KAWACATOOSE FIRST NATION, Sask. — “We’re gonna take you home now.”
Those were okimâw (Chief) Cory Dustyhorn’s words when he first touched the teepee cover connected to his great-great-great-grandfather, sîpiskwêsîkan.
After a century away from Kawacatoose First Nation, the ancestral item has returned to the Cree community.
Community and family members gathered around the teepee cover after it was brought back from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
They prayed over it and welcomed it home.
“When I first touched it, I just felt so emotional,” Dustyhorn said.
“I was thinking of all those that are gone on before me.”
He thought about his parents, grandparents and ancestors, who preserved the history of the item through generations.
He prayed for them to be present as the community finally brought home a piece of their history.
“I told all of them, ‘Come with us, come and attend with us,” Dustyhorn recalled.
“I know they were in between all of us and they were here, too.”
Colonizers’ ‘vanishing Indian’ narrative
The teepee cover will remain in the community for four nights before being temporarily housed at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina).
Until the First Nation can build a permanent museum or cultural centre to house it safely, they plan to bring it home each year.
The return followed a reparation process that lasted almost three years.
Andrew Miller, an associate professor at the First Nations University of Canada, helped the Dustyhorn family locate the item and communicate with the Smithsonian.
Miller described the teepee cover’s return as a meaningful example of reconciliation in action.
“One of my friends from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve just realized reconciliation,” Miller said. “That’s what this is.”
But for Miller, reconciliation means more than merely acknowledging past injustices. It also requires returning ancestral belongings and supporting communities as they restore cultural teachings.
Dustyhorn said the return also highlights the need for stronger support from governments and museums, for all Indigenous communities hoping to recover what was taken away.
“They talk about truth and reconciliation,” he said. “They splash that all over the news for a few years.
“But where’s their help? How can we get the stuff back that was taken from us, too?”
Miller and Dustyhorn said museums and governments took the teepee cover during an era when they declared Indigenous cultures were disappearing and needed to be archived. That view justified an urgent push to collect ceremonial belongings and other ancestral items from Indigenous communities worldwide.
“They were wanting to capture the disappearing Indian,” Dustyhorn said.
Miller said museums particularly sought items connected to regalia, ceremonies and other cultural practices as part of that colonial narrative.
“They were targets,” Miller said, describing sacred belongings as part of the “vanishing Indian culture” narrative.
But, Dustyhorn emphasized, “We’re still here.”
‘Let’s get it back’
Miller first learned about the teepee cover from a former student, Andrea Dustyhorn. Years later, while researching ethno-ornithology — the relationships between people and birds — he found the teepee cover in the Smithsonian’s catalogue.
So he reached out to Dustyhorn.
“You should see this,” he told the chief. “What do you want to do?”
“And he said, ‘Well, let’s get it back.’”
Together they began an arduous process to bring the cover home.
Dustyhorn’s family provided genealogical information and oral histories connecting it to his great-great-great-grandfather.
During one meeting, he recounted Smithsonian representatives asking how he knew the teepee cover actually belonged to his community.
Their question, he said, reflected what he called a big difference between written museum records and Cree way of preserving history: through oral stories, saved for generations.
“Everything is handed down orally,” Dustyhorn told them. “Let me tell you a story.”
A collector remembered
Dustyhorn began sharing the history passed down through his family about the teepee cover — and the person who took it.
As he described the collector’s journey from Alaska through Saskatchewan, the Smithsonian representatives recognized details that matched their own written archival records.
“They said, ‘Did you know he started in Alaska?’” Dustyhorn recalled them asking about information he already knew. “And I’m like, ‘Really?!’”
The exchange connected the community’s oral history with the Smithsonian’s documentation, which, to the museum, established the family’s claim to the cover.
According to archival records, the item was taken in Saskatchewan in 1926.
Although the National Museum of the American Indian has since deleted its record of the teepee cover, an archived version of its webpage states it was obtained by museum staff member Donald Cadzow — who it notes was a “non-Indian.”
