Indigenous group seeks help repatriating cultural items from Switzerland
Posted June 23, 2026 2:16 pm.
Last Updated June 23, 2026 7:20 pm.
A collection of Indigenous sacred belongings thousands of kilometres away in Switzerland is at a crossroads. With the private museum they are housed in now closed, Indigenous leaders fear sacred pipes, regalia, and ceremonial items could be sold off to private collectors, and they are now calling for action to help bring those belongings home.
“He’s already boxed everything up and wants to wrap this up like pretty quickly,” said Coleen Rajotte, a member of Bringing Them Home.
The collection, owned by Swiss collector Vincent Escriba, includes thousands of belongings connected to Indigenous Nations across North America.
Advocates say many are believed to originate from Dakota, Lakota, Cree, Ojibwe and Blackfoot communities, although questions remain about exactly how such a large collection was assembled over several decades.
“It was one of those things like you just couldn’t really put a number to it. Just seemed like it went on and on forever,” said Gerald Neufeld, a Bringing Them Home member.
While advocates say the sacred belongings should be returned to the communities they came from, they say dealing with a private collector makes that process far more complicated.
“He’s taken very good care of these photographs. They look authentic. We need to get them authenticated. We need to get them priced and we need to bring them home,” said Neufeld.
Karl Stone, the councillor of Dakota Tipi First Nation, said, “Some of the things that they’re like our sacred pipes, our gourds, rattles, these are holy, and they were used in ceremony, and they shouldn’t be displayed like that. But, you know, I think the right thing to do is to take those things back to our elders and our people in our communities and have ceremony over it and make decisions from there how they should be kept.”
The group says the collector is seeking between $13 and $17 million and has expressed a willingness to work with Indigenous representatives first. But without a deal, they fear the collection could eventually be sold piece by piece through private auctions.
“We contacted him yesterday to make sure that he hasn’t started the process of selling these items off one by one, and he assured us that he has not, that he wants to work with us and come up with a price and deliver it back to Canada,” said Rajotte.
They are now calling for financial help, saying bringing the collection home will require governments, Indigenous leaders, museums, donors and communities from across Canada and the United States to work together.
“It’s totally up to him what he’s going to do from there, but I did my part, and I told him, you know, return to Sacred. Don’t put profit on Sacred. That’s not a good way,” said Neufeld.
-With files from the Canadian Press
