The Gemini Award–winning documentary Stolen Spirits of Haida Gwaii (2004) follows a similar quest by the Haida people to repatriate their ancestors’ remains from a museum in Chicago. ( See also Repatriation of Artifacts.)įor example, the Mi’kmaq First Nation of Miawpukek, supported by the federal government and other allies, have asked a Scottish museum to repatriate the remains of two Beothuk people named Nonosabasut and Demasduwit (Demasduit). In many cases, efforts have been made at repatriating these items. Today, this is seen by some as a form of cultural appropriation.

Were preserving cultures that were dying out, some of these artifacts ended up (and often remain) in museums. Whether out of curiosity or, as in the case of anthropologists in the late 1800s and early 1900s, because they believed they When Europeans came to North America, some explorers and traders took items belonging to Indigenous peoples back home with them. They have often become part of politicized debates aboutĬross-cultural sharing, responsibility and relationships. In recent years, discussions about cultural appropriation have become part of mainstream literature and art. The concept of cultural appropriation was born of the works of these academics. Scholars who critiqued these depictionsĪnd similar forms of appropriation as acts of colonialism during the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, used concepts of class, power, race and gender to explore the ways in which dominant, colonial powers used the practices or cultural items of colonized Images representing Indigenous peoples have appeared in newspapers, advertisements and other forms of media and print for centuries.

The lone ranger costumes