A mysterious artifact known as the Whaler’s Shrine is being returned to West Coast First Nations, after spending the last 120 years in a New York museum.
The shrine once stood near Yuquot, and was used by indigenous whalers for spiritual and ritual purposes before they would head out on whale hunts. It contains 88 carved human figures, 16 human skulls, and whale carvings. Since it was sold to the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1904, it has been rarely displayed to the public.
On April 1, it was returned to the shores of Nootka Sound near its original home, and was repatriated by the Mowachaht / Muchalaht Nations.
It was taken from Yuquot in 1903 while most of the villages was away fishing, after two elders claimed to have the power to have the shrine removed. It was sold to German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, who acquired many indigenous artifacts from the BC coast for museums around the world.
Boas and other early anthropologists believed they were preserving the history of a vanishing people, but their actions encouraged others to collect artifacts under false pretenses, and to inaccurately romanticize West Coast Indigenous people and their cultures.
The shrine is currently stored in multiple containers, the nations plan to set it up in summer and honour its return with a feast.
The original shrine location was designated a Canadian heritage site in 1983.
