[ISL] "Ottawa backs request for return of Beothuk remains from Scotland"

[rfmcdonald]

Deen Beeby's CBC News article is bittersweet.

Ottawa is throwing its weight behind an effort to repatriate the remains of two Indigenous people taken from a Newfoundland gravesite in 1828 that are now at a museum in Scotland.

Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly has taken the unusual step of notifying the director of National Museums Scotland that Canada will make a formal demand.

The remains are Nonosabasut and his wife Demasduit, two of the last Beothuks, an Indigenous people declared extinct in 1829. Some historians have claimed the Beothuks were the victims of genocide.

[. . .]

The federal letter revives a campaign by the Newfoundland and Labrador government, and the chief of a Mi'kmaq band, to have two skulls and related burial objects returned to Canada.

"This is wonderful news," said Chief Mi'sel Joe of the Miawpukek First Nation of Conne River, N.L., that claims kinship with the Beothuks. "When they come back to Canada, I want to travel with them."