The Heiltsuk First Nation is celebrating the return of a precious piece of history, lost to their people for more than a century.
The nation held a special reunification ceremony for the bentwood box last Friday that coincided with a feast to mark the ratification of their written constitution.
“I was very emotional,” said Christine Smith Martin, CEO of Coastal First Nations, who helped facilitate the return of the box from an American family to the Heiltsuk Nation.
“We really want to tell art collectors or whoever may have boxes similar to this, the right thing to do is to bring it home, to make sure those boxes make it home if they can because its an important piece for us, there’ s a lot of teachings on that box, there’s a lot of things artists might not have seen yet.”‘
Bentwood boxes were specialized, watertight containers fabricated from a single piece of cedar wood that has been steamed and curved, then fastened shut with wooden pegs.
Elroy white, an archeologist, hereditary chief and elected councillor with the Heiltsuk, said they were used to carry trade goods up and down the coast, as well as for the storage of important items like instruments or regalia. They were also used to store and prepare food.
He said the Heiltsuk became well known for their skill in crafting the boxes in the 1860s, after their population was decimated by smallpox and came together in a single community.
Ethnographers who visited the community documented them and spread the word, and soon collectors and academics from around the world began seeking them out.
“That was their premise, that they were going to preserve this cultural way of these First Nations, they were called Indians back then,” he said.
“They were either sold or they were coerced from the owners.”
The provenance of this particular box is unknown, Elwood said, save that it passed through collections and galleries before being purchased in Vancouver in 2020. He believes it was made some time in the 1880s, but said that when items pass through galleries their back history is typically not shared, and information like the artist who made them is lost.
That’s when Janet and Dave Deisley, a couple from Salt Lake City, Utah, purchased it at the Douglas Reynolds Gallery on Granville Street.
“After Dave bought the box we had we had it in our home for a couple of years,” Janet Deisley told Global News.
But the item never felt right in the couple’s collection, and they decided to return it — free of charge — reaching out to Coastal First Nations for help in connecting it to the Heiltsuk.
“The community in which those artifacts were created is where they belong from a spiritual sense,” Dave Diesley said.
“I would imagine they felt what we felt when we had it in our office for that short time. You can feel. It’s like a piece of an ancestor wanting to come home … you look at it and you see that history in there,” Martin said.
“I would imagine they felt that yearning, because it’s not just a box, there are spirits that are attached to it, there are ancestors that are attached to that.”
Coastal First Nations accepted the box, but it stayed in their office for some time as they worked to arrange an appropriate return.
White came to Vancouver to authenticate the box and work on the best way and time to get it home safely.
“I knew it would have no back history, but the important part was …. it was still important to the Heiltsuk,” he said.
“Elroy came down and did some ceremony in our office, and we had a talk to the box and let them know they are going home now. It’s been a long journey as you can imagine, since the 1800s, since this box has been away from their territory.”
Last week, the box was honoured in the Heiltsuk big house in Bella Bella as a part of the constitution ceremonies, and members had the opportunity to get up close and see a piece of their lost history.
“It was so heartfelt to see that, seeing the artists looking at it and sort of pointing out different things,” Martin said.
For White, it is just one step in the ongoing process to repatriate Heiltsuk culture that was taken from the community and now resides in museums, galleries and private collections around the world.
The nation has spent decades building a database of items and has identified 34 institutions around the world that house more than 1,000 Heiltsuk items.
They’ve repatriated four items since 2022, including a historic chief’s seat that was returned to the community last summer.
It’s work that White intends to continue, and that Martin hopes will have more success.
“I hope that we have many more of these boxes,” she said.