By Ross Nervig

Home to Mi’kma’kik is a multi-year project led by Mi’kmawey Debert Cultural Centre (MDCC) to reconnect Mi’kmaw people with cultural belongings currently housed in the Smithsonian Institution. Held in the collections of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), these belongings were made by Mi’kmaw ancestors—each one carrying memory, artistry, and knowledge. The goal of the project is to document these belongings, return them to Mi’kma’kik, and restore their connection with community.

In Phase 1, MDCC’s curatorial team travelled to Washington, DC, to identify and inventory more than a thousand belongings connected to Mi’kmaw people—more than 1500 individual items represented by more than 500 catalog numbers. The team documented each item with photographs, descriptions, and quiet care, laying the groundwork for a more community-rooted engagement.

Phase 2 invited Mi’kmaw cultural practitioners—beaders, quillers, and basketmakers—to join the process. Over the course of several trips to DC, they engaged with the belongings as practitioners leading curation efforts in order to assess their readiness for travel. These were not museum visits. They were acts of recognition, recovery, and relationship-building.

With Phase 2 of Home to Mi’kma’kik now complete, MDCC looks ahead to Phase 3—the return of belongings to Mi’kma’kik. Yet the echoes of those first visits are still being felt. What began as ...

 

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