This story begins in the 1850s, in a remote wilderness where temperatures can dip to minus 50 degrees and the roads are closed for eight months of the year. No, not Scotland - though we'll come to that in a moment.
The setting is the Athapascan region of sub-Arctic Canada, part of what is now Northwestern Territories. This bleak landscape was - and still is - occupied by a group of indigenous peoples known as the Dene. Hardy nomads, they survived from a combination of hunting, subsistence farming and fur-trading.
And here's where the Scots come in. Around the mid-19th century, Scottish fur traders began to show an unprecedented interest in Dene artefacts. They would pay good prices for garments, cooking and eating utensils, bags, pipes and other articles produced by the Dene for their everyday lives. Eventually, they would commission brand-new items - and even scaled-down models, for ease of transportation.
To explain this commerce, we must look to Edinburgh, where the Industrial Museum - now part of National Museums Scotland (NMS) - had just been established.
Chantal Knowles, the principal curator for Oceania, the Americas and Africa, takes up the story: 'At that time, the call went out to Scots overseas for examples of industry and arts abroad. George Simpson, the head of the Hudson Bay Company, wrote to men of Scots descent, saying, "Think patriotically, and document these people through their arts and crafts and their material culture."
'Most of these guys were on their own in fairly remote areas, and they responded very well,' Knowles continues. 'Between 1858 and 1862, around 280 artefacts came back from the Athapascan region.'
These items were duly added to the NMS collection, where they remained until just last autumn, when some unusual developments occurred.
We now leap forward 150 years. Back in Athapascan, Canada, a Dene group known as the Dogrib (or, in their own language, the Tlicho) launched what would become a successful land claim.
Ultimately, they would secure control of 39,000 sq km of land. In the course of their research, they became aware of the Dene collection held at NMS in Edinburgh. Eager for evidence that their people once lived, worked and traded in the territory they hoped to claim, they arranged to visit Edinburgh and examine the artefacts.
At this point, the story takes on echoes of the thorny debate over repatriation: the question of whether artefacts acquired from overseas by museums should be returned to their countries of origin. It is an issue that haunts museums all over the world. Even at the British Museum recent murmurs suggest a softening of the hard line traditionally taken on the Elgin Marbles, the hottest potato in the repatriation oven.
In Scotland, the debate has been stirred repeatedly in recent years by high-profile repatriations, leading some to suggest that Scots, as both agents and victims of empire, may have arrived at a more enlightened attitude than their English neighbours.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow and the Marischal Museum in Aberdeen have both repatriated toi moko (preserved human heads) to Maori groups in New Zealand.
In addition, Kelvingrove famously surrendered a ceremonial North American ghost dance shirt in 1999, following a successful repatriation claim by the Lakota tribe.
According to the former convener of Glasgow Council's culture and leisure services committee, councillor John Lynch, five criteria are applied to any such requests.
'Probably the overriding one is that each case is examined on its own merits,' he explains. 'We would also look at how the museum service acquired the item; at the status of the people who are making the request and what their link is with the original owners; whether there's any religious significance to the item; and at what would happen to the item if it was returned.'
With the ghost dance shirt, Lynch adds, there was a faction within the requesting community who felt it should have been buried with the warrior it was taken from (at the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890).
The Lakota were looking to have it reinterred. 'One of our conditions was that it would be maintained in perpetuity and that access would be available to the general public,' Lynch says.
Kelvingrove is also one of several UK institutions (including the British Museum) that hold bronze wall-plaques taken from Benin, West Africa, during a 'punitive expedition' in 1897. The Benin Bronzes were the subject of a repatriation campaign led by the late Bernie Grant, MP, in the mid-1990s.
While Lynch remains open to a renewed approach, he says any response should be a joint one. 'The line that we've always taken with the Benin Bronzes is that there are bigger collections elsewhere,' he says. 'It should really be a collective decision. A decision over whether they were wrongfully taken isn't one for an individual organisation.'
The repatriation procedure of the Marischal Museum - which is part of the University of Aberdeen - is based on criteria similar to those adopted in Glasgow. As well as returning nine toi moko heads earlier this year, in 2003 the museum repatriated a ceremonial
headdress to the Kainai Nation in Alberta, Canada.
Neil Curtis, the senior curator at the museum, explains: 'With the headdress the main issue was demonstrating its significance as something other than a museum object - it turned out to be one of their most sacred bundles. The decision was therefore based on setting that significance against its significance to the museum.'
Curtis believes this kind of judgement carries more weight than any ready-made categorisations. 'We didn't repatriate the toi moko because they were classed as human remains, or indeed classed as anything by us. If we're responding to other people's views, then we should not be basing our decisions on museum classifications. That was beautifully shown by the headdress, which was to us an object, a headdress; to them a sacred bundle, a gift of the Creator.
