During the week of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I was able to experience the reality of the effects of the Residential Schools through the exhibition “Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools” at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Originally coming from Japan, a relatively homogeneous nation in terms of ethnicity, the exposure I received from the TRC, in its effort in capturing the movements of reconciliation through inviting many perspectives from not only within Canada but from the greater Aboriginal societies around the world, made me realize the depth in which the nation had come to pursuing the vague goal of reconciliation.

An art piece that caught my attention from the moment I walked in was the The Lesson by Joane Cardinal Schubert (Page 40 of the Catalog). As I entered the main gallery hall, not only does the three dimensional exhibit give tangible expressions, the adoption of a single corner of the hall conveyed the message of the artist into one frame.

Its recognizable details, where all the chairs were linked to one another with a single rope, eminently suggests the suppressive environment in which the children were forced in. Most eye catching of all were the only non-monochrome objects in this piece, the apples on the chairs. (Although I failed to recognize whether the apples were real or not, in its original installation in 1993, the apples were real. Interview) As the only biotic objects in the installation, the significant of deterioration of these apples, combined with a hook running through their cores, symbolized the gradual demoralization of the kids who were forcefully made to attend these residential schools. As an prominent advocate for the First Nations artists, Cardinal Schubert mentioned in an interview that this piece was produced to rid of the vague common perception of the horror the natives endured and to give it a solid image of the horror within the classroom.

In educating and humbling myself through this visit and the descriptive depiction of “The Lesson”, naturally I came to doubt my understandings of the issues that surrounds myself today. Through the opinionated and readily accessible sources available at my disposal, I believe our attention to knowledge and our journey towards the truth has become a unappreciated movement. Partly because our lives are very independent in spirit and diverse in cultural interactions, we associate ourselves in many different efforts to become informed and to engage to make the best decision for the disputes present. Concurrently, these efforts have made it that we are knowledgeable about a wide variety of the issues in the world but lack the critical thinking in what is necessarily the most beneficial action to take. For instance, many of us have heard and know well about the AIDS epidemic prevalent in Africa. But I believe that many of us have accessed these issues solely through data and numbers, articles, and even a column on a textbook. But is this an effective way of keeping ourselves informed? Are they sufficient information to make a decision regarding the problem at hand? Are we not creating our own perception of reality?

As The Lesson symbolically shows us, knowing and acknowledging the existence of a problem is one thing, but whether or not we really are paying attention to the reality and the details of the problem is another. I believe through the depiction of the installation with a personality, the imagery of suppression and untouchable classrooms of residential schools of Cardinal Schubert’s view and arguably many others were distinctively clarified and this gave me a concrete image of what the kids had endured during their times in residential schools.

During the numerous events TRC hosted, such as the valuable first account narrations and the inputs from many diverse groups including the youths of multiple intergenerational cultural discrimination experiences collectively completed a collage of characters within the greater TRC event. Unlike other globally recognized organizations that I have attended to raise awareness of a cultural problem, where the tone of the issues were expressed in a relatively monotone and opinionated manner, the TRC, in its wide angle yet very characteristic approaches, provided to the general population the autonomy to adopt and create ones own experience through the events held throughout the week.

The event gave me a chance to revisit the method of pursuing of the Truth. Ultimately, there are no final distinct goal in reconciliation as we individually carry different meanings associated with the term but it is in the process of finding it that is crucial. And as participants and also members of the reconciliation movement it is vital that we take the initiative to interact with the characters and personalities put forth through exhibits and to contribute our own interpretation and inputs into the larger movement.