e-misférica: After Truth
February 22, 2011
A special edition of e-misférica, focusing on truth commissions, has just been published. The articles and reviews cover a diverse range of issues related to truth commissions around the world. I have two short pieces on the IRS TRC in this issue: Contexualizing Truth: Recent Contributions to Discourses of Reconciliation in Canada, and The Nation Gathers. Looking forward to reading more of this special edition.
Louder than Words
January 24, 2011
There is an article in the New York Times today about Zimbabwean artist, Owen Maseko, whose recent exhibit at the National Gallery has been censored. Maseko’s work focuses on the Gukuranhundi, a massacre of thousands of Ndebele people that occurred between 1983 – 1987 in Zimbabwe. The exhibit remains standing but access has been barred. Instead, patrons can catch glimpses of the work from a balcony above. The windows of the gallery have been covered with newspapers.
The windows of the National Gallery, covered in newspaper. Source: NY Times
The New York Times article touches on the troubled past (and present) of Zimbabwe under President Mugabe’s rule, and discusses the fear of a public who cannot criticize its rulers or play a hand in shaping their country’s future. It also highlights the complicated relationship between art, politics and reconciliation. The article notes that Owen Maseko “created the Gukurahundi exhibit to contribute to reconciliation.” I wonder what reconciliation means in this context, especially given that Mugabe is still in power.
As my research on the Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission (IRS TRC) moves forward, the role of artwork in the negotiation of a troubled past and particularly within the context of reconciliation continues to arise as an area of interest. The IRS TRC has put out a call for artwork, recognizing that images/artwork/film etc. can play a powerful role in processes of reconciliation. It is the first TRC that has prioritized artist engagements with the past in this way.
I recently came across this image on one of my favorite blogs, No Caption Needed. The blog post is entitled “Seeing the Past in the Present,” and showcases the work of artist Sergey Larenkov. Larenkov uses archival images of Europe during World War II and current photographs to make the past legible in the present. Because I find these images so striking, and because sometimes images do speak louder than words, I end this post with one of Larenkov’s images.
By Sergey Larenkov. Source: No Caption Needed
Reconciling Several Pasts
December 20, 2010
The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission has recently announced a conference to take place in Vancouver (March 2 – 4, 2011) to discuss the proposed National Research Centre on Residential Schools. I recently visited the Nikkei Place / Japanese Canadian National Museum (JCNM) in Burnaby whose funds partially came from the reparations awarded for the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. I wonder if the Research Centre on Residential Schools will take their cue from the JCNM, which aims to be a site for both the sharing of information as well as the creation and fostering of a strong Japanese Canadian community.
Raymond Nakamura gave me a tour of the exhibit on the internment and we discussed some of the similarities between the Japanese Canadian experience and the Indian Residential Schools. A few months ago, I posted a short excerpt from Thomas King’s short story, “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens,” which draws connections between these two histories. It seems fitting to post it again here:
“I know the story of the Japanese internment in Canada. I know it as most Canadians know it.
In pieces.
From a distance.
But whenever I hear the story, I think about Indians, for the treatment the Canadian government afforded Japanese people during the Second World War is strikingly similar to the treatment that the Canadian government has always afforded Native people, and whenever I hear either of these stories, a strange thing happens.
I think of the other.
I’m not suggesting that Native people have suffered the way the Japanese suffered or that the Japanese suffered the way Native people have. I’m simply suggesting that hatred and greed produce much the same sort of results, no matter who we practice on.”
Model of Japanese Canadian Internment Camp in Lemon Creek, BC
Image at Internment Exhibit
AFN Event
December 12, 2010
The Assembly of First Nations is holding an event tomorrow, December 13, 2010, in Ottawa focusing on the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement. The event will be webcast live from 8:30am – 4:30pm. Click here for more information and a link to the webcast.
Back to the matter at hand
December 1, 2010
Postcard for The Children Remembered
I’ve been looking through the archival documents and images I brought with me to Paris and am still trying to process the many stories they tell. Because in most cases I did not bring the originals with me, I am either looking at pictures of pictures (photographs I’ve taken of the images), photocopies or reproductions of the originals that are now circulating in different ways.
The image that has my attention now is a postcard printed by the United Church of Canada. It is a piece of promotional material for their Residential Schools Archival Project: “The Children Remembered.” There is a lot going on in the photo. The children are drawing “zeros” or perhaps circles on the blackboard, their backs facing away from us. Three girls, five boys. The banner “Looking unto Jesus” is perched above them in bold block letters. The image conveys both a sense of movement and a sense of stillness. The second girl is caught with her head looking slightly to her left; the boy second from the right seems to be reaching upwards to write higher. The angle from the picture is taken positions the photographer (and the viewer of the photograph) within the first rows of the classroom.
On the back of the postcard is a short excerpt from the United Church of Canada Apology made in 1986: “We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were.”
Happening Now: Webcast of Public Education Initiative
October 26, 2010
To watch the live webcast of Public Education Initiative, presented by the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, connect to the IRSSS site and click on the webcast link. The event is scheduled to run from 8:30am – 4:30pm PST and is hosted by Squamish Nation at the Chief Joe Mathias Centre in North Vancouver.
