News

Faculty of Education's Newest CRC Starts with An Impressive Act of Reconciliation

August 31, 2022

Dr. Amy Parent, newly appointed Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Education and Governance is taking part in an initiative in Scotland to repatriate a Nisga'a memorial pole. The National Museum of Scotland (NMS) will meet with Parent and other First Nation leaders to discuss the repatriation of this totem pole that was stolen 93 years ago without consent from what is today British Columbia. 

These open dialogue discussions will include viewing the memorial pole, sharing information on it and beginning the procedure for considering requests for transfer. 

Learn more and follow these discussions below. 

B.C. First Nation delegation headed to Scotland to discuss repatriation of Nisga’a memorial pole (Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadow News)
August 12, 2022

“This will be the first time in living memory that members of the House of Ni’isjoohl will be able to see the memorial pole with our own eyes,” said Sim’oogit Ni’isjoohl (Earl Stephens). “This visit will be deeply emotional for us all.”

National Museum of Scotland urged to return stolen First Nation artefact (The National)
August 16, 2022

"Dr. Parent, Canada research chair in indigenous education and governance at Simon Fraser University, said the totem pole symbolised 'a chapter of the Peoples’ cultural sovereignty and a living constitutional and visual record'."

Nisga’a Nation travelling to see stolen totem pole in Scotland (APTN News)
August 18, 2022

“It’s not that we abandoned our villages or that we weren’t caring for our poles,” says Amy Parent, a Nisga’a member and research chair in Indigenous education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. “We were simply out food fishing.

“For us, it’s the modern-day equivalent of going to the grocery store and having the government come along and sell your house and have some anthropologist come in and take your precious family belongings. And shortly thereafter, you’re going to have a church official show up and come take your children away.”

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