Il Papa restituisce 62 manufatti alle popolazioni indigene del Canada come parte della resa dei conti con il passato coloniale

The Church felt the culture was not good enough for the indigenous population but good enough to stuff into their pockets and museums. Weird.

>Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens. The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.

>But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time.

I think you’d reasonably file that under ‘inconclusive’ and leave them where they are unless you really don’t want them anymore.