The Chiefs of Ontario, the political body representing 133 First Nations across the province, issued an open letter Sept. 23 calling on governments, museums, universities and private collectors to return Indigenous ancestral remains and sacred belongings still held in their custody, ahead of Monday’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The letter asks private citizens who hold ancestors, sacred items or knowledge of their whereabouts to come forward in good faith, and asks governments, museums and universities to share their inventories directly with First Nations and remove barriers that slow repatriation, according to a statement posted on the Chiefs of Ontario website. It grew out of a resolution passed by Ontario Chiefs-in-Assembly in June 2025 directing Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict to advance the file.
“Our Ancestors are not objects. They are our relatives, and they deserve to be treated with dignity,” Benedict said in the statement. Knowledge Keeper Pat Oakes added that “when we speak about bringing our Ancestors home, we are speaking about our sacred duty,” framing the work as spiritual rather than administrative. Anishinabek News, an independent outlet covering Ontario First Nations, reported on the letter’s launch the same week, describing it as part of a broader push tied to the Sept. 29 to 30 Orange Shirt Day and Truth and Reconciliation events already scheduled across the province.
What the letter does not do is put a number on the problem, and that is where the real scale of the issue shows up. A three-year national review commissioned by the Canadian Museums Association found that Canadian institutions collectively hold roughly 6.7 million Indigenous objects and human remains, with about 94 per cent of that total concentrated in just eight institutions. That review, prompted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 67, urged Ottawa to legislate and fund repatriation rather than leave it to individual institutions to act voluntarily, and called for Indigenous staff to be hired into permanent decision-making roles rather than advisory ones.
Nearly a decade after the commission’s final report, that legislation still does not exist, which is part of why Ontario’s Chiefs are now going directly to institutions and the public rather than waiting on federal action. The pattern has precedent: the Assembly of First Nations has held ceremonies in recent years marking the return of items from the Vatican Museums, following Pope Francis’s 2022 apology and pledges to examine the Church’s holdings. Those returns took years of direct negotiation between First Nations and one institution at a time, the kind of case-by-case process the Chiefs of Ontario letter is now trying to accelerate at a provincial scale.
For readers outside Ontario, the letter is also a reminder that repatriation is not a settled, past-tense chapter of reconciliation. Ancestral remains taken through archaeological digs, private collecting and institutional acquisition over more than a century remain in storage in universities and museums across the country today, including outside Ontario. Advocates say every year those remains stay uncatalogued or unreturned is a year communities are denied the ability to properly lay their relatives to rest according to their own traditions.
The Chiefs of Ontario says questions about the letter or information on holdings can be directed to its repatriation office. With no deadline attached and no legislation compelling institutions to respond, whether the letter produces returns or simply another round of pledges will likely become clearer well after this week’s reconciliation events have passed.
Via Chiefs of Ontario. Original release: chiefs-of-ontario.org
