The Nisga'a totem pole, also known as the Ni'isjoohl memorial pole, was carved by hand in the 1860s and it depicts the story of Ts'wawit, the warrior who was next in line to be chief before he was killed in a conflict with a neighboring nation. It was taken without consent in 1929 by ethnographer Marius Barbeau and was later sold to a museum in Scotland.

While Amy Barnett, a Canadian researcher in Indigenous education, a judge at Simon Fraser University, and a representative of the nation, said that the repatriation of the artifact would mean restoring a piece of the nation’s cultural identity, she said delegates intend to discuss "their precise intentions" with the museum and government officials to request the legal title of the pole be returned to the country.

In the same context, Amy added that this is not the first time that representatives of the Nisga'a Nation traveled to Europe attempting to identify and reclaim cultural artifacts, as a group visited the National Museum of Scotland in 2018 but were told the pole was too fragile to be removed; however, they later discovered it had been moved when the museum underwent recent renovations, adding: "Prominent Canadian experts decided that the pole is in good enough condition to be moved and they would not hesitate to say that it can withstand the journey back to Canada and return to our nation." She said this prompted them to decide to return to the UK in hopes of reclaiming it.

On the other hand, National Museums Scotland through the body that oversees the museum stated, "We welcome open dialogue and foster collaboration with communities of special significance to the collection," and said, "We look forward to hosting a delegation from the Nisga’a Nation at the National Museum of Scotland to view the memorial pole, exchange information about it, and share our procedures for considering requests for object transfers."