The highest valuation for any item on Antique Roadshow was a famous Navajo Chief’s Blanket that was appraised for between $350,000 to $500,000 on the 2002 Tucson Roadshow.

There was also a private valuation done in which a Chief’s blanket was valued at 1 million dollars, belonging to two poor caucasion guys. They had it sitting outside on their porch for years.

So how did they get this blanket? And do they feel bad for selling the blanket when it belongs to a tribe? They decided to not be on the show, so no one can ask where their family got the blanket from. Was it stolen? Was it traded for candy? Has the Nation tried to fight for the blanket back?

It confuses me that people can sell our artifacts or put them in their museums and not think at all about the Nation.

For your knowledge, artifacts from my Nation; Little Salmon are in the museum in Scotland. Yes, Scotland! How did they get over there from a little town in the middle of the Yukon?

And how can we fight to get them back?

Many of the items in the Museum Anthropology at the University of British Columbia are known to be traded back in the day for pieces of candy. And they get thousands of people a year to come look at these yet they belong to the Squamish, Musquem and West Coast Natives.

Even on our land, if we find something like an arrow point we have to by Canadian Law inform Anthropologists. This is actual Canadian Law! So we find something that is meant to be ours. That is meant for our land, but we have to give it up?

How does this make sense?