Last week a group of students in my class gave a presentation about the postcard secret-sharing project called PostSecret. You can check out their website here: http://www.postsecretcommunity.com/

When I first learned about PostSecret, I thought it was just another website encouraging artistic people to send in their work and try to get it posted on the internet. However, after doing a bit more research and taking a closer look at the background story to the site, I realized that it is much more than that, and much more open to everyone. It describes itself almost like a therapy program, to help people who have been suffering from an inner problem and have not yet found a way to effectively cope with it.

In the backstory behind the start of PostSecret, the creator, Frank Warren, describes how it first started with the “reluctant oracle” project, where he artistically generated and sent out a work to be discovered and interpreted by anyone. He did it to give people advice on how to deal with anything that was bothering them, insignificant or life-changing.

Here is an example of one of his “reluctant oracles” he created:

On the last “reluctant oracle” it stated, “you will find your answers in the secrets of strangers,” and that is what started the idea of allowing people to create their own postcards and write their secrets on them, putting them out there to the public world. Now, what I find most interesting about this is that the concept of PostSecret serves two purposes. The first is to serve as a coping mechanism for the person who creates the postcard, forcing them to think deeply about how to artistically represent their secret in a unique way, which will hopefully lead to getting their postcard chosen as one of the few to be posted online. The act of even writing the secret down is, for many people, already a big step in releasing some of the pressure that has been built up inside them from the keeping in of the secret or issue. The second purpose of PostSecret, as expressed in the quote from the last “reluctant oracle” is to serve as a forum of admitted secrets that others can relate to. People find comfort in seeing that others share similar problems or sufferings—that they are not alone. By being able to relate with other people through their secrets, people saw the site as a kind of therapy.

The popularity of PostSecret has been seen by Twitter, who even started SecretTweet, a supposedly anonymous way to tweet secrets about anything you want. You can check out an article about it here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/02/like-postsecret.html

The popularity of anonymous secret-sharing can be seen by an idea from Calvert, quoted by Miller & Shepard in their scholarly article “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog”– that people’s relationships with each other through media can be described as “mediated voyeurism”, or “the consumption of revealing images of and information about others’ apparently revealed and unguarded lives, often yet not always for purposes of entertainment, through means of the mass media and internet”  (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogging_as_social_action.html).  “Mediated voyeurism” has become such an evident part of human obsessions that hundreds of new websites specifically serving this purpose has appeared. One may ask, how many secrets can be anonymously shared until the whole world knows everything about everyone?

Entrance to Auschwitz (http://northernbullets.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/let-auschwitz-die/)

As I think more deeply about Chute’s stress on “bearing witness” (93) when talking about the aim of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis in her article “The Texture of Retracting in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis” (http://www.jstor.org/stable/27649737), I am reminded of an experience I went through that also allowed me to bear witness to an historical event: visiting the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp in Poland. Chute talks about how the representation of memory and testimony through the graphic novel form “makes the snaking lines of history forcefully legible” (93), which is what I also experienced while at the concentration camps. She relates this statement to the political and ethical work of narrative and the traumas shown visually in the comics, allowing these themes and historical events to present themselves directly to the audience. This immediately reminded me of how I felt when I visited Auschwitz and saw, with my own eyes, the dirty, cramped, smelly living conditions of the Jewish prisoners, the long train tracks where they were brought into the camps, stuffed in the train cars like cattle, and the rows upon rows of electric fencing surrounding the wooden bunkers and concrete ovens where they burned the bodies. I remember seeing the piles of shoes, clothing and suitcases piled up, each displaying a deeply personal aspect, taken from the prisoners as they arrived. There was even a mountain of cut hair, shaved from the heads of the Jews when they arrived to prevent the spread of lice. I remember walking through underground concrete “showers” where families were sent thinking they were simply going to be cleaned before entering the camp, but where they were in fact sprayed with poisonous gas, murdered en masse because they were thought too weak to work. I saw torture devices and photos of hundreds and hundreds of starved men, women and children, barely alive or dead and piled on top of each other. I read letters from husbands to wives, saying goodbye and wishing the best for their families, and letters describing the terrible conditions, with barely any food and surrounded by senseless violence. I watched video interviews of concentration camp survivors describing their awful experiences, for which they will forever be scarred.

