A chief’s seat that has been in the Royal B.C. Museum’s possession for more than a century is being handed back to the Heiltsuk Nation near Bella Bella.
The massive hand-carved seat was made by Captain Richard Carpenter and was used in potlatch ceremonies before it came into the museum’s possession in 1911.
Carpenter, also known as Hawallis and Dúqvay̓ḷá, was a master woodworker and chief who helped steward Heiltsuk society through European contact and colonization.
It’s unclear how the museum acquired the seat, though Carpenter sold some of his work to collectors while working as the Dryad Point lighthouse keeper, as well as a store owner and boatbuilder.
Marilyn Slett, a Carpenter descendant and the elected chief of the Heiltsuk Nation, said the seat is the first of Carpenter’s major works to be repatriated. “For this to come home, it’s a monumental day for us. It feels like Captain has come home.”
For about a decade, Carpenter, a hereditary chief, used the seat during potlatches which were then illegal under Canadian law, she said.
“You can see the wear on it.”
On Friday, about 50 members of the nation, including chiefs, council members and members of the Carpenter family, gathered at Mungo Martin House to celebrate the occasion.
Eagle down fluttered through the air as nation members welcomed the seat back with dances, songs and the retelling of Carpenter’s stories.
“Captain Carpenter was a good leader. He made sure that the people in the Bella Bella were fed,” said Steve Carpenter, Captain Carpenter’s great-grandson.
His great-grandfather was also a legendary fisherman known along the coast from Alaska to Washington state for his skills, he said.
Carpenter’s seat is the fourth object to be handed back by the Royal B.C. Museum to the Heiltsuk. Three objects taken from Heiltsuk burial grounds in the late 1800s were repatriated in 2022.
The seat was reassembled from storage for the occasion, but will be taken apart to travel by truck to Heiltsuk lands in Bella Bella, where a larger celebration is set to take place on July 25.
Heiltsuk artist Ian Reid believes that Carpenter likely painted the seat in traditional style using brushes made from deer-tail fur and porcupine quills.
“I’m very humbled by his presence. Even though his physical being has expired, I can feel it in this art.”
The chief seat is well known to the Heiltsuk, and several smaller replicas have been made, one of which resides in the Berlin Museum, said Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department repatriation adviser Elroy White.
Another was given to the Gitxaala, a Central Coast First Nation now based on Dolphin Island, he said.
The nation is still deciding where the seat will be permanently placed once it arrives in Bella Bella, he said.
About 30 B.C. First Nations are in varying stages of the process of repatriating artifacts from the Royal B.C. Museum’s collection.
