First Nations museum has high ambitions

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When Lorne Carrier used to work the front desk at the Wanuskewin Centre in Saskatoon a few years ago, people would come in and ask him why he wasn't wearing his headdress.

Even at an archeological and historical site maintained by First Nations people, the Piapot First Nation man says some people still think of the Hollywood stereotype when they think of Indian people.

Carrier now has the opportunity to change that public assumption. He's the curator of the Treaty 4 Keeping House, which will eventually house artifacts, goods and documents of many of the 35 First Nations which signed or agreed to adhere to Treaty 4, and it will be part of the Treaty 4 Governance Centre.

"We are now getting our own museums, such as the Treaty 4 Keeping House. We get to tell our story from our perspective," he said. "We get to interpret the things that are put on display and in the future, there will be more input and involvement from First Nations people. We'll help mold a new image of First Nations' people in this country."

As well as the Treaty 4 Keeping House, Carrier has been a member of the Museums Association of Saskatchewan's First Peoples committee for the past three years.

"We're looking at the concerns of First Nations' people within the museum community. We're also coming up with standards of care for collections of sacred objects . . . we're trying to identify what's out there."

For dozens of years and in places ranging from Regina to London, First Nation's material - from headdresses to clothing, from stone tools to religious goods - have been put on display in museums. In many cases - such as an expedition to the File Hills area by archeologists from the London-based British Museum during the mid 1920s - many of those goods were taken with little or no effort made by archeologists to consult the communities.

It was because, at the time, archeologists and museum curators regarded First Nations culture as something in the past, not as a living culture, said Carrier.

"Ours is a living, changing culture," he said. "In the past, our cultures were portrayed as something from the past and not changing. That's a perception that the average citizen going into a museum would get."

However, those attitudes are now changing, he added.

"In the five or six years I've been involved with the cultural and heritage community, I see that situation improving a lot," he said. "The bigger institutions such as the Royal Saskatchewan Museum and the Glenbow in Calgary have been a lot of help. And Alberta's recent repatriation legislation is very good. Even the smaller museums . . . when I look at the Museums Association of Saskatchewan newsletter, I see First Nations participation within that museum - in their programming and identifying objects, and also on their boards.

"They're getting input on how things are displayed, which we haven't had in previous years."

A 1988 study by the Canadian Museums Association and the Assembly of First Nations proved to be a watershed. Titled "Turning the Page," the report laid the groundwork for better communications between the two groups when it came to the display and storage of sacred and important First Nations material in museums, he said. "That was one of the first papers that drew attention to the fact that First Nations people weren't involved in the heritage community," said Carrier, even though many of their important and sacred objects were on display at those facilities.

The Treaty 4 Keeping House will seek to tell the story of how the first peoples of southern Saskatchewan lived, worked and worshipped before, during and after the time of the signing of Treaty 4 between chiefs and Canadian government officials in Fort Qu'Appelle on Sept. 15, 1874.

Some of the material will include papers concerning the Treaty Land Entitlement (TLE) process. In the long term, Carrier hopes that the Keeping House could contain the original Treaty 4 documents, "so people can go there and research thing relating to Teaty 4," he said.

In addition, Carrier hopes the facility will also display the original treaty medals given to chiefs who signed Treaty 4 in 1874, parchments of the treaty given to the chiefs at the time of the signing,suits of clothes given to chiefs as part of the treaty honoring system, and flags given to chiefs who signed.

"Some are in the First Nations community. Some are in Europe and the United States or eastern Canada," he said. "It's going to take some time to track these things down."

When the Keeping House does open to the public, may of its displays concerning Treaty 4 will be borrowed from other museums, Carrier added.

The Treaty 4 Governance Centre is to open during the Treaty 4 commemorations in mid-September. However the Keeping House will probably not be open to the public at that time.

"We want the process of providing artifacts from our people to be much more fair than how the artifacts were originally collected from our people two and three generations ago," said Ron Crowe, co-chairman of the Treaty 4 Tribal Council. "We want to get it right, and that will mean we will take our time."