Sleeping Quarters (http://michaelatures.wordpress.com/author/michaelatures/page/2/)

Piles of Hair (http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz11.html)

Railway at Entrance (It still looks exactly like this today) http://adventuresinpoznan.blogspot.ca/2011/05/auschwitz.html

This deeply emotional and visual experience based around remembrance made vivid connections for me while reading Persepolis, especially in the way that visuals and words are used in describing trauma (or, as Chute words it, the “hybridity” (93) of a graphic novel). In both experiences (reading Persepolis and visiting the Auschwitz museum), I heard from the people who struggled through these awful events firsthand, and I also experienced them visually, adding to the emotional effect and the sense of “bearing witness.”

One of the main purposes of turning the Auschwitz concentration camp into a museum is to encourage remembrance and discourage ignorance, as well as serving to promote “not forgetting” (Chute 94). This was also Chute’s take on Satrapi’s reason for writing Persepolis.  Part of her conceptual summary of the graphic novel could even be used to describe the Auschwitz museum. She writes, “Persepolis is about the ethical, verbal and visual practice of “not forgetting” and about the political confluence of the everyday and the historical…” ( 94). As I was looking online for recent articles on Auschwitz, I came across this one: (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/25/auschwitz-first-world-war-tourism-teaching) which raises the ethical question of, basically, how far we should go with acting as witnesses and remembering. The article brings up the topic of stag party organizers that include a visit to Auschwitz in their program as a “lads must-see,” and describes it as “a top bonding experience,” similar to other, more trivial events they do, such as “running with bulls and oil wrestling” (Bennett).  People are starting to worry that these traumatic historical events, such as the Holocaust, are starting to be “trivialized” and becoming only tourist attractions for people to gawk at, forget about and then grab a beer. They have even allowed the Harlem Shake to be filmed in the Auschwitz concentration camp. I also remember that two days after I visited museum, I read in the news that the famous Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work Makes You Free” in German) sign (see picture at beginning of post) at the entrance of the camp was stolen by two young men. These multiple examples of disrespect are proof that people today are not taking these distressing historical events seriously. They don’t care about remembering or being a witness. The article goes on to talk about steps that are being taken to “fight ignorance” and hopefully teach the next generation to learn, remember, and care. The article also goes on to talk about how studies have shown that visual experiences are more impacting and effective on emotions than simply hearing or reading. This, I feel, is why graphic novels, and specifically in this case, Persepolis, are a much more effective way of allowing readers to bear witness, remember so as to heal and work to prevent recurrences, and feel the emotions of others who struggled through those difficult times.

As an American living in Canada for the first time, I knew nothing about Canadian history when I first arrived. Then, after only a few weeks upon my arrival, I learned about the residential schools and the TRC. Basically, this was the first history I had ever learned about Canada, and it really amazes me that out of all the Canadian historical facts that could be drilled into my brain–first 10 prime ministers, the foundation of Canada, the Canadian national anthem (which I still need to learn!)—I learned about a very important part of history that Canada is not proud of, but is still impressively taking a huge effort to reconcile and apologize for. And what makes this even more shocking to me is that before moving here, the idea of residential schools was completely foreign to me. I had no idea that they had even existed in the U.S. as well. The topic of residential schools and the assimilation of Native Americans was never brought up in school or in the news. I had no idea it was even part of my own homeland’s history. And this, honestly, makes me rather angry. How could such a terrible event that affected so many people’s lives, never be mentioned? Why do I have to come to Canada to hear about it? I am proud of the Canadian government and citizens to rightly acknowledge this awful, dark historical event and truly reconcile and apologize for it. Also, the step UBC took in cancelling classes for the day shows how important this event is and how committed everyone is to true reconciliation. However, my next question is, what is the government doing to make sure something like that never happens again? This is also an important part of reconciliation.

