Victoria totem pole project teaches Truth and Reconciliation through art

The artist behind the Witness Blanket documenting residential schools atrocities is hopeful projects like a hands-on totem with kids will be the bridge to respect & change. Liza Yuzda speaks with @blueravenart & indigenous author @ltldrum about the power of education.

Editor’s Note: This article contains disturbing stories of experiences at residential schools.

VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) — The artist behind the Witness Blanket documenting the atrocities of residential schools is devastated by the discovery of 215 children’s remains in Kamloops, but hopeful the students who helped create a totem pole at a Victoria school will continue to work toward reconciliation.

Students and staff of Oaklands Elementary began the Legacy Totem Pole Project in 2018 alongside Carey Newman (Hayalthkin’geme). The work was unveiled last Thursday, the handprints of the students who helped create it hanging on banners behind it. Newman — who is Kwakwak’awakw from the Kukwekum, Giiksam, and WaWalaby’ie clans of Fort Rupert, and Coast Salish from Cheam of the Sto:lo Nation along the upper Fraser Valley through his father, and English, Irish, and Scottish through his mother — says it was a joyful moment.

“Thursday was such a beautiful day with the kids coming and the blessing. With all the stuff that’s going on in this district — in this world — that was just like a little moment of hope,” he says.

Then, the discovery of the remains of 215 children in an unmarked burial site at the Kamloops residential school was announced by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation.

“The juxtaposition of those two things was inescapable. That’s how it felt for me: it kind of just took a lot of wind out of my sails, and it wasn’t because it was news. Because having worked on the Witness Blanket, we heard about children being buried. We heard from survivors who remembered digging graves, outside of the graveyard,” Newman says, adding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found in 2015 that at least 6,000 children died from abuse or neglect in residential schools.

“I was angry that there was so much shock, but I realized that it’s the tangibility of the bones. People hear numbers, but what does the number mean? What does 6000 mean? What does 215 mean? But when it’s 215 bodies that’s something that people hold onto – it impacts everyone differently.”

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Newman is not sure whether or not the news out of Kamloops — which has made headlines worldwide — will be a turning point for Canada.

“There’s parts of this conversation that make me feel despair. How can we ever honour this? When do we raise our flags again? I heard someone did some math, that if we lowered our flags in this country for every child that we know died in residential school it would be over 11 years before they were raised again,” he says.

Newman recalls how vast swathes of politicians and Canadians balked when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings in 2015, saying the system constituted cultural genocide. He also points out there was a similar backlash in 2019 when the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls found the persistent, fatal violence was genocide. But over the past week, Newman says he has seen international media, Canadian politicians, and even the Vancouver Canucks use this language to reflect the reality of Canada’s past and current treatment of Indigenous people.

“We haven’t yet come to full grips with facing the truth of how this country was built. But every time I see someone else accept something like that, I know that — even if it’s incremental — there is progress.”

‘I want to transform relationships, I want my art to be part of that’

And then there are the kids he worked with on the totem pole.

“I think about what it means for all the kids whose handprints are represented up there — what it means when they’re older when they’re the leaders who are making the decisions for this country,” he explains.

“How many times did we hear this week, ‘We weren’t taught these things, we didn’t know about these things? Now we know that the kids in this school will grow up knowing about residential schools, will grow up having had some experience with authentic Indigenous culture. Having participated, maybe that changes the level of respect and understanding.”

Seeing the change in the kids over the past two years has been a heartening reminder for Newman of how transformation and reconciliation can take place.

“I’m thinking back to the beginning of this project. When I came in and I was nervous and the kids were all nervous. Then we started up chainsaws and cutting up logs, and it went from being apprehension to celebration. The kids went from thinking that this was this other thing, to it becoming their own thing,” he says.

“I guess it just kind of hits me right in the heart when I think about that process. That’s why I do a project like this — hearts on, hands-on — because I want to transform relationships. I want to be part of that, I want my art to be part of that.”

Art can gently open the door for tough lessons, conversations

Monique Gray Smith, who is Cree, Lakota, and Scottish, writes books for youth about reconciliation. She also says she sees change happening, and believes art has a vital role to play.

“I have to have hope we’re going to see change, and sometimes that change is systemic but also the change of people’s hearts, minds, and spirits about how they uphold our dignity as Indigenous people. When that dignity isn’t upheld it is a form of trauma,” she explains.

“We’re all coming up these conversations at different places at different times, and some people need really gentle door openings to come into the conversation. That’s why I write the books I do, they’re the gentle door openings for people.”

As a mom to two teens, she does see a shift, even over the last five years.

“Because of what they’re learning in school; because of the resources available; because of what’s happening in the media; because of conversations around the dinner table, so much is changing,” she says.

“In a few years they will be the change-makers, they’ll be decision-makers, and their heart and mind and spirit will make decisions from different places that uphold dignity.”

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available for anyone affected by residential schools. You can call 1-866-925-4419 24-hours a day to access emotional support and services.

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