The audience listens to Grand Chief Stewart Phillip the Public Education Initiative.
Grand Chief Edward John addresses the audience via video link
New York and Toronto: Two Upcoming Events
October 12, 2010
I wish I could attend this event in New York:
October 18 2010, 6 – 8pm: The University Seminars on Cultural Memory and on Redress invite you to join in a discussion of the new publication, MEMORY: HISTORIES, THEORIES, DEBATES (Fordham), which explores the future of memory studies. Its editors, Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz, will present their project. Respondents Daniel Levy, Jenny James and Marita Sturken will join them in a discussion of the state of the field and its future.
Location: Room 1 on the 2nd Floor of Faculty House
(http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/faculty_house.html)
But at least I’ll be able to attend this event in Toronto:
imagineNATIVE is a media festival in Toronto running from October 20th until October 24th. See the program here. I’m particularly interested in seeing A Windego Tale, the closing night film.
A Windego Tale:
Against an idyllic autumn backdrop, Harold (Gary Farmer) embarks on a road trip north with his troubled grandson and recounts a story of their family’s harrowing past that began a generation earlier. In a remote northern community, Lily (Andrea Menard) returns home after a 15-year absence and reunites with her estranged mother, Doris (Jani Lauzon). When she begins to uncover the terrifying legacy of the community’s residential school and its ties to her own family, the weight of the past threatens to awaken the sinister spirit of the Windigo. With an all-star cast that includes the screen debut of acclaimed writer Lee Maracle, this gripping and potent psychological drama depicts the intergenerational scars left by residential schools in this dark chapter of Canada’s history, and the power of reconciliation and hope for the future.
TRC Commission and Canadian Senate Hearing
September 27, 2010
On Tuesday morning (September 28, 2010), the IRS TRC commissioners will give an update on the commission’s progress to the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. Their presentation will be webcast live at 9:30am Eastern. For details, click here, and to watch the webcast, click here.
UPDATE: FULL TEXT OF THE PRESENTATION CAN BE READ HERE: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ISSUES AND RESOURCES.
Photo of Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of the IRS TRC, courtesy of CBC.ca
A Visit to Ottawa
September 20, 2010
Indian Residential School students holding up letters spelling "goodbye" at the Fort Simpson School in the Northwest Territories, 1922. Credit: J.F. Moran / Library and Archives Canada / PA-102575
I’ve posted in the past about visiting various archives, and it never ceases to amaze me the stacks and stacks of information held within their walls. You can start your search in one place, looking for one thread of information and the trail takes you somewhere completely different. My trip to the National Archives in Ottawa was no different. Mostly, I was looking for particular photos from particular residential schools, and I saw many photographs that were striking (including the one above, which can also be found online through the archive’s website).
I also found a whole stack of letters sent from the schools to the administrators regarding the upkeep of the schools, payment to staff, ledgers of staff and students. These documents track some of the mundane and everyday aspects involved in running the schools, revealing the ways in which policies affecting the schools took shape. For example, many of the letters I sifted through (generally from the 1940s and 1950s) discussed the need for manual training for the students. The focus was not on reading, writing or math, but on the training of a low-income work force. The documents included the lists of chores (including the repairing of furniture and fixing broken windows) undertaken by the young students and included letters expressing concern and dismay at the poor conditions in which the students resided. For example:
Letter extract from Dr. P.E. Moore, Director of Indian Health Services, on his visit to Chemawawin Indian Day School – Letter dated 15, September 1947:
“When I see these buildings I am not at all proud of our Department. We should set an example and we are certainly not doing it here. However, any comments I shall make are purely from a health angle. There has been a lot of rain recently and I discovered that the ration house leaks in places, the plaster has fallen away from between the logs which must allow both rain and snow to penetrate. At one corner the logs are so rotted that the dogs had dug a hole large enough for them to enter and steal some of the bacon. The man has repaired this opening temporarily with tin and stones. One would have to have a powerful imagination to see anything sanitary about this place.”
Writing on the Wall – Portage la Prairie
September 7, 2010
The former Portage la Prairie Indian Residential School, renamed the Rufus Prince building.
A heart sticker near a drain at the former Indian Residential School in Portage la Prairie.
As I’ve mentioned, I spent some time traveling and researching this summer. One stop I have yet to write about is my short visit to Portage la Prairie. Located just an hour or so outside of Winnipeg, I spent a day there after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s first national event. While in Portage la Prairie, I visited a former residential school that is now being used as development and tribal offices for the Long Plain First Nation. The school itself is still in good condition, and it had been chosen to house the Indian Residential School Museum of Canada. Originally slated to open in 2008, the Museum unfortunately lost its funding and the project has been put on hold. Some of the archival documents, artwork and photographs are still housed in the school’s basement.
While visiting the school, I was fortunate to have a tour of the grounds. Barb Esau and Robert Peters walked with me through the school. As we walked, they pointed to where the students had showered, where they were sequestered when punished, and where they lined up to eat….
NOTE: I am currently working on writing a longer piece about visiting the school, so I have truncated the version that originally appeared here.
Thank you to Ruth Roulette, Barb Esau, Robert Peters and Angela Roulette for sharing your time, memories and experiences.