“Collected from Dusty Horn (sîpiskwêsîkan, Plains Cree, b. ca. 1863),” the record states.
Cadzow was hired seven years before he collected sîpiskwêsîkan’s painted fabric.
“He made four field trips north,” the Smithsonian Institution states, “and collected over 2,000 objects from northern Athapaskan and Plains peoples.”
It was later transported through Winnipeg, Toronto and New York — before finally reaching Washington, D.C.
A century later, last June, the Smithsonian notified the family it had deemed the cover ready to return. At the time, he was travelling to Regina when he got the email.
“I just started pumping my fist,” he remembered.
His wife asked, “What?! Is it the teepee?”
“Yeah, it’s the teepee,” he replied. “It’s ready to come home.“
In August, a group from Kawacatoose First Nation finally travelled to Washington, D.C. to repatriate the teepee cover.
On the journey back, Dustyhorn said the weather changed as they approached the border. Rain, hail and lightning surrounded the vehicle.
“It started raining really hard,” Dustyhorn said. “It was raining and lightning happening all around us… It started hailing.”
He saw the weather as a sign that the teepee cover was leaving behind the painful history connected to its removal.
“It’s washing the negativity — the 100 years of negativity that it is carrying … leaving it in the States,” he said.
Miller also remembered that storm — but also the clear skies that emerged soon after they crossed into “Canada.”
The travellers placed tobacco down, seeing the brightening weather as a meaningful part of the teepee cover’s return journey home.
Yolanda Dustyhorn, the community’s cultural co-ordinator, described the item’s return as an emotional and historic moment.
“Words can’t describe,” she said. “It’s very touching to have it come [back home].
“I shed a tear. It’s unbelievable.“
She also spoke about the item’s condition after so many decades away.
“The way it’s preserved, it’s 100 years old … yet we were able to still erect it,” she said. “It’s amazing.”
She hopes having the teepee cover available in Saskatchewan will help younger generations learn about their history, culture and traditional teachings.
“We gotta bring our culture back,” she said. “I want them to see this and to realize we gotta bring our culture back.”
She plans to incorporate the returned teepee cover into programs for Youth. Her work includes teaching traditional medicines, ribbon skirts, belts and other cultural practices.
“I’m targeting the Youth and the children,” she said. “We are gonna start bringing culture back.“
‘One foot in front of the other’
Miller said the loss of cultural belongings continues to impact many Indigenous communities a century later.
“It impacts the present generation to this day.“
He said the removal of ceremonial belongings like the teepee cover significantly disrupted cultural education, language and traditional practices.
“This was involved in ceremony,” Miller said. But there are many more still held in museums and archives around the world.
“There’s a lot out there,” he said. “Pipes, rattles, regalia, medicine bundles.”
Reflecting on his correspondence with the Smithsonian, Dustyhorn said he felt there were unnecessary delays throughout the repatriation process.
“We’d wait months for a reply,” he said, and they kept setting up more and more meetings.
Although they were ultimately successful, Miller argued that museums should be willing to participate more proactively in repatriating communities’ cultural belongings — “to give back the things that are requested,” he said.
For Kawacatoose’s leader, despite the hurdles he had to jump through, the return of his great-great-great-grandfather’s teepee cover proved what communities can accomplish when they keep fighting for their belongings.
He encouraged other First Nations hoping to recover ancestral belongings to be persistent.
“Start the process and finish the process,” Dustyhorn recommended. “Keep going forward — one foot in front of the other every day — until they get it home.
“I want all the other communities to get their stuff, to bring pride back to their Nations.”
His First Nation is now working to bring home additional belongings, he said, estimating that about 900 artifacts connected to the community are held at the Glenbow Museum in otôskwanihk (Calgary).
The community is also preparing for the return of objects from the Field Museum in Chicago, Ill. Miller said that collection could include roughly 60 items.
For the Nation and the Dustyhorn family, the return of sîpiskwêsîkan’s teepee cover is both a homecoming — and a renewal of their profound cultural pride.
“I want all our kids to be proud,” the chief said. “Walk with your head held high.”
