Inuvialuit kayak, other items from Vatican unveiled at Museum of History

OTTAWA — An Inuvialuit kayak more than a century old was unveiled Tuesday at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., along with a handful of other priceless Inuit items returned to Canada from the Vatican collection.

The kayak, hand-built from driftwood, sealskin and sinew, was one of the artifacts earmarked for repatriation by Inuit representatives who were given a private showing of the Vatican’s holdings in the Amina Mundi exhibit during a trip to Rome in 2022.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami President Natan Obed was part of that delegation, which visited Rome to accept Pope Francis’s apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential school system.

Obed said the late pope told him in conversation that “if items were taken forcibly or without consent,” it amounted to theft.

The 62 items were among thousands sent to Rome by missionaries around the world for an exhibit organized by Pope Pius XI in 1925. Obed said it’s not known how this particular kayak ended up in the Vatican but it would have been essential to the well-being of a community and used for beluga hunting.

In November, Pope Leo XIV said the items would be transferred to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said it would immediately turn them over to Indigenous communities in Canada. That decision followed years of negotiations that at times involved former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Inuit leaders showed some of the returned items to a small group of Indigenous representatives and journalists in Gatineau on Tuesday. Along with the kayak, the items included a soup ladle, needle casings, an ulu knife and a water container made from a seal’s bladder.

Obed said the items will not be on public display in the near term as a group of Inuit advisers works to trace each artifact back to its community of origin. The artifacts will be kept for now at the Canadian Museum of History in a secure facility with temperature controls.

Inuit leaders demonstrated for journalists Tuesday how the items were made and how they would have been used. Onlookers were allowed to touch the objects as Paul Irngaut, acting president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., explained their cultural significance.

“I’m sure that there were some people who are curators who might have been quite aghast at us touching the item, lifting it up, handling the paddle,” Obed said.

“And I think this is also something that’s part of reconciliation. The norms that you have for your institutions are not necessarily the norms that we have in our society, about how we respect our living history, our items of cultural significance.

“The ways in which we connect are often, very literally, to physically touch and to feel, to have that unbroken connection between something that was made 100 years ago to the practice that still exists today.”

Darrel Nasogaluak, elder and chair of Tuktoyaktuk Community Corp, said the kayak was built without modern clamping systems to bend the frames, and was instead constructed with what people had on hand.

“You use your teeth,” Nasogaluak said, pointing to tooth marks on the interior of the kayak’s ribs.

While he has built kayaks of his own and with students, he said this one is special.

“It’s like a car enthusiast looking at a Ferrari,” he said.

“One day it’ll come back home with us … It’s survived the last 120 years, so it’s quite a treasure for us.”

Inuit hunters would use the kayak to hunt beluga by working in groups to drive them into shallow water.

“Inuit still harvest in very similar ways using the same method, same understanding of harvesting methods, even if we’re using different equipment,” Obed said.

Duane Smith, chair and CEO of the Inuvialuit Regional Corp., said the kayak came from a community called Kitigaaryuit, a historic settlement in the Northwest Territories that used to be home to around 1,000 people.

The community was “decimated” by disease brought over by explorers and whalers, Smith said. According to the common Inuit practice at the time, when the man of a household died, he was placed on the ground surrounded by his tools.

“Our thoughts is that one of the explorers came to the region (and saw) the item, and this may be one of the ways it was collected,” Smith said.

The Indigenous delegation met with Pope Francis in Rome a year after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced that potential unmarked graves had been found at the site of the former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. The news sparked global outrage and a national push for reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

During the Rome visit, delegates were given a private viewing of items held by the church — some which had not been seen in public in decades.

Indigenous leaders, including Obed, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak and Métis National Council President Victoria Pruden, were on hand in Montreal on Saturday to watch as the artifacts were removed from the belly of an Air Canada cargo jet in large crates.

Indigenous groups have signed a memorandum of understanding on how to identify the 62 artifacts released by the Vatican. Fourteen of those items were attributed to Inuit, though Obed said that two did not appear to be Inuit-made.

Smith said ITK will be looking at other Inuit artifacts held around the world and putting together a “potential game plan” to get them back where they belong.

Obed said the project will be “generational,” but it’s a priority for Inuit.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, the first Inuk woman to hold the role, said in a media statement Monday she hopes the repatriation inspires the return of more artifacts.

“For too long, these artifacts were separated from the Indigenous communities to whom they belong,” Simon wrote.

“Now, they have come home to once again breathe life into our stories, teachings and healing journeys.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 9, 2025.

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press