Indigenous Advocates Race to Raise $20M to Prevent Private Sale of Sacred Artifacts From Closed Swiss Museum

For three decades, a massive collection of North American history sat quietly above a Migros supermarket in Gossau, Switzerland. Inside the privately owned Indian Land Museum, thousands of sacred Indigenous artifacts—from 19th-century Cheyenne cradleboards to original Winchester rifles used at the Battle of the Little Bighorn—were displayed in glass cases, a continent away from the communities that created them.[1]

The tension at the heart of the story is one of ownership versus heritage. At the end of 2025, 67-year-old Swiss collector Vincent Escriba closed the museum's doors, citing waning public interest. Now, the collection of up to 10,000 items sits packed in storage boxes, waiting to be sold to fund his retirement. The legal reality is stark: because the artifacts are private property, they fall entirely outside the jurisdiction of international repatriation treaties.[1][2]

Across the Atlantic, a Manitoba-led delegation of Indigenous advocates is racing against the clock to resolve that tension. The "Bringing Them Home" project has launched an urgent campaign to raise $20 million to purchase the entire collection en masse, effectively buying back their own heritage from the open market.[1][3]

"They are all sitting in boxes in Switzerland right now, so there's a real urgency about this," said Coleen Rajotte, a Cree advocate and member of the project. The group fears that without immediate funding, the items will be auctioned off individually to private buyers in Dubai or New York, disappearing into billionaires' offices as decorative showpieces.[4]

The collection is vast and historically profound. It includes intricately beaded bandolier bags from Algonquin, Ojibway, and Cree communities, elk-foot bags dating back to 1780, and sacred pipes and feathered headdresses. Escriba, who began collecting in the late 1970s, spent decades traveling to North America to amass the items, carefully preserving them in his Swiss facility.[1][2][3]

For the Indigenous delegates who traveled to Switzerland to inspect the collection before the museum closed, the items are far more than historical curiosities. "When I was there in Switzerland, I felt the energy of our ancestors," said Karl Stone, a councillor for the Dakota Tipi First Nation.[1]

"They're not just things you display like trophies," Stone added. "They are sacred and they are holy to our people, and they need to be looked after with prayer." The delegation believes the artifacts hold spiritual power that must be reconnected with descendant communities to facilitate cultural healing and restore identity to younger generations.[1][2][4]

The financial hurdle, however, is immense. Escriba is currently asking between $13 million and $17 million for the collection. The Bringing Them Home project is seeking an additional $3 million to cover the costs of transportation, secure climate-controlled storage, and professional authentication.[1][3]

Gerald Neufeld, a retired engineer and Ojibway speaker who accompanied the delegation, noted the high market value of individual pieces. A single 19th-century Cheyenne baby cradle, similar to ones in the Swiss collection, recently sold for $95,000 through an antiquities clearinghouse. The math of the open market is unforgiving to grassroots repatriation efforts.[1][4]

Despite the ticking clock, there is a window of cooperation. Escriba has expressed a willingness to work with the Indigenous advocates, assuring them he has not yet begun selling the items piece by piece. He has given the group time to assemble the necessary capital, though his retirement timeline looms over the negotiations.[2]

The campaign is now urging federal, First Nations, and tribal governments in both Canada and the United States to intervene and provide financial backing. While national museums and universities have increasingly reckoned with their roles in holding sacred items, private collections remain a massive, unregulated blind spot in global repatriation efforts.[3]

If the $20 million can be raised, the group plans to return specific items to their respective nations across the Prairies and the US. For the rest, they are discussing the possibility of establishing a new Indigenous-led museum in Winnipeg—ensuring that the artifacts are finally displayed on their own terms, on their own land.[1][2][4]