Haudenosaunee Confederacy retrieves sacred objects from Geneva museum

After almost 200 years sitting in Switzerland museums, two sacred objects belonging to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy have returned home from overseas.

A delegation from the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee travelled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week to retrieve a medicine mask and turtle rattle from the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève (MEG).

"It was like the mask was sleeping for 200 years and the mask is now coming back awake," said Kenneth Deer, who is Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) from Kahnawà:ke, south of Montreal, and was a part of the delegation.

The Haudenosaunee, who include the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Kanien'kehá:ka and Tuscarora Nations and live on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, view medicine masks as living beings. 

"We have to treat it that way and we don't look at it as a decoration, something to decorate your wall with," said Deer.

"You wouldn't treat your brother by hanging them on the wall in a museum."

The museum held a public ceremony to hand over the mask and a turtle rattle on Feb. 7. It coincided with the start of a year-long list of activities to commemorate the centenary of the arrival of Deskaheh in Geneva.

Deskaheh, a Cayuga chief, tried to lobby for international recognition of the Haudenosaunee as a sovereign nation but in 1923 was refused the right to address the assembly floor of the League of Nations, precursor to the United Nations. Before he returned to Canada, the mayor of Geneva invited him to give a speech in front of the people of the city. 

"We know that the first thing that Indigenous peoples are asking is to be considered as sovereign, so we want to acknowledge this as well," said MEG director Carine Ayélé Durand.

"There is happiness to know they're home. At the same time a sense of loss as well from our point of view, which is not a bad loss."

However, Durand said it was important for the museum to take a proactive approach. 

"Sometimes I realize that museum professionals don't even know that some objects are sacred or sensitive," she said.

"One way of being proactive would be to get in contact [with] Indigenous organizations and then ask them to help, assist in reviewing their collections."

In 1995, the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee issued a policy statement on medicine masks, banning their use for commercial purposes and public exhibition, including photographing them. It also called for the return of all masks from private collectors, museums, galleries, universities and other institutions.