A 2024 internal audit of the Indigenous Art Centre found that the federal government has lost more than 130 pieces of Indigenous art, valued at $48,878.
Starting in 2019, the audit examined the operations of the Indigenous Art Centre department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
The findings cited “key risks” to the collection’s security during and after its relocation to temporary private storage facilities following renovations of the centre in 2022.
The audit found that in addition to “negatively impacting” the collections’ designated status through the Movable Cultural Property program, failing to fulfill the “key requirements” of care can “erode” the trust placed in the program by Indigenous artists.
The majority of the pieces identified in the auditor’s report, says a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations, were loaned to government offices for display in the 1980s.
“Since the publication of the report, some pieces have been located, while others have been identified as reference materials and reproductions, or duplicate records included in the final count in error,” said Alec Wilson, the press secretary for the minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, in an email to the Calgary Journal.
The entire collection — more than 5,000 artworks by First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists — is valued at roughly $14.4 million and includes works by renowned artists such as Christi Belcourt, Elisapee Ishulutaq, Kent Monkman and Norval Morrisseau.
Not without precedent
Indigenous art has a reputation for being improperly handled, said Jaime Waucaush-Warn, an associate professor of Indigenous studies at Mount Royal University (MRU). She isn’t surprised that the collection was lost.
“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” she said. “It’s kind of the legacy of Indigenous art that has been stolen, taken, even gifted in some cases.”
The impact of losing artifacts and art from any community is significant, both physically and spiritually, Waucaush-Warn explains. In her own work as an artist, Waucaush-Warn believes that her knowledge comes from kitchen tables and the Indigenous women who continue to push back against racism and colonialism.
Born out of those knowledge systems, Waucaush-Warn was a part of a collective of six women who created the Aunties/Anti exhibit on MRU’s main street. Being able to respond to the impacts of colonialism through art filled a gap in the faces Waucaush-Warn saw in the institutions around her.
“We always see a panel of usually old white men on the walls,” she said. “Those are the people, the founding fathers, that have built this institution. Well, so have these women. And we don’t know their names, we don’t know their faces.”
That’s why losing items from Indigenous communities, said Waucaush-Warn, is so harmful. The MRU professor has witnessed artifacts stored improperly and experienced the loss of artifacts from her own family.
Her great-grandmother’s headband and spoon sit in the Smithsonian, with no easy way for Waucuash-Warn to access her own family’s history.
“If we accept these works, or have taken on the care of these works, then we have a responsibility to them,” she explained. “We can’t just have work for the sake of hoarding, for the sake of collecting, for the sake of saying, ‘I possess them.’ Whatever that means, possessing.”
Federal government response
The audit outlines a need for policy revisions, increased storage facilities, and an analysis of the costs associated with implementing proper preservation, promotion and protection of the artifacts. Those changes were implemented in March of 2025.
But, as the audit also outlines, the damaging impact this loss already has on Indigenous communities and artists risks the trust the Indigenous Art Center seeks to rebuild.
In the future, Waucaush-Warn hopes this loss brings an awareness of the importance of Indigenous knowledge systems and the records they hold. For her, the importance of keeping a record of Indigenous identity is a reflection of the survival of Indigenous people through colonialism.
“Some of those artifacts hold our identities, hold who we are. So they’re animate beings. They’re living. They have spirit,” said Waucaush-Warn. “They’re pertinent to our identity and not to treat it as such is shameful, it’s harmful, and it’s continuing a colonial legacy that is disgraceful.”
— With files from Canadian Press.
Correction: An earlier version of this story estimated the value of the unaccounted Indigenous art at $14 million.