Indian Residential School Memorial in Vancouver
In my wanders around Vancouver last week, I came across a memorial to the victims of the Indian residential school system. It was initially created by First Nations artist Tamara Bell with 215 pairs of children’s shoes (see this CTV article), but it appears to have become less an organized effort than a stream of consciousness from community members.
The memorial has been created on the back stairs of the Vancouver Art Gallery, known as the 800 Robson Plaza. I don’t know if the huge banner was intended to be part of it, but it doesn’t seem to be.
The Vancouver Art Gallery says about the banner:
“Know more than names of the land. We are past the point of gratitude. It is time to commit to more than live, work and play.”
As part of the exhibition “Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo,” Carrier Wit’at artist Whess Harman has created a public banner entitled “the lowest bar” for the Gallery’s Robson Street facade. The work employs their dense trademark style – one that melds aspects of punk, comic books, zines and graffiti with Indigenous Northwest Coast formline design and 2-Spirit/Indigiqueer aesthetics.
It’s estimated that more than 150,000 children attended residential schools in Canada from the 1830s until the last school closed in 1997. A 1907 report by Dr. Peter Bryce, the Chief Medical Officer for the Department of Indian Affairs, made clear the huge number of deaths occurring at the schools, but nothing substantial was done about it.
In May, a survey of the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, using ground penetrating radar, revealed the presence of 215 unmarked and apparently undocumented graves of children (see a CBC article). Many hundreds of other graves have since been found at other residential school sites, recorded on this whiteboard at the memorial.
“If we held a moment of silence 4 each child who died in residential school, we’d be silent for 13+ yrs.”
“No matter what the numbers are, there are not supposed to be graveyards at schools, ever.”
“It’s ok to cry here. Compassion is righteous.”
Ensuring that today’s children know what happened – and understand why it happened – is crucial to change happening.
The memorial is constantly changing as new additions are made and some are removed, and is maintained by cleaning, watering plants, removing wilted flowers, etc.
There was a broad call to cancel Canada Day celebrations this year, instead using July 1st as a national day of mourning. I don’t know what the response was across the country, but every community in the Yukon that had celebrations planned cancelled them.
The significance of many of the installations is known only to the creators.
“It’s time to go home, little ones…”
There are both public and private places for people to go at the memorial. I spent a while talking to 2 people at a table, who seemed to be involved with the memorial. I wish I had asked more questions about it, but “interviewing” them wasn’t where my head was.
These 3 paintings were created by an unstated artist as a fundraiser for the IRSSS, the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, and raised a total of $740.
My impression is that people in Vancouver are paying far less attention to this national tragedy than are Yukoners. I wore my “Every child matters” tshirt during both my visits to the memorial, but orange wasn’t a colour I saw much of around the city. When the flags are raised and the news cycle has moved on, have we as a nation learned anything? Will anything change not only to address what happened, but what is still happening? I wish I could say I’m optimistic…
This is post #1,327 on The ExploreNorth Blog since it began on April 25, 2006. Of those, 594 have now been rebuilt in the new format with larger photos – the entire list can be seen at the Post Archives.
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