from CBC News
Gloria Bell, an assistant professor of art history at McGill University, has been researching the Vatican’s collection of Indigenous cultural belongings and artwork for nearly a decade. She is challenging the Vatican’s official account of how it acquired tens of thousands of Indigenous artifacts from countries around the world — including Canada. The Vatican claims the artifacts were sent as gifts to the Pope. Bell’s research suggests that assertion glosses over a contested history of Indigenous people working under duress to create these items — along with evidence that some of those cultural belongings may have been stolen from communities.