A totem pole belonging to the Nuxalk Nation has sat in the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria, B.C., for many years. Now, it's being returned to its rightful owners.
The Royal B.C. Museum is returning a totem pole to the Nuxalk Nation. The pole, which has sat for years at the museum, will be transported to Bella Coola by truck.
The more than 1,000-kilometre trip from the island to the mainland and up through the Interior is expected to take two or three days, depending on weather conditions. It was lost in the early 1900s when Nuxalk members, seeking to evade the smallpox epidemic, relocated about 35 kilometres north to Bella Coola.The totem pole's journey will begin with two days of ceremony at the Royal B.C. Museum and adjoining Mungo Martin Longhouse, with representatives from the Nuxalk, Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.
The repatriation comes after a lawsuit filed by the Nuxalk Nation, following multiple requests for the museum to return the pole, which until last year was on display in the Totem Hall on the museum's third floor.In 2019, the museum's then-CEO Jack Lohman said the pole had been purchased by the museum, but that claim was rebutted by Clyde Tallio, a teacher of traditional Nuxalk culture, who said an item of such significance would never have been sold. Instead, Tallio said, it was taken.
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