Indigenous artists were producing art in the territory that is now called Canada for thousands of years prior to the arrival of European settler colonists and the eventual establishment of Canada as a nation state. Like the peoples that produced them, indigenous art traditions spanned territories that extended across the current national boundaries between Canada and the United States. The majority of indigenous artworks preserved in museum collections date from the period after European contact and show evidence of the creative adoption and adaptation of European trade goods such as metal and glass beads. Canadian sculpture has been enriched by the walrus ivory, muskox horn and caribou antler and soapstone carvings by the Inuit artists. These carvings show objects and activities from the daily life, myths and legends of the Inuit. Inuit art since the 1950s has been the traditional gift given to foreign dignitaries by the Canadian government.