Download e-book for kindle: We Are Coming Home: Repatriation and the Restoration of by Gerald T. Conaty,Robert R. Janes,Allan Pard,Jerry

In 1990, Gerald Conaty was once employed as senior curator of ethnology on the Glenbow Museum, with the actual mandate of enhancing the museum’s dating with Aboriginal groups. that very same yr, the Glenbow had taken its first tentative steps towards repatriation via returning sacred gadgets to First countries’ peoples. those efforts drew harsh feedback from contributors of the provincial govt. was once it no longer the museum’s fundamental felony, moral, and fiduciary accountability to make sure the actual upkeep of its collections? may the go back of a sacred package to ceremonial use now not modify and reduce its historic worthy and its price to the bigger society? Undaunted by way of such feedback, Conaty oversaw the go back of greater than fifty medication bundles to Blackfoot and Cree groups among the years of 1990 and 2000, at which era the 1st international locations Sacred Ceremonial gadgets Repatriation Act (FNSCORA)—still the single repatriation laws in Canada—was handed. “Repatriation,” he wrote, “is an important part within the construction of an equitable, assorted, and respectful society.”

We Are Coming Home is the tale of the hugely complicated strategy of repatriation as defined by means of these in detail concerned about the paintings, significantly the Piikuni, Siksika, and Kainai elders who supplied crucial oversight and advice. We additionally listen from the Glenbow Museum’s president and CEO on the time and from an archaeologist then hired on the Provincial Museum of Alberta who offers an insider’s view of the drafting of FNSCORA. those debts are framed through Conaty’s reflections at the impression of museums on First international locations, at the heritage and tradition of the Niitsitapi, or Blackfoot, and at the course ahead. With Conaty’s passing in August of 2013, this e-book can also be a tribute to his enduring relationships with the Blackfoot, to his wealthy and exemplary profession, and to his dedication to innovation and aware museum practice.