In 1925, Pius XI staged the Vatican Missionary Exposition in Rome’s Vatican City. Offering a narrative of the Catholic Church’s beneficence to a global congregation, the exposition displayed thousands of cultural belongings stolen from Indigenous communities, which were seen by one million pilgrims. Gloria Jane Bell’s Eternal Sovereigns offers critical revision to that story. Bell reveals the tenacity, mobility, and reception of Indigenous artists, travelers, and activists in 1920s Rome. Animating these conjunctures, the book foregrounds competing claims to sovereignty from Indigenous and papal perspectives. Bell deftly juxtaposes the “Indian Museum” of nineteenth-century sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich, acquired by the Vatican, with the oeuvre of Indigenous artist Edmonia Lewis. Focusing on Turtle Island, Bell analyzes Indigenous cultural belongings made by artists from nations including Cree, Lakota, Anishinaabe, Nipissing, Kanien’kehá:ka, Wolastoqiyik, and Kwakwaka’wakw. Drawing on years of archival research and field interviews, Bell provides insight into the Catholic Church’s colonial collecting and its ongoing ethnological display practices. Written in a voice that questions the academy’s staid conventions, the book reclaims Indigenous belongings and other stolen treasures that remain imprisoned in the stronghold of the Vatican Museums.

Gloria Jane Bell is Assistant Professor of Art History at McGill University.

List of Illustrations  ix
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction. A Nomad in the Roman Archives: Writing from the Margins  1
1. Unsettling the Indian Museum in Rome: Ferdinand Pettrich and Edmonia Wildfire Lewis  23
2. “The Most Exhaustive Record of the World’s Progress Ever Displayed”: Pope Pius XI’s Culture of Conquest and Visitors’ Experiences at the Vatican Missionary Exposition  53
3. “A Window on the World” of Colonial Unknowing: Dioramas, Children’s Games, and Missionary Perspectives at the Vatican Missionary Exposition  91
4. Eternal Sovereigns and Ancestral Art: Ancient Archives, Relatives, and Travelers at the Vatican Missionary Exposition  125
Epilogue. Deus ex Machina: An Indigenous Protester at the Vatican Missionary Exposition  159
Appendix. Letters on Accessing the Vatican Missionary Ethnological Museum  167
Notes  171
Bibliography  207
Index  231