Aidan Jaager
Saskatoon StarPhoenix
After 135 years, a sacred and historic pipe belonging to Chief Whitecap has returned to the Whitecap Dakota First Nation, just south of Saskatoon.
Chief Whitecap gave the pipe to a Saskatoon store owner during a trial in 1885, Whitecap councillor Frank Royal said Wednesday in an interview.
“During the Riel Rebellion, Chief Whitecap was arrested for treason and he did go to trial. He had good friends in Saskatoon, the Willoughby brothers … one was a doctor and the other a store owner I believe, and Gerald Willoughby testified on his behalf.”
“In 1889, from what his family mentioned to us, is that on his death bed he asked Gerald to come see him and gave this pipe as a gift. Nobody knew where the Willoughbys moved to after that … we knew about the story, but nobody knew where the family of the descendants were,” Royal said.
That was until Royal got a call from the City of Saskatoon, which had received a call from Dianne Elliot — the great-granddaughter of Willoughby’s brother — who lived in Ottawa.
According to Royal, she said she saw a story about a military pipe on the news in 2023, and decided her family’s pipe needed to be returned to the Whitecap community.
Royal and Elliot met at a repatriation ceremony in Ottawa in August, where they performed a transfer ceremony and exchanged stories.
“I learned that Gerald Willoughby’s brother, who was a doctor, gave up his own house to be the first hospital in Saskatoon, which turned out to be St. Paul’s Hospital,” Royal said.
In addition to the pipe, 60 pieces of century-old regalia and beadwork belonging to Saskatoon brothers Harry and Theodore Charmbury, who operated a Saskatoon photography studio, were returned to the Whitecap Dakota First Nation by members of the Charmbury family.
“The pure cultural value of having received back really historic and old and really well preserved pieces of culture to the community, on a really big scale, that they haven’t really managed to locate yet, means immeasurable value,” Canadian Museums Association community engagement manager, Stephanie Danyluk, said.
“In terms of cultural significance, every piece has a connection to certain aspects of spirituality and certain aspects of cultural creation and ties to family … it carries a lot of layers of cultural knowledge as well,” she added.
Danyluk, who worked with Whitecap in supporting repatriation work for 10 years, said she typically only sees one item come in at time, rather than an entire collection.
She said the pipe’s return is “about the recognition of the significance of the pipe to the community over the family continuing to keep it.
“The pipe is significant because it belonged to our original leader and was returned to our community. So to give it away, it had to be an important gift to an individual and to get it back to the community is important,” Royal said.
Sacred and cultural belongings were removed from communities through “various measures,” Danyluk said.
“Sometimes it was done by agents of the church and other ways like coercion, sometimes purchased in really dire economic situations. It’s more of a recognition of the right to continue to have and maintain and protect the cultural heritage of the community rather than an act of reconciliation.”
Royal said he’s enjoyed working with museums during the repatriation process, and plans for the pipe to eventually be on display.
