Exploring Dokis First Nation’s repatriation project

Trigger warning: readers may be triggered by the recount of Indian Residential Schools. To access a 24-hour National Crisis Line, call: 1-866-925-4419. Community Assistance Program (CAP) can be accessed for citizens of the Anishinabek Nation: 1-800-663-1142

By Kelly Anne Smith

NORTH BAY— Bringing our Ancestors Home: The Chicago Field Museum/Robinson Huron Treaty Repatriation Project was presented to a packed venue for the NU360 Speaker Night held at Nipissing University Student Union Student Centre.

Speakers Nipissing University Professor Dr. Kirsten Greer and Dokis First Nation Lands Administrator Randy Restoule travelled to the Chicago Field Museum where their research led to disturbing discoveries.

Restoule is the community collaborator for the project. He talked of the recent history of Dokis First Nation, located on the French River, saying there are 200 people on-reserve for a total of 1,400 members.

“Although the treaty was signed in 1850, the Anishinabek Nation has been here since time immemorial. That’s evident by the pictographs, the features found on the land, as well as the artifacts and remains present on the lands today.”

“Dokis First Nation was the main opposition trader to the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1800s. Chief Dokis operated a trade network that spanned from Penetanguishene to Lake Abitibi, so therefore, we consider that our traditional territory that we do share and benefit with Nipissing First Nation.”

Dr. Greer is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Geography and History at Nipissing University, and the Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Histories and Geographies. She spoke of being involved through researching North American museum and archival holdings to examining how the human remains from this territory ended up at the Chicago Field Museum.

“As our research demonstrates, leading anthropologists Frederic Putman and Franz Boas acquired these human remains as part of the physical anthropology exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1892-93, which celebrated the 400th year of the Christopher Columbus’ ‘discovery’ of the Americas and the scientific theme of evolution. The Anthropological Exhibition became an ideal site for organizers to legitimize North American settler colonialism, which was built upon the discursive construction of settler colonial-First Nation relationships,” Greer explains. “More specifically, Franz Boas and his network of collectors, which involved Dr. Thomas Proctor Hall who acquired the human remains from this territory, worked with the Dominion of Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs for access to Indian agents which resulted in unearthing human remains in First Nation settlements.”

Greer briefed that the human remains were put on display in the Anthropological Building beside the Ethnographical Exhibit grounds for the “living exhibits”, as well as next to the US Indian Industrial School model, which housed Native American Residential School children.

“The Dominion of Canada also organized a ‘special exhibit by the Department of Indian Affairs’ to introduce the Indian Industrial Schools of Canada,” says Greer. “Here, First Nation children were brought to Chicago, and put on rotation at the Manufacturing and Liberal Arts Building to perform practical tasks, which included running a printing press for the publication of The Canadian Indian… Boas and his collectors also took cranial measurements of Indigenous peoples for the exhibit, including children from Shingwauk Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie. We signal this troubling connection for present-day scholars particularly in physical anthropology, evolutionary biology, and even business history, who are resurrecting Boa’s historical cranial measurements in their research, without considering their troubling pasts.

“As Anishinaabekwe scholar Sonya Atalay describes, repatriation involves not only the returning home of stolen ancestors and sacred objects, but the exposing of the brutal history of colonial theft through truth-telling and the naming of the perpetrators. As we walked across the former world’s fairgrounds in Chicago this past fall, we reflected on how these histories have been erased in textbooks, and across the landscape. Today, one of the few traces of the anthropological site at Jackson Park is a children’s hospital, which adorns a decorated tile of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas. We placed some semaa (tobacco) on the grounds to honour the ancestors who are stolen from their communities, and to remember the Indigenous children who were brought there without their consent. We hope that our research helps to rectify some of these colonial erasers, and to bring to the forefront the importance of confronting them to help restore justice.”

After the presentation, Restoule informed there are still a large number unidentified remains.

“The information that the museum had on the remains was a catalogue card at the time when the collection was received. It identified, for example, one remain taken from the French River area, one remain of a female taken at Georgian Bay. A very vague description. But there are 100,000 remains which have no information whatsoever… There was a trade network of scientists in the exchange of skulls.”

Travelling with Greer to the site of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago left Restoule feeling uneasy.

“It was somewhat shocking that there was no real recognition from the city today that that event even happened…Really, the only remnant that they have is a small replica of the main statue that they had on the site.”

Restoule says legislation and policy should be in place in Canada like NAGPRA or Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in the United States.

“Canada does not have set rules. In most cases, it’s left up to the province or the proponent to decide. In many cases, it’s up to the municipality. It’s left up to the city planner to decide if there is archaeological potential. How do they know our interests and know our concerns and who even to speak to when it comes to remains and burial sites?”

Greer says she is honoured to be working with Dokis First Nation and that she was entrusted to do the research, which also included visiting with the human remains in Chicago in the collections room before they were repatriated.

“In uncovering and piecing together how the human remains were stolen in the first place, our findings were more disturbing in the end than what we had thought. The fact that human remains were stolen is disturbing but then from the buildings of Residential Schools from the network of collectors that Franz Boas created across North America for this work and how important it is to talk about it.”

Greer says the data sets are being used today.

“It’s important that we make sure the researchers know about those histories because it just reenacts the violence.”

The fact that the Indian Residential Schools were used for taking hair samples, measurements, and remains was not previously known, says Dr. Greer.

“Our research looked at Thomas Proctor Hall who was a doctor. He was the one that was travelling in this region and he was the one, if you look at the index cards at the museum, his name is on them as the provenance. But he and Reverend Wilson, who was the principle at Shinwauk Residential School, was also collecting for Franz Boas, and taking the measurements of the children at school. And then, doing more research into him, we saw that he travelled across Canada visiting other Residential Schools because he was the head principle for the Anglican network of Residential Schools. And he was doing the same thing along his travels.”

Greer says the letter books are digitized and online at the The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre.

“That was how we started piecing together that part of what was the physical anthropology exhibit.”