For nearly six decades, a deceased Inuk woman’s skull sat in a locked cabinet at the Canadian Museum of Nature. This past July, it travelled more than 4,000 km back to its original resting place at the High Arctic edge of the Northwest Territories.
The skull was collected by a Canadian botanist in the 1950s, because of a vegetation specimen growing on it.
In collaboration with anthropologists at the Canadian Museum of History, Canadian Museum of Nature staff tracked down the skull’s origins and made the arrangements to have it repatriated. The return of the skull to the Arctic was disclosed in a blog post published on Feb. 5 at the museum’s website.
Mark Graham, the the museum’s vice-president of research and collections, co-wrote the blog item and took a lead role in the repatriation process. He began corresponding with the Elders Committee in Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., the Inuit community located closest to the skull’s original resting place at Toker Point on the coast of the Beaufort Sea.
In the blog post, Graham and co-author Jennifer Doubt acknowledged that, “Even though we try to use our museum powers for good, there are times when things go wrong. Collectors — both amateur and professional — are dedicated and extremely passionate about what they do. That enthusiasm for collecting can sometimes lead to problems, like one that started in the Arctic in the late 1950s.”
Once the Elders Committee had been contacted and the necessary arrangements were made, the skull was packed away in a custom-made carrying case.. Case in hand, Graham and a colleague flew up north to personally deliver it. The skull was returned 57 years after it was taken.
The case is now in the possession of Emmanuel Adam, a minister with the Glad Tidings Mission, a Pentecostal Church in Tuktoyaktuk. This summer, a proper burial is scheduled to take place at Toker Point.
Graham says the skull was out of place at the Canadian Museum of Nature because the McLeod Street institution doesn’t typically house human remains. It was “a real exception,” he says.
Arranging to have to skull returned to its original resting place and then delivering it into the hands of those who will properly put it to rest is quite a relief, says Graham.
“We were glad to be able to make it right again.”
The identity and history of the woman whose skull was collected remains a mystery. “We don’t know anything about who the person was,” says Darlene Gruben of the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation.
The Canadian botanist who collected the skull was on a federally endorsed expedition. The 1950s were a period during which the federal government was intent on exercising and displaying Canada’s sovereignty in the Far North. As part of that effort, scientific field studies in the area accompanied establishment and maintenance of a military distant early warning perimeter called the DEW line..
The skull was of significance because of a species of lichen that was growing on it. Lichen is a composite organism resembling moss in appearance. It’s the product of a symbiotic relationship between algae, bacteria and fungus.
The skull was collected so that the lichen specimen could be studied. However, once it arrived at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, it was kept in a locked cabinet and left alone – never studied nor displayed.