The Museum of Ethnography in the Swiss city of Geneva has restituted two sacred objects acquired without consent nearly 200 years ago to their original nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
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Keystone-ATS/SWI
A ceremony – the first of its kind by the museum – took place on Tuesday in the presence of a delegation from the Haudenosaunee, the authorities of the city of Geneva and representatives of the museum.
The objects concerned are a mask and a rattle.
Museum officials said that considering the Haudenosaunee were the traditional owners and the cultural value of these objects made them unsuitable for exhibition.
The ceremony could not be filmed or photographed.
As part of the ceremony, a Tree of Peace offered by the Haudenosaunee Confederation, will be planted in a public Geneva park later this week.
The Haudenosaunee include the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk and Tuscarora. They live on both sides of the border between the United States and Canada.
The city of Geneva received a formal request for the return of the objects from the Haudenosaunee Confederation’s external relations committee last August.
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This content was published on
As countries re-examine their colonial past, returning cultural artefacts has become a hot issue. This affects Switzerland too.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.