'I was at the repatriation conference in Greenland in February and there was an attempt to draw up a declaration which mentioned things like "human remains", "cultural artefacts" and "lineal descent".
These are all such western terms that actually block us from engaging with other people's views of the world. If we're genuine about trying to understand the world and the items in museum collections, we have to try to understand different ways of thinking and talking.'
Back at NMS, remarkably, there have been no repatriation claims in recent years, aside from a few relating to human remains. But this may soon change. It was recently reported that a different native Canadian group, the Confederacy Council of the Haudenosaunee - based further south, around Lake Ontario - is planning to lodge a repatriation claim on 'false face' masks and rattles held in the Scottish collection.
Gordon Rintoul, the director of NMS, is aware of the report, but unwilling to discuss the implications of the claim until it materialises.
'Members of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Culture came to Scotland last year, when we started the process of looking at the national museums' collections together,' he explains. 'We embarked on this partnership with the same positive spirit and intentions as our project with the Tlicho nation. We have not received any repatriation requests from the Haudenosaunee, but fully expect to continue with this exciting partnership.'
So what did the Tlicho want when, in 2003, they travelled some 5,000 miles to be reunited with the artefacts sold by their forebears to Scottish fur traders?
According to Knowles, repatriation simply wasn't on the agenda. 'No,' she insists. 'Never. There's always been a really high regard for our care of the objects on the part of the Dogrib. The steering group that I was working with - who collaborated with their communities to discuss these issues - were really pleased that we'd collected them in the first instance, and that we'd preserved them.'
The plan eventually hatched was an example of what NMS is calling 'knowledge repatriation'. This, as Rintoul points out, is a Canadian term, coined to describe a system of international cultural exchanges and long-term loans. Since 1 October, part of Scotland's Dene collection (including all its Tlicho elements) has been on display in an exhibition entitled We Live Securely by the Land, at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, capital of Northwestern Territories. In September it will transfer to Ottowa, returning to Edinburgh early next year.
One crucial element of the Yellowknife exhibition was an educational outreach project in March, during which Knowles travelled with some of the exhibits to four separate Tlicho communities.
'We took three items to each community,' says Knowles. 'A pair of winter mocassins, a set of sled-lines and a dog harness. We also had 15 pairs of traditional snow-shoes made. At each workshop there was an elder, an interpreter and two seamstresses. I would talk to the kids about where I was from, and then they'd get to handle the objects and the elder would use them to talk about the past.
'It was a way of getting the kids interested and excited. Within the schools there's a really strong emphasis on language, so it's really good when you can provide a moment for the elders to talk in Dogrib to the kids.'
The project with the Tlicho has provided invaluable insights into the interpretation of the Dene artefacts, says Knowles. 'When they came to us and said, "Ok, this is what we'd like to do," we saw it was an opportunity to revisit our collection and think, "Well, what's its relevance to Scotland today?"'
Her travels in Athapasca also enabled her to augment the collection with modern artefacts. 'I've collected everything that's been offered to me,' she says. 'I've not discriminated. A lot of the objects parallel what we have in the early collection and show a continuity.
But I've also been collecting things like beaded credit-card holders - beads are the new traditional form of decoration. And bingo is a huge activity, so they've recently restarted making one of the traditional types of bag, which they keep their bingo daubers in.
'It's all about re-stating their identity; and it's also about the fact that they are now part of the global economy. So I've been trying to collect things like that, and asking them how they want to be represented in our collection.'
It emerged that the Tlicho - who have recently acquired their own land and established their own government - felt a strong affinity with newly independent Scotland. But are they satisfied with the management of this project?
John B Zoe is an executive officer of the Tlicho government and a member of the project's steering committee, liaising with the indigenous communities.
'It has been important for making sure that the information is passed on to the younger people,' he says. 'The travelling exhibition gave them a good understanding of the material.
'We now have written documentation and pictures,' he adds. 'And by having this material here at the national capital, the Tlicho people have become a little bit more known. A lot of these materials are very hard to come by.'
Zoe also seems indifferent to any notion of permanent repatriation. 'We don't have issues about where these things should be,' he says.
Scottish museum-goers can judge for themselves the success of the exhibition when it arrives in Edinburgh next year. But for NMS, does the project represent a model for further adventures in knowledge repatriation? Gordon Rintoul believes it does.
'We've certainly found it a valuable approach,' he says. 'It's really built around working in partnership to mutual benefit.
'We are already doing other projects in a similar vein,' Rintoul continues. 'We're working with a whole range of indigenous peoples around the Great Lakes area, and we've also done something very similar in Japan. We've got a very important collection from a
Japanese sub-group called the Ainu. We've done a lot of work with them, lending and borrowing items.
'So from the point of view of NMS, it's been hugely beneficial to work in partnership with the communities from which the material originated. It's certainly something that we'll be aiming to do more of in the future.'
