisla elder Louisa Smith, a descendent of the chief who first commissioned the totem, told CBC News.
"We're definitely filled with a lot of anticipation."
 The totem was uncrated at UBC's Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. (CBC) |
The totem was officially reclaimed from Sweden's National Ethnographic Museum in March after a long campaign to bring the artifact home.
Commissioned by Chief G'psgolox in the early 1870s, the totem is believed to have been removed in 1929 by Olof Hansson, a representative of the Swedish government who had purchased it from an unauthorized individual. He then donated the totem to the Ethnographic Museum.
The Haisla began searching for the totem in the 1970s and, in 1991, found it in Stockholm. Though the Swedish government agreed to the repatriation in 1994, it has taken more than 10 years to raise the necessary funds to return the totem.
The committee overseeing the repatriation did not want to leave the Stockholm museum empty-handed.
"We thought, in effect, taking the totem pole without replacing it would be doing the same thing to the Swedish people that had been done to us," said committee head Gerald Amos.
A replica of the totem, created by a descendant of the man who carved the original, was created and mounted outside the entrance to the Swedish museum.
"The new pole actually attracts more visitors than the old pole did because it has this richer story in it than the old pole had for us," said museum director Anders Bjorklund.
After a few weeks at the University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology, the original totem will travel back to Kitimat in June.
"Our children will be able to touch something that their ancestors carved," Amos said.