Geneva returns ritual objects to indigenous people of North America Geneva returns ritual objects to indigenous people of North America

The Ethnographic Museum of Geneva (MEG) has returned to Native Americans two ritual objects acquired nearly 200 years ago. To mark the return, a ceremony was held at the museum on Tuesday afternoon, attended by representatives of the Haudenosaunee Confederation, the State of Geneva and the MEG.

The returned objects are a mask and a rattle. At the end of August, the city of Geneva received a formal request from the Committee for External Relations of the Haudenosaunee Confederation to return the objects. The city of Rhône immediately agreed to the request.

The Haudenosaunee were the traditional owners of the objects and because of the ritual value of the objects they were not suitable for exhibition, it was said at the time. The ceremony was not allowed to be filmed or photographed.

Haudenosaunee is the self-designation of the Iroquois, which includes the Seneca, the Cayuga, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Mohawk, and the Tuscarora. At the beginning of the 17th century, the then 20,000 Haudenosaunee lived in the north of the US state of New York. Today, they are located on both sides of the US-Canada border, south and east of the Great Lakes.

Haudenosaunee means “people of the longhouse”. These semi-sedentary tribes traditionally lived in buildings about 20 meters long and six meters wide, each containing several families. The longhouses were owned by women. Iroquois society was matrilineally oriented. The head of a family was a woman and the children belonged to the maternal line. (sda)