On Wednesday september 18th, the University of British Columbia canceled classes to accommodate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Classes were cancelled to welcome in the TRC and also to give students an opportunity to look into what has happened in Canadian history with the Aboriginal community. It also gives students, professors and other public figures around the school to pay their respects to the Aboriginal people whose land the school and other places in the metro Vancouver area sits on. This is a very important thing to the Canadian government, who has affected the life of Aboriginal people in so many ways, to be able to apologize formally on the matter and start to correct what was done wrong in the past.
When I visited the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery to look at the Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools exhibit, the first thing that struck me was the video “Savage” by Lisa Jackson where a young girl is taken from her mom and brought to one of the Residential schools. Once the girl gets to the school, they cut her hair, take her clothes and make her wear a uniform. Essentially stripping her of her personality, her culture, and her religion. While this is all happening, her mom is home by herself crying and screaming for her daughter to come back home. She is miserable knowing that she may never get her daughter back, and if she does get her back, she will never be the same. This really affected me because I was able to understand somewhat how the mother felt because I have gone through personally family issues where a family member changes and becomes someone new due to sickness or other medical reasons. Even though the circumstances are different, the idea behind both is very similar.
Some other the other artwork that really affected me was the paintings by Gina Laing called “Untitled.” These paintings explained what Gina witnessed and went through personally at the Residential schools. Some of the big ideas in all of the paintings where constant eyes that where watching her all the time. She mentioned how anything she would do, there was always someone observing her or she felt that there was. She was never given any sort of freedom. Another large idea present throughout many of the paintings is the idea of a light that a girl is carrying. This girl is Gina herself, and this light she carries is explained as her hope that she has that everything will work out for her and she will get out one day. She also paints many of the people that abused her and the other girls she went to school with, and she would paint these people differently then what they actually looked like. This shows how disturbed Gina is by the events she had to deal with as a child.
Many of the other art works displayed how bad these children had to live in the residential schools. The conditions were very bad and nobody should have to live in such conditions. The artwork really reflected what these children had to live through and how unfair it was of the Canadian government to treat Aboriginal people this way.