Andrew Burnet is a freelance journalist based in Edinburgh
The setting is the Athapascan region of sub-Arctic Canada, part of what is now Northwestern Territories. This bleak landscape was - and still is - occupied by a group of indigenous peoples known as the Dene. Hardy nomads, they survived from a combination of hunting, subsistence farming and fur-trading.
And here's where the Scots come in. Around the mid-19th century, Scottish fur traders began to show an unprecedented interest in Dene artefacts. They would pay good prices for garments, cooking and eating utensils, bags, pipes and other articles produced by the Dene for their everyday lives. Eventually, they would commission brand-new items - and even scaled-down models, for ease of transportation.
To explain this commerce, we must look to Edinburgh, where the Industrial Museum - now part of National Museums Scotland (NMS) - had just been established.
Chantal Knowles, the principal curator for Oceania, the Americas and Africa, takes up the story: 'At that time, the call went out to Scots overseas for examples of industry and arts abroad. George Simpson, the head of the Hudson Bay Company, wrote to men of Scots descent, saying, "Think patriotically, and document these people through their arts and crafts and their material culture."
'Most of these guys were on their own in fairly remote areas, and they responded very well,' Knowles continues. 'Between 1858 and 1862, around 280 artefacts came back from the Athapascan region.'
These items were duly added to the NMS collection, where they remained until just last autumn, when some unusual developments occurred.
We now leap forward 150 years. Back in Athapascan, Canada, a Dene group known as the Dogrib (or, in their own language, the Tlicho) launched what would become a successful land claim.
Ultimately, they would secure control of 39,000 sq km of land. In the course of their research, they became aware of the Dene collection held at NMS in Edinburgh. Eager for evidence that their people once lived, worked and traded in the territory they hoped to claim, they arranged to visit Edinburgh and examine the artefacts.
At this point, the story takes on echoes of the thorny debate over repatriation: the question of whether artefacts acquired from overseas by museums should be returned to their countries of origin. It is an issue that haunts museums all over the world. Even at the British Museum recent murmurs suggest a softening of the hard line traditionally taken on the Elgin Marbles, the hottest potato in the repatriation oven.
In Scotland, the debate has been stirred repeatedly in recent years by high-profile repatriations, leading some to suggest that Scots, as both agents and victims of empire, may have arrived at a more enlightened attitude than their English neighbours.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow and the Marischal Museum in Aberdeen have both repatriated toi moko (preserved human heads) to Maori groups in New Zealand.
In addition, Kelvingrove famously surrendered a ceremonial North American ghost dance shirt in 1999, following a successful repatriation claim by the Lakota tribe.
According to the former convener of Glasgow Council's culture and leisure services committee, councillor John Lynch, five criteria are applied to any such requests.
'Probably the overriding one is that each case is examined on its own merits,' he explains. 'We would also look at how the museum service acquired the item; at the status of the people who are making the request and what their link is with the original owners; whether there's any religious significance to the item; and at what would happen to the item if it was returned.'
With the ghost dance shirt, Lynch adds, there was a faction within the requesting community who felt it should have been buried with the warrior it was taken from (at the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890).
The Lakota were looking to have it reinterred. 'One of our conditions was that it would be maintained in perpetuity and that access would be available to the general public,' Lynch says.
Kelvingrove is also one of several UK institutions (including the British Museum) that hold bronze wall-plaques taken from Benin, West Africa, during a 'punitive expedition' in 1897. The Benin Bronzes were the subject of a repatriation campaign led by the late Bernie Grant, MP, in the mid-1990s.
While Lynch remains open to a renewed approach, he says any response should be a joint one. 'The line that we've always taken with the Benin Bronzes is that there are bigger collections elsewhere,' he says. 'It should really be a collective decision. A decision over whether they were wrongfully taken isn't one for an individual organisation.'
The repatriation procedure of the Marischal Museum - which is part of the University of Aberdeen - is based on criteria similar to those adopted in Glasgow. As well as returning nine toi moko heads earlier this year, in 2003 the museum repatriated a ceremonial
headdress to the Kainai Nation in Alberta, Canada.
Neil Curtis, the senior curator at the museum, explains: 'With the headdress the main issue was demonstrating its significance as something other than a museum object - it turned out to be one of their most sacred bundles. The decision was therefore based on setting that significance against its significance to the museum.'
Curtis believes this kind of judgement carries more weight than any ready-made categorisations. 'We didn't repatriate the toi moko because they were classed as human remains, or indeed classed as anything by us. If we're responding to other people's views, then we should not be basing our decisions on museum classifications. That was beautifully shown by the headdress, which was to us an object, a headdress; to them a sacred bundle, a gift of the Creator.
'I was at the repatriation conference in Greenland in February and there was an attempt to draw up a declaration which mentioned things like "human remains", "cultural artefacts" and "lineal descent".
