The former community of Zoar is believed to be somewhere between the northern Labrador coastal towns of Nain and Hopedale. (CBC)

Inuit remains that were taken from an ancestral burial site on Labrador's north coast more than 80 years ago by an American archeologist are to be returned to Canada.

According to officials at the Chicago-based Field Museum, the remains of 22 individuals from the former community of Zoar, a town believed to have been somewhere between Nain and Hopedale, had been removed from an abandoned Moravian church.

During the Rawson-MacMillan sub-Arctic expedition of 1927-28, Field Museum archeologist William Duncan Strong is believed to have removed the remains from marked graves.

According to historical documents, including Strong's own journal, the remains were brought back to the museum, where they've been ever since.

Over the last several years, Helen Robins, the museum's repatriation director, has been working with the Torngasok Cultural Centre in Nain to have the remains returned to the community. Robins said the museum wants to make amends.

"I think it's very clear that what he did was wrong and it was not an ethical thing," said Robins. "I think it's clear he knew that he shouldn't have been doing it but did it anyway and did it because he and others, I assume, thought that it was very important scientifically."

In a statement issued Monday, Field Museum president John McCarter said, "We are deeply saddened by this incident. While Field Museum employees of today did not commit this wrong, we recognize that these actions did not comply with ethical and archeological practices, either past or current."

All costs associated with the return of the remains will be covered by the museum.

Misguided science

Robins said it's believed Strong may have removed the remains with the hope that examining them would provide insight about the people in Labrador. She said Strong's intention was to look at the skeletons and draw conclusions about populations based on physical features.

"The idea was they would have great scientific importance because they would do physical, anthropological studies of the bones and of the crania and help see if there was sort of a pattern," Robbins said. "Unfortunately, the physical anthropology wasn't what it is today, and so there wasn't a lot of useful information that they got. The idea was that you could look at crania, make, inferences or discoveries about populations and whom was related to whom based on features."

Since 2008, Robins has been working with the Torngasok centre and the Nunatsiavut government to figure out the best and most respectful way to return the remains. Robins said the process is complicated and may involve putting some of the remains on a plane and returning the rest by boat.

"The community needs to decide where they're going to be reburied. So what we'll do is we'll start working probably late this summer, this fall, with trying to figure out the logistics of how to make that happen and packing the remains and transferring them," said Robins.

The community of Zoar was established in 1865 by missionaries to help trappers and fishermen. It was abandoned in 1894 for reasons unknown. Little is known about the identities of the remains being returned. Robins said in some cases a first name and birth year is all they have.

"We do have some information about the majority of these ancestral remains," Robbins said. "It's not very complete. We have a birth year and then a death year … sometimes. Sometimes, we just have a birth year, or sometimes we just have a death year."

Johannes Lampe, the minister of culture, recreation and tourism for the Nunatsiavut government, said people in Nain and Hopedale should take comfort in news of the repatriation.

"I'm sure that people here in Nain and Hopedale may feel that it's not a good thing, but at the same time I hope that the people will feel that they are grateful for what is being done to right a wrong, to make something bad that happened to make it good."