Issue - meetings

To consider the report of the Director (J-PH).

The Museums Manager and Cultural Lead presented the report seeking the de-accessioning from RAMM’s collections a group of ceremonial items that once belonged to Chief Crowfoot, a Chief of the Siksika Nation, and transferring ownership to the Siksika Tribal Council, Alberta, Canada.

The Siksika were one of the four Indigenous nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy. The Siksika Nation is governed by a Chief and 12 Councillors constituting the Siksika Tribal Council. Described as the “Crowfoot regalia”, the items once belonged to Chief Crowfoot, an important late nineteenth-century Blackfoot leader and believed to have been acquired in Canada by a Cecil Denny about the time of a treaty signing (Treaty 7) and loaned to RAMM by his sister in 1878. They had been purchased by RAMM in 1904.

RESOLVED that legal title to the Crowfoot regalia be relinquished by Exeter City Council and transferred to the Siksika Tribal Council, the living descendants of Chief Crowfoot and legally recognised representatives of the Siksika Nation.