Museums no place for bundles - elder

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Much debate has raged about whether medicine bundles should be returned to Indian people or kept in museums and put on public display. The debate was highlighted during the Calgary Glenbow Museum's 1988 Spirit of the Rainboe display which featured sacred Blackfoot ceremonial masks.

A Native spiritualist originally from Wabasca feels museums are not a place to store or exhibit sacred articles. Isabel Auger, 51, had followed Native spirituality since she's been a child. She had participated in sun dances, has wide knowledge of Native culture and is constantly learning more about Native spirituality from other elders.

Bundles and pipes should have been passed to the owners' children instead of being given to museums where they can be mistreated, she said.

"They're special thins, they're not to be played around with," Auger said. "A bundle is a very secret thing. I wouldn't want anyone to see my medicine bundle or put it in a museum."

Another practicing Native spiritualist described the bundle as a tool for prayer. The bundle can also be used to heal people - this power is shared between the article and the owner, the spiritualist said. The bundle contains items that symbolize valuable lessons and incidents that strengthened their belief in Native spirituality.

Sacred artifacts at the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton have not been mistreated, insisted museum director Philip Stepney. Elders have been consulted on how to store, treat and display sacred articles. Purification ceremonies have also taken place and the staff who are exposed to sacred articles have been ceremonially smudged to protect them against their power.

"The museum was really seen as a safe place they (religious artifacts) could be put, " explained Pat McCormack, the museum's ethnology curator. She said the museum holds in trust medicine pipe bundles, weasel-tailed shirts and other religious Indian artifacts.

Most artifacts were acquired during the 1960s and the 1970s, long after Native ceremonies - like the sun dance - were attacked by Christian religions and then legislated out of existence, said McCormack, so aboriginal people felt uneasy owning religious artifacts.

The people respected the power of the bundles but couldn't use them anymore because of their forced adoption of Christian beliefs, she explained.

And the museum takes the view the religious power of the bundles is shared with the owner, so people who want bundles returned should be able to replicate the bundle, letting the museum keep the original.

Traditionally, bundles can be replicated, McCormack claimed, if it has been stolen, destroyed or damaged.

And even though the museum allows the replication of bundles, only one has been replicated by a Peigan Nation member.

The museum has put religious articles on temporary loan for Indian ceremonies in the past, but is more guarded now. Officials encourage the replication of medicine pipe bundles and other items so the original can be preserved.

The last time a bundle was loaned was in 1986, according to McCormack.

"Constant handling subjects the artifacts to vibrations. They may get rubbed or bumped and they are more prone to accidents and wear," she said. "Folding can create wear and tear on the (eagle) feathers, for instance."

The relationship between Native people and museums has improved in the last 15 years, declared Stepney, adding that the resurgence of Native spirituality has led the museum to loan out some sacred objects for traditional ceremonies.

"One of our functions is to help people with aspirations for cultural knowledge," Stepney asserted, saying there are traditional ceremonies visually recorded, as well as audio tapes of elders long gone.