These are all such western terms that actually block us from engaging with other people's views of the world. If we're genuine about trying to understand the world and the items in museum collections, we have to try to understand different ways of thinking and talking.'
Back at NMS, remarkably, there have been no repatriation claims in recent years, aside from a few relating to human remains. But this may soon change. It was recently reported that a different native Canadian group, the Confederacy Council of the Haudenosaunee - based further south, around Lake Ontario - is planning to lodge a repatriation claim on 'false face' masks and rattles held in the Scottish collection.
Gordon Rintoul, the director of NMS, is aware of the report, but unwilling to discuss the implications of the claim until it materialises.
'Members of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Culture came to Scotland last year, when we started the process of looking at the national museums' collections together,' he explains. 'We embarked on this partnership with the same positive spirit and intentions as our project with the Tlicho nation. We have not received any repatriation requests from the Haudenosaunee, but fully expect to continue with this exciting partnership.'
So what did the Tlicho want when, in 2003, they travelled some 5,000 miles to be reunited with the artefacts sold by their forebears to Scottish fur traders?
According to Knowles, repatriation simply wasn't on the agenda. 'No,' she insists. 'Never. There's always been a really high regard for our care of the objects on the part of the Dogrib. The steering group that I was working with - who collaborated with their communities to discuss these issues - were really pleased that we'd collected them in the first instance, and that we'd preserved them.'
The plan eventually hatched was an example of what NMS is calling 'knowledge repatriation'. This, as Rintoul points out, is a Canadian term, coined to describe a system of international cultural exchanges and long-term loans. Since 1 October, part of Scotland's Dene collection (including all its Tlicho elements) has been on display in an exhibition entitled We Live Securely by the Land, at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, capital of Northwestern Territories. In September it will transfer to Ottowa, returning to Edinburgh early next year.
One crucial element of the Yellowknife exhibition was an educational outreach project in March, during which Knowles travelled with some of the exhibits to four separate Tlicho communities.
'We took three items to each community,' says Knowles. 'A pair of winter mocassins, a set of sled-lines and a dog harness. We also had 15 pairs of traditional snow-shoes made. At each workshop there was an elder, an interpreter and two seamstresses. I would talk to the kids about where I was from, and then they'd get to handle the objects and the elder would use them to talk about the past.
'It was a way of getting the kids interested and excited. Within the schools there's a really strong emphasis on language, so it's really good when you can provide a moment for the elders to talk in Dogrib to the kids.'
The project with the Tlicho has provided invaluable insights into the interpretation of the Dene artefacts, says Knowles. 'When they came to us and said, "Ok, this is what we'd like to do," we saw it was an opportunity to revisit our collection and think, "Well, what's its relevance to Scotland today?"'
Her travels in Athapasca also enabled her to augment the collection with modern artefacts. 'I've collected everything that's been offered to me,' she says. 'I've not discriminated. A lot of the objects parallel what we have in the early collection and show a continuity.
But I've also been collecting things like beaded credit-card holders - beads are the new traditional form of decoration. And bingo is a huge activity, so they've recently restarted making one of the traditional types of bag, which they keep their bingo daubers in.
'It's all about re-stating their identity; and it's also about the fact that they are now part of the global economy. So I've been trying to collect things like that, and asking them how they want to be represented in our collection.'
It emerged that the Tlicho - who have recently acquired their own land and established their own government - felt a strong affinity with newly independent Scotland. But are they satisfied with the management of this project?
John B Zoe is an executive officer of the Tlicho government and a member of the project's steering committee, liaising with the indigenous communities.
'It has been important for making sure that the information is passed on to the younger people,' he says. 'The travelling exhibition gave them a good understanding of the material.
'We now have written documentation and pictures,' he adds. 'And by having this material here at the national capital, the Tlicho people have become a little bit more known. A lot of these materials are very hard to come by.'
Zoe also seems indifferent to any notion of permanent repatriation. 'We don't have issues about where these things should be,' he says.
Scottish museum-goers can judge for themselves the success of the exhibition when it arrives in Edinburgh next year. But for NMS, does the project represent a model for further adventures in knowledge repatriation? Gordon Rintoul believes it does.
'We've certainly found it a valuable approach,' he says. 'It's really built around working in partnership to mutual benefit.
'We are already doing other projects in a similar vein,' Rintoul continues. 'We're working with a whole range of indigenous peoples around the Great Lakes area, and we've also done something very similar in Japan. We've got a very important collection from a
Japanese sub-group called the Ainu. We've done a lot of work with them, lending and borrowing items.
'So from the point of view of NMS, it's been hugely beneficial to work in partnership with the communities from which the material originated. It's certainly something that we'll be aiming to do more of in the future.'
Andrew Burnet is a freelance journalist based in Edinburgh
