This thesis focuses on repatriation, resurgence, and reconnection. In line with Indigenous methodologies of prologuing and story, I employ the auto-ethnographic method to detail my experience of Indigenous identity and investigating my relationship to my father’s Métis heritage. I further engage in the practice of story through qualitative, semi-structured, conversational interviews with two Indigenous arts professionals currently working in the field of repatriation. Through narrative analysis and a critical museological framework, these conversations form the foundations for an exploration into strategies of repatriation and the role stolen cultural belongings play in the collections of galleries, museums, and other heritage organizations.
What emerges from the conjunction of these stories is a treatise on collecting and belonging through the lens of personal and professional functions of return. This research seeks to demystify the practice of repatriation as a one-time, almost bureaucratic occurrence and instead posits it as one tool of relationship building between museums and communities. Similarly, I show how the processes of reconnection and resurgence also struggle to be linear events. Through this combination of auto-ethnography and conversational interviews, I explore how access to or absence of emotional and material expressions of self shape identity through a critique of what collecting practices we engage in as both individuals and institutions.