This project explores Indigenous cultural revitalization through the histories, afterlives, and renewed possibilities of the K’ëgit pole. Carved approximately 150 years ago, the pole belongs to the C’inegh Lhay Yikh, a matrilineal extended-family group within the Witsuwit’en clan of Likhskilyu. In 1938, it was taken to Paris by a surrealist collector, and it has remained in the custody of French museums ever since.
Moving beyond the dominant focus on repatriation - the return of cultural belongings - this project centres rematriation as a way of understanding the K’ëgit pole’s enduring cultural significance. It considers how the pole, despite its displacement, continues to connect people, knowledge, and cultural practices across generations, opening pathways for Indigenous knowledge transmission, cultural renewal, and the reclamation of relationships to ancestral belongings.
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The Këgit Pole
The Këgit pole is significant as the largest and oldest surviving Witsuwit’en pole, carved prior to the influx of white settlers to their lands in the late-nineteenth century. Emblazoned with the story of C’idimsggin’is, the pole represents the connection of the Likhsilyu (Small Frog Clan) to the spirit of the land.
March 3, 2026
Congratulations, Dr. Connauton!
January 8, 2025
Article in Y-File, York University
Funding
The Old Poles, New Stories Project is supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant Programme.
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