The Vatican will return many artifacts back to indigenous groups in Canada

Question

There is recent news that the Vatican will be returning indigenous artifacts back to Canada as a reconciliation. Many of the different articles I found were written by the same author and had essentially the same title, just under different publications. However, the Assembly of First Nations has come out with a brief statement confirming the discussions while also enforcing that it is still a complicated work in progress. From what other articles I have read, such as the Associated Press, it seems that while the number of artifacts being returned is not yet announced one of the items will be a kayak from one of the indigenous tribes. There seems to be an amount of discourse on whether the artifacts were willingly given to the Vatican in the first place or if they were forcefully taken according to The Canadian Press and the Associated Press. After my readings I think this claim is true and to happen sometime this year according to the Associated Press, however, it is still new news so there is little being reported about the discussions as of now. 

Answer 1

This article is generally accurate and slightly oversimplifying. It correctly states that the Vatican plans to return dozens of artifacts to Indigenous communities in Canada, yet does not explain that this process is still underway and not entirely finalized. The article states that while Indigenous groups met with Vatican officials in 2022, Vatican officials were “open to returning”  culturally significant items such as wampum belts, ceremonial masks, and an Inuit kayak at indigenous groups’ request, but it is unclear if those specific items were ever repatriated (AP News)

Additional historical analysis from the Christian Science Monitor mirrors the AP article’s discussion that many of these artifacts were potentially gifted by indigenous groups and brought by missionaries to the Vatican during the 1925 exhibition, and Indigenous groups have since argued that these items were collected under colonial power dynamics rather than through legitimate consent (Christian Science Monitor) 

 

Canadian leaders, including former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have publicly urged the Vatican to return these artifacts as part of broader efforts toward reconciliation for the harms caused by the Church’s involvement in Indigenous residential schools. (University of Western Ontario News)

 

Overall, I think the article’s main point is true, but it slightly oversimplifies the situation by not acknowledging that the return is still in progress (and likely to be in progress for some time). It spends a lot of time discussing specifics of the contingency of the return and what procedures will take place, which could potentially misguide readers to think that those plans have been finalized and executed.

Answer 2

When you Google this headline, there is many prominent news outlets covering this story including PBS News Hour and Global News Canada to name a few. According to MSN, they claim that “the Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts to Indigenous communities in Canada as a part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday” (October 22nd). When looking at MSN and PBS News Hour, it is confirmed that this negotiation started in 2022 when Pope Francis met with Canadian Indigenous leaders who traveled to the Vatican to meet with him. During this meeting, the Indigenous people asked the Pope to  return the items where they belonged after viewing them. Pope Francis and the Indigenous leaders came to an agreement, with the outcome of Pope Francis wanting to help and speaking with others in the Vatican. It was a gesture to restore the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Indigenous peoples of Canada. In the next few years, these items should be back in Canada, but the process is still outgoing. As for MSN, it is known as an "aggregator" of the news and not an original publisher, so it's hard to assess whether it is bias or not. According to Google, "The bias of the MSN homepage depends on the curation and algorithmic selection of content from various third-party sources." To make this statement even stronger, Microsoft (owner of MSN), had replaced their human editors of MSN with AI for these news reports. This has caused a lot of criticism within MSN since that announcement. Overall, a  bulk of this MSN article seems correct and accurate, but also super simplistic or reduced.