September 30 - There is Truth Here: Creativity and Resilience in Children's Art from Indian Residential and Day Schools

UVic in the News

September 23, 2017 to January 6, 2018

Guest curated by Dr. Andrea N. Walsh, Anthropology, University of Victoria

Panel Discussion & Public CelebrationSeptember 30, 2017
Panel 2:30 - 4pm | Celebration 4 - 5pm

There is Truth Here brings a new line to bear on the role of art as part of children’s knowledge, identity, and experiences of Indian Residential and Day Schools. Through paintings, drawings, sewing, beading, drumming, and singing, and drama produced by children and youth who attended them in British Columbia and Manitoba the exhibition seeks to contribute in vital and new ways to dialogues and initiative about true telling, reconciliation, and redress in Canada.

The first person perspectives of Survivors and former students, their families, and communities are told via children’s creativity to bring a multi-generational perspective on the lives of children in the schools. The exhibition explores the common thread of historical resilience in the creation of the artworks, and speaks to the importance of the art today as nodes of healing and resurgence.

CBC - Residential school survivors share paintings, stories at the Canadian Museum of History

The years-long efforts of Andrea Walsh were included in a story by CBC News about artwork created by children who'd attended residential schools. Walsh's repatriation of paintings that were donated to UVic by Robert Aller's family after his death was included in the TRC executive summary report as an example of how "recognizing and respecting Indigenous protocols and practices of ceremony, testimony, and witnessing can breathe life, healing, and transformation into public memory making through dialogue, the arts, and commemoration." Legacy Art Gallery will be holding an event curated by Walsh. CBC News