A deeply prayerful celebration greeted the return of 62 Indigenous artifacts to Canada from the Vatican at Montreal’s Trudeau Airport Dec. 6.

Unfortunately, the guests of honour were unavoidably delayed by Air Canada. The aged and in some cases fragile belongings of numerous Canadian Indigenous nations weren’t bumped off their return flight from Frankfurt, Germany, but reportedly needed time to acclimatize after the long journey home.

“I’m not sure what they mean by acclimatize,” Assembly of First Nations Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said with a puckish smile. “Maybe the air is different in Europe?”

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Delay of public display of the artifacts until Tuesday at the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa did nothing to dampen spirits or lessen the sense of spiritual joy during a 90-minute welcome home in a hotel conference room at Trudeau Airport.

The event was billed as a media conference. In fact, it was a time for Indigenous groups and their leaders, joined by Vancouver Archbishop Richard Smith, Gérald C. Cardinal Lacroix, federal Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller and Museum of History CEO Caroline Dromaguet, to rejoice at the first major formal repatriation of Indigenous relics from foreign soils.

Throat singers sang. A duo played the Red River Jig. And Claudette Commanda, an Algonquin Elder who is also Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, set the spirit for all with an opening prayer of gratitude to the Creator for the return of goods that, she said, Indigenous people consider “relatives, brothers and sisters, ancestors” more than mere objects.

The theme of the artifacts embodying both ancestral and contemporary spiritual power might have sounded to some ears as incongruous given that it was emphasized in a province where public prayer had led to human rights complaints and provincial legislation banning the wearing of religious garb in specific public settings. Yet Indigenous welcomers simply ignored Quebec’s new-found frenzy of legally enforced laicité and chose to worship unabashedly in their own way as they wished.

“I learned the power of prayer,” Peyal Laceese said politely but emphatically when he was asked by a journalist what was most important to him in travelling to Frankfurt for the transhipment from Europe to Canada.

Laceese, of the Tsilhqot’in Nation, was one of four Indigenous young people chosen to make the return flight that was also a flight of return. His emphasis on the spiritual over the merely material was echoed by fellow traveller Katisha Paul, who framed the event in the language of traditional Indigenous animism and ancestor worship. She noted the significant ancestral sign of the appearance of a swan while the youth delegation was in Frankfurt.

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“We are all looking to seeing our (ancestors) feel the mountains, winds, the warmth of our lands and our waters,” said Paul, who is also a youth member of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

In a brief speech-cum-sermon, Paul linked the eight-year effort to have the artifacts returned to a wide-reaching spiritually rooted political effort to assert recognition of Indigenous rights and regain full control of ancestral entities.

She was one of several speakers who underscored that this welcome home, while joyful, was also the harbinger of a determined effort to recoup that material past of Indigenous people as the objects are akin to living ancestors. The steps taken so far are to be seen as “rescuing our ancestors from the Vatican” and wherever else in the world they are being held in non-Indigenous hands.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People’s, ratified by Canada under the Justin Trudeau government, gives the international legal leverage to do just that, Paul said.

Or as both AFN National Chief Woodhouse Nepinak and Natan Obed, head of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said separately at the Dec. 6 event: “This is just the beginning.”

For his part, Vancouver’s Smith welcomed the spirit in which that declaration was made given its consistency with the return of the artifacts in this year’s Jubilee of Hope as directed by Pope Francis. Indeed, Smith noted, the repatriation was a key catalyst in Francis’ historic pilgrimage of penance across Canada in 2022. 

“This gesture is a gift freely given — an act of reconciliation rooted in the grace of the Jubilee Year of Hope,” said Smith, who is a member of the Canadian Catholic Indigenous Council and one of the CCCB’s key representatives during the process. “A gift, unlike restitution, is offered in freedom and friendship, as a sign of renewed relationship and mutual respect between the Church and Indigenous peoples.”

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While some of the artifacts, including a century old Inuvialuit kayak that appears to have become something of an obsession for the CBC, were to be unveiled in Ottawa on Tuesday, speakers at the Dec. 6 event were frank that much work lies ahead just to determine which Indigenous groups own what and how “the relatives” are to be returned.

As hard as the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, Métis National Council and other First Nations leaders have worked in order to say welcome home, they face further significant challenges in spreading the joy equally and fairly across Canada.