New York’s Natural History Museum Returns Shrine to First Nations Community

New York’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has returned a shrine known as the Whalers’ Washing House to Mowachaht, a First Nations people in Canada.

The Whalers’ Washing House was removed from its home in 1904 following a controversial acquisition by Tlingit-Scottish ethnographer George Hunt for German-American anthropologist Franz Boas. Last Thursday, parts of the shrine started to go back to Canada following a repatriation ceremony in New York.

Back in the 1990s, Mowachaht officials voted to begin international discussions about seeking the return of the shrine, but it wasn’t clear until now how, or if, they would be successful in getting it back from the museum.

The shrine contains 88 carved human figures, 16 human skulls, and whale carvings. The structure was used by the Mowachaht people for purification rituals conducted prior to whale hunting, an activity that was seen as a communal endeavor. If rituals around whale hunting weren’t carried out with caution, it was believed that there would be spiritual consequences.

The shrine has never been fully displayed since the American Natural History Museum came into possession of it. In Canada, there have been talks about turning the shrine into a cultural center, but those plans have stalled.

The original $500 sale of the piece to the museum involved two Mowachaht elders and stipulated the shrine could only be removed after the tribe’s seasonal departure. Many repatriation advocates believe that the sale was conducted under duress, however, since American and European researchers often misled Indigenous peoples about why they wanted their objects, claiming they merely wanted to preserve practices and objects that were vulnerable to being lost.

The shrine was considered sensitive because it includes human remains, something that for many years made it difficult to return. The U.S. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act also does not cover artifacts from international sites.

Despite the barriers, a newly formed repatriation committee traveled to New York in July for a ceremonial meeting that involved discussion about a potential return. That same month, the museum made strides in repatriating other objects belonging to Native American tribes following officials from their respective nations. The museum subsequently gave back the remains of 124 Native individuals and 90 cultural objects as part of this initiative.