An artists' reception at the Chapel Gallery in North Battleford Tuesday, June 24, celebrated the coming together of two exhibits meant to reconcile the history shared by First Nations and non-First Nations Canadians.
Director of galleries for the City of North Battleford, Leah Garven, said she felt humble about the power of the two exhibitions and how well they compliment each other.
"It wasn't planned," she said. "It just happened."
In the main gallery space is Love Stories - listening and seeing as gestures towards reconciliation - and in the Windows Salon is Honour the Child - an exhibition on the Indian residential schools. The former will be on display until July 27 and the latter until July 20.
Love Stories is a photographic and videographer exhibition by Sandra Semchuk. Born and raised in Meadow Lake, Semchuk is one of the founders of the Photographers' Gallery in Saskatoon and has a Masters in Photography from the University of New Mexico. She has taught at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design since 1987.
She and her late Cree husband, writer and orator James Nicholas, collaborated for 15 years looking at possible relationships between the indigenous and non-indigenous through untold stories in history and in dialogue, and some of those collaborations are found in Love Stories.
The exhibition was put together in collaboration or conversation with her late husband, her late father Martin Semchuk and with Elder George Canapotato, Clarence Whitestone of Onion Lake, Joanne Reimer and Gordon Vaadeland of the Sturgeon River Plains Bison Stewards, Eric Tootoosis of Poundmaker First Nation, Elder Archie Weenie of Sweetgrass, singer-songwriter and forest community advocate Joys Dancer as well as others.
"A lot of this exhibition came out of a fierce love," Semchuk told the gathering at the reception.
She also said, "It's a lot about 1885."
Semchuk, a Ukrainian Canadian who married a Cree man from Northern Manitoba, said being in a cross cultural marriage gave them an opportunity to learn to become more human.
"How do we learn how to become human, that's what James was about," said Semchuk. "We learned how to be more human from each other."
She learned more about hanging on to being human from the Cree culture than her Ukrainian heritage, she said. In the survivors of residential schools who were able to hang on to their humanity, she saw a "great generosity of heart."
What happened during the 1885 resistance, with Colonel Otter planning to destroy the Cree, was wrong, she said.
"Our hearts weren't big enough," she said. People from the "old country" were seeing their own background of war and "projected it on to you."
"They assumed things that were really wrong and they were prepared to kill," said Semchuk. "That's not right."
What happened in Canada's Indian residential schools was also wrong, she said.
Semchuk's husband went to residential school.
"Being sexually abused hurts really bad," she said, adding, "As bad as the suffering he experienced at the hands of others was, the worst was when he abused others," she said.
The lateral violence.
"That's the part that's so hard to get past," she said.
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to First Nations for their treatment in residential schools, he also apologized for the lateral violence, she pointed out.
"Somehow we didn't get that part, and it's really important we heard it."
It's vital that Canadians truly listen and understand why that lateral violence occurs and how the residential schools and 1885 betrayals are still causing pain today.
Semchuk maintains we all need to learn how to listen, and from that a new identity for Canada can be formed.
Love Stories has been supported by the Common Weal Community Arts and Indigenous Peoples Artist Collective in Prince Albert, by the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the Canada Council for the Arts. Sandra's collaborations with Hames have been exhibited at the Mendal Art Galleru the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa and the Belkin Art Gallery in British Columbia.
Eleanore Sunchild, whose law firm has worked with 1,400 residential school survivors of the last five years, says they hear disturbing stories of abuse and trauma every day.
Hearing these stories has led to the creation of Honour the Child by Sunchild Law and Friends, an exhibition about the residential school experience.
Sunchild says the exhibit has helped them deal with some of the trauma they hear about on a daily basis.
"It does affect us because we are native people. We, too, have our own children that we look at and say 'what if that happened to them.'"
A number of individuals participated in the exhibition, all connected to Sunchild Law. Some did pieces of original art or poetry and some loaned items from their own or the family's collections.
"We're not artists per se, but we dabble," said Sunchild. "We love art because it allows us to express what we feel.
Honour the Child remembers the 150,000 children who were forced to leave their families, their culture, their languages, and ways of life from the 1870s until the last school closed in Saskatchewan in 1997.
Sunchild said students were starved and the schools were overcrowded and unsanitary. An estimated 6,000 of them are said to have perished, and unmarked graves are still being discovered.
This is all in our recent past, said Sunchild, not hundreds of years ago.
It was not a mere strapping of the hands, it was of the most severe physical and sexual abuse, leaving latent and permanent injuries, she said. It changed these people and their communities.
Consider a child who has never been hugged, who has been continuously told they were a savage, who suffered sexual abuse with no one to protect them, she said. Released at 16 with no idea what to do or where to go, many turned to addictions or died.
"Our prisons are filