Sixty-two artifacts from various First Nations, Inuit, and Metis communities will be finally returning home to Canada, a century after being collected by missionaries and sent to Rome.

Around 100,000 objects were collected and sent by missionaries to be a part of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition of 1925.

“These items, they’re not items, they’re our grandmothers and our grandfathers,” said author and storyteller, Tanya Talaga. “These are objects we’ve used in ceremony that were cared for by our elders and our ancestors for so long. To have them not with us, it really hurts.”

The artifacts are currently housed in the ethnological collection of the Amina Mundi Museum in Vatican City.

“There are artifacts from all over the world, from Indigenous nations and some of the little cards attach

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