Returned kayak a symbol of Vatican-Indigenous relations

National Post, 14 December 2025

The facts about the kayak differ from the post-TRC template — and are more complicated, more interesting and more hopeful

An Inuvialuit sealskin kayak was transferred to the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) this week after a century in the collections of the Vatican Museums. Fulfilling the decision of the late Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV gave the kayak and some 60 other Indigenous artifacts as a gift to the Catholic bishops of Canada, which in turn presented them in a spirit of reconciliation to Canada’s Indigenous leaders. It was a gracious and touching moment at the CMH as Inuit men from the North laid eyes on the kayak for the first time.

“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,” explained Archbishop Richard Smith of Vancouver, the lead Catholic interlocutor.

It remains to be worked out where the kayak and other artifacts will be permanently housed. Indigenous institutions currently lack the capacity to properly preserve the artifacts, particularly the kayak, so they will remain at the CMH for now. That the kayak should go to the North is the consensus desire, but it may not be practical to build a suitable facility there and very few people would see it, relative to it being displayed in the Ottawa area.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report. The TRC’s reckless indictment of Canada as a wholly criminal enterprise bent on the brutalization of Indigenous peoples proved to be more persuasive than might have been originally thought, due principally to the perfervidity of the then brand-new prime minister.

Trudeau was comfortable describing Canada as a “post-national” country in part because he considered the nation itself to be a shameful initiative. Canada’s history was not, like all other countries, one of lights and shadows, but instead a long darkness awaiting the ultimate dawning of his own light.

Rooted in false premises, and fuelled by the new government’s national self-loathing, the TRC created an environment in which no falsehood was too extreme to be spread abroad, culminating in the 2021 claims of a discovery of mass graves near a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Sloppy reporting thus easily fit the kayak story into the dominate post-TRC template. Sacred Indigenous items had been finagled out of Indigenous hands by unscrupulous missionaries to the Vatican, where they were displayed as quasi-trophies of conquest until public shame finally pried them away from a grudging colonialist bureaucracy. Those claims no longer even have to be made by Indigenous leaders — and were not made, by and large, in this case. The story is written even before the facts are known.

The facts about the kayak are altogether different from the post-TRC template — and, as is usually the case with actual history, are more complicated, more interesting and more hopeful.

For a special “jubilee year” in 1925, Pope Pius XI invited missionaries from all over the world to send artifacts to Rome for a special exhibition. The late 19th-century included a massive expansion of missionary efforts that brought European Christians — Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians — into contact with diverse peoples the world over. Some 100,000 artifacts arrived in Rome and were the first occasion for many pilgrims to witness the artistic and technological skills of distant cultures.

In 1925, the Vatican latterly joined the phenomenon of global cultural festivals, like London’s Crystal Palace in 1851 and the Paris World Fair in 1889.  The inclusion of works from distant lands was, by the standards of the day, a compliment to other cultures. Though the TRC template cannot imagine it, people were proud to have their own works exhibited in a major world capital.

Such was the enthusiasm for the 1925 exhibition that a permanent ethnological collection was established at the Vatican — even though vanishingly few visit the Vatican Museums for that reason. It was renovated in 2019 with a new name, Anima Mundi (“Soul of the World”), indicating that it paid tribute to the spiritual values found in all cultures.

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