Work underway to bring home Crowfoot regalia

The Siksika First Nation is one step closer to bringing Chief Crowfoot’s regalia home from England.

On May 28, representatives from the First Nation and the Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park museum met with Alberta Culture and received support for the work needed to repatriate, among the items, regalia worn by Crowfoot when he signed Treaty 7 in 1877.

“We were given the go ahead. They said, ‘We’re backing you up,’” said Herman Yellow Old Woman, cultural curator at the Blackfoot Crossing museum.

Yellow Old Woman says the government has committed to covering the transportation costs of bringing home the articles, approximately 30 pieces, as well as the renovation work needed in the museum to display Crowfoot’s regalia.  Yellow Old Woman puts the price tag at $50,000-$70,000 for the transportation and another $30,000 for the renovations. He says Siksika First Nation cannot afford to cover any of the costs.

The regalia, which includes Crowfoot’s pipe bag, bear knife and moccasins, as well as Crowfoot’s wife’s headdress, is presently at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, England. That the museum had the regalia was discovered by accident.

In 2007 or 2008, says Yellow Old Woman, a delegation from the Pit River Museum, in Oxford, England, came to Alberta to learn more about an extensive collection of Blackfoot shirts Pit River had. The shirts came from a Blackfoot camp in Edmonton from the 1870s to early 1880s and had been gifted by the Chiefs to members of the Hudson Bay Company. In 2010, Pit River Museum returned with five shirts on-loan to the Glenbow Museum, in Calgary, and the Galt Museum, in Lethbridge, for short-term exhibit. As Pit River Museum still had grant money available, it invited representatives from Alberta to England.
Yellow Old Woman was among the delegates to make the trip to London and to meet with representatives from a number of museums throughout Europe. It was at a meeting after the formal session that Yellow Old Woman was approached by the Royal Albert museum about a collection the museum wasn’t sure what to do with.

“A year later we went back. We paid them a two-day visit and went through their collection and realized the importance of this regalia,” said Yellow Old Woman.

An open panel discussion with Royal Albert museum officials and Exeter town officials led to the decision to return the regalia to its rightful owners.

“After 130 years of the regalia sitting there, (they decided) it should actually come home,” said Yellow Old Woman. “I was excited. I was very moved simply because that morning when they unveiled the regalia to us we sang sacred songs, chief songs that were composed at the time of the treaty to honour Chief Crowfoot and leaders after him.  We still sing those songs today to honour our leaders.”

Yellow Old Woman was not surprised by Exeter’s decision because he “had been talking to the spirits and asking them to help in their way.”

He was also not surprised by the decision because the attitude toward repatriation has changed in the 25 years that Yellow Old Woman has been working in the field.

“When we first started, even local museums such as Glenbow didn’t open their doors to the First Nations people,” he said.
“Whereas today, any story that is told in a museum, is almost all told by First Nations people.”

In the early ‘90s attitudes started changing, he says, with “a new generation of traditional people (who) started coming forward and of course there were new people on boards with the museums.” That was followed in 2000 with the province’s First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Object Repatriation Act.

Yellow Old Woman expects Crowfoot’s regalia to be back in Alberta sometime in late 2015 or early 2016. He notes that last November, Royal Albert museum curator Tony Eccles said the repatriation should take place within two years.

Delegates from the Royal Albert museum will be coming to the Siksika First Nation in July to discuss the process further. Yellow Old Woman says when the transfer is made, technicians from the Royal Albert museum will make the trip to ensure safe passage and safe installation at the Blackfoot Crossing museum. None of Crowfoot’s regalia was on display at the Royal Albert museum.
However the headdress of Crowfoot’s wife, who was a member of the sacred society the Buffalo Women, was on display. After the headdress was identified by the Siksika delegation, the Exeter museum immediately removed it.

Yellow Old Woman says the Crowfoot regalia will be displayed permanently in what is now the travelling exhibit area of the Blackfoot Crossing museum. Renovations are required to ensure the area is air-controlled environmentally.