Homecoming

As museums worldwide are increasingly pressured to return cultural property, co-directors Suvi West and Anssi Komi carry us through the remarkably intricate and emotional depths of the repatriation of Indigenous cultural and spiritual property to their homelands. The camera follows West as she visits Sámi artifacts housed in a Helsinki museum as they are prepared for their long-awaited return to Sápmi, the Sámi nation in northern Scandinavia and northwestern Russia. Sámi (and countless other Indigenous nations) relics are scattered worldwide in different institutions, seized or claimed over the centuries as curios for trade or as part of the aggressive Christianization that demonized Sámi culture Enhanced by the beautiful cinematography of co-director Kömi, Homecoming richly shares how personal identity, cultural value, and restorative justice can be intrinsically woven together and raises the important question of who has the right to a nation’s spiritual heritage.