Return to Turtle Island: Indigenous Nation-Building in the Eighteenth Century celebrates the sophisticated social, political, and creative systems developed by Indigenous peoples prior to and during their interactions with European settlers. Turtle Island is the name given to the North American continent by Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and other First American and Canadian First Nations peoples, referencing the origin story of a landmass built on the back of a great turtle.  

From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, French and English colonists forged meaningful relationships with Indigenous sovereign nations, fortified through the exchange of gifts and knowledge. Indigenous objects, overwhelmingly created by women, were prized possessions and emissaries, defining and representing their cultures in distant lands. Scottish officer Alexander Farquharson obtained many such objects during his military travels through New York and Canada during the French and Indian Wars. He sent them back to his family estate where they remained until the early twenty-first century, when they were acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art.

Return to Turtle Island commemorates this homecoming. This exhibition honors the remarkable journey these relatives have charted as ambassadors of their own communities, and we welcome them home to Turtle Island.