Indigenous leaders urge reburial of Beothuk remains in Newfoundland

Unreserved54:00Unmapped: St. John’s

Perched atop Signal Hill, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, daily tours often recount the colonial tale of St. John's — a narrative of European settlers forging new lives on distant shores.

Yet beneath the echoes of colonial triumph lies an even deeper story: one of the Beothuk, the Indigenous people of Newfoundland whose voices were largely silenced by colonization.

Indigenous leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador are calling for the return and reburial of two Beothuk ancestors, Demasduit and Nonosabasut, whose remains have been in storage for more than two centuries.

Now under the care of The Rooms provincial museum archives in St. John's, discussions are under way about their final resting place on their ancestral land.

"They were stolen, they were taken, they were grave robbing and it's long overdue for them to come back where they belong," said, Mi'sel Joe, traditional chief of Miawpukek First Nation.

A history of tragedy

Nonosabasut, a Beothuk leader, was killed by European settlers during a violent clash in 1819 near Beothuk Lake in central Newfoundland. His wife, Demasduit, was captured shortly thereafter. She gave birth to their child, only for the infant to perish days later.

Although attempts were made to return Demasduit to Beothuk Lake that summer, she succumbed to tuberculosis in January 1820 and was laid to rest beside her husband in a simple coffin.

Decades later, Scottish explorer William Cormack located their gravesite and brought their remains to the National Museum of Scotland — an act that historians now recognized as grave robbing. For nearly 200 years, the remains were kept in Edinburgh before being repatriated to Canada in 2020.

"She was taken away from her home and her infant child violently by colonists and later she and her husband had their skulls removed from their grave,"  said Leahdawn Helena, a Mi'kmaw playwright originally from Bay St. George, N.L. "It's just an all‑around really tragic series of events."

Helena's extensive research into the lives of Beothuk women, most notably featured in her play-turned-book Stolen Sisters, resurrects the otherwise marginalized narratives of Indigenous women before and after colonization. Her work revisits the story of Demasduit, whose life and suffering mirror repeated patterns of dispossession and violence.

"I think it's really exemplary of a universal Indigenous experience of colonialism… a story that repeats over and over again with just as much tragedy, just as much loss, just as much violence," Helena said affirms, highlighting how the Beothuk experience aligns with Indigenous histories across the globe.

Remembering the Beothuk

The Beothuk were the original inhabitants of what is now known as Newfoundland. They predominantly resided in central Newfoundland, near the Exploits River and Beothuk Lake.

Travel within their island homelands was facilitated by birchbark canoes, and large sedentary camps were interspersed with seasonal encampments along rivers and lakes. Their sustenance was drawn from the land and sea: they harvested fish, hunted caribou and sea animals, and gathered berries and roots.

The Beothuk were a hunting and fishing people whose seasonal movements were closely tied to the availability of resources. In spring and summer, families spread out along the coast to fish and gather, while in the fall they moved inland to hunt, trap, or organize caribou drives along rivers and streams.

To meet their subsistence needs, each band required access to a large and varied territory rich in natural resources, according to N.L.'s Heritage project. In the early 1600s, for instance, the Beothuk — who interacted and traded with John Guy of the English settlement at Cupids — gathered seabirds, eggs, and fish along the shores of Trinity Bay. In Placentia Bay, they fished for salmon in the Come-by-Chance River and likely hunted the plentiful harbour seals on nearby islands.

In a distinctive cultural practice, the Beothuk adorned their bodies, clothing, and tools with red ochre, earning them the misnomer "Red Indians" by early European explorers — a term now recognized as derogatory.

Through displacement, disease, loss of natural resources, and violent encounters with settlers throughout the 17th to 19th centuries, the Beothuk population dwindled dramatically. With no transmission of culture and no new generations to carry on traditions, the Beothuk are often referred to as culturally extinct.

The path to repatriation

The repatriation process began in 2015 when Chief Mi'sel Joe initiated a campaign to return Beothuk remains to their homeland. This effort gained momentum with support from the provincial and federal governments and several Indigenous organizations, including the Nunatsiavut Government, Innu Nation and Qalipu First Nation. 

"There's nobody around to speak for the Beothuk people at this time. And somebody has to start a process of bringing those remains back to this land where they belong," said Chief Joe.

Today, the remains of Demasduit and Nonosabasut are held at The Rooms in St. John's. While the physical repatriation is complete, Indigenous leadership is guiding the process to determine their final resting place.

A statement from the office of Scott Reid, Newfoundland's Minister Responsible for Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation, said that they are leaving it in the hands of the Final Resting Place Circle to determine where Demasduit and Nonasabusut will be buried and that the province "will not dictate to them timelines as this is an Indigenous‑led process."

In the meantime, Demasduit and Nonosabasut continue to wait in the vault at The Rooms. 

This story is part of a travel series from Unreserved called Unmapped. The series invites us to look for the Indigenous presence in some of the most iconic travel destinations around the world. Meet the people who are nurturing community and raising the visibility of Indigenous pasts, presents and futures.