Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome

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 and Communication Studies at McGill University.