While attending the TRC events, I became more and more shocked by what I saw, heard and read. At one event I went to in the UBC Longhouse, they were showing live recordings of the people speaking at the PNE. One question that Caroline Wong asked which really struck me was, “What is the price for loss of land, loss of family, loss of tradition?” It made me realize, this kind of damage that was done was the worst kind. It cannot be replaced, it cannot be brought back to exactly the way it was before. Nothing can be given as a “make-up.” These deep traditions that the First Nation people have been passing on for generations were wiped away and smothered by the beliefs of the white.

The man (I believe his name was Daniel Richmond) speaking about reconciliation and the Holocaust, discussed how reconciliation is not only important in order to show that the wrong-doing is acknowledged and apologize for it, but also to make sure something like the residential schools never happens again. People need to understand exactly what happened in order to put a system into place which prevents it from reoccurring. Unfortunately, after doing some research on the current aboriginal human-rights record in Canada, I found that the Canadian government has not been taking as many steps towards the improvement of First Nations organizations and the treatment of aboriginal people as they should be. The government has recently made large budget cuts for First Nation organizations (http://akagallery.org/cathy-busby-budget-cuts-2012-from-every-line-every-other-line/), and in the past few years violence towards aboriginal women has increased. For example, a report came out this past February about police officers sexually abusing young aboriginal girls and women. Check out the article here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/rcmp-accused-of-rape-in-report-on-b-c-aboriginal-women-1.1305824

In addition, just one day after the official TRC event at the PNE, a report was released that after the UN Human Rights Council asked the Canadian government to perform a “comprehensive national review to end violence against aboriginal women,” the Canadian envoy refused. Check out the full article here:  http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/canada-nixes-un-review-of-violence-on-aboriginal-women-1.1860828

These examples show that even though Canada is going through the steps of reconciling, the country is not learning from its mistakes. It is not taking steps to prevent the re-occurrence of those terrible events which caused thousands of First Nation people’s lives to be ruined forever.

The emotions I felt during my visit to the exhibition Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools at the Belkin Gallery are difficult to describe. I felt as if for every artwork I saw, I sensed a different kind of emotion. All of these emotions put together are a good representation of how the entire residential school situation makes me feel. For example, the large artwork The Lesson made me depressed and disturbed by the very cruel layout of the chairs and desks, and how they were all chained to each other and looked identical, with hooks sticking out of the apples. It made it seem like a prison where the children would be tortured and brain-washed into one giant identical army of zombies. The children were not taught religion, they were beat into it. They were taught that their traditional beliefs were evil and their ways were work of a devil. The “killing of the Indian in the child” was a strong theme of the artwork, and something that really got to my deepest emotions. I find it extremely sad when such rich tradition is lost and small, innocent children are taught that their families basically work for the devil. Below is a picture of what the artwork The Lesson reminds me of—hundreds of children being brain-washed into a monolithic group, with their spirits broken and living in fear day in and day out.

http://kolonialq.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/idle-no-more-meets-invasion-day-australia/

On the blackboard for Memory Wall, there were stories written of aboriginal children being refused treatment when they were sick or injured. After my research on the current treatment of many aboriginal people today, it doesn’t seem like they are being treated much better. They are still treated unequally, and this is something that really disappoints me, especially considering that the nation has put so much effort into apology and reconciliation. Leaders and decision-makers need to see that apology is only one small part of reconciliation. The other part is making new systems and laws to keep the issue from reoccurring.

Finally, Gina Laing’s paintings brought tears to my eyes. I feel that her artwork was so heart wrenching because of how personal it was. The viewer could truly see into Gina and how her experiences affected her internally. I remember in one of the descriptions she explains how she developed “a sense of disembodiment.” This again goes back to the idea of the children becoming one giant homogenous group, where none of them have any sense of who they are or where they come from anymore. That is the worst position for a child to be in, and that is why so many of them grew up into lost individuals with no path in life and addictions to drugs and alcohol.

As it did for most people, the TRC and the events really had a strong emotional effect on me. I am so happy that this nation I am now a resident of is strong enough to admit its wrong doings and take the steps to properly reconcile and that so many people support this. Now, the Canadian leaders need to put more effort into putting systems into place which will prevent residential schools or anything like them to ever happen again, and to work on ending the violence inflicted on aboriginal people.

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