Museums - Royal British Columbia Museum

The museum was founded in 1886 as the Provincial Museum of Natural History and Anthropology. It was later renamed the British Columbia Provincial Museum and in 1987 became the Royal British Columbia Museum. It houses thousands of historical and contemporary First Nations artifacts as well as ethnographic photographs and audiotapes created throughout British Columbia.
Among the major ethnological collections from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are the Fillip Jacobsen, Charles F. Newcombe and James Teit Collections. In 1978 the museum received a major donation of Haida argillite carvings from the Reif family. Its Potlatch Collection features carvings made by artists in the museum’s Carving Program for use in First Nations potlatches and ceremonies. The Mungo Martin House in Thunderbird Park and the Jonathan Hunt House in the First Peoples galleries are versions of historical Kwakwaka’wakw bighouses that continue to have connections with modern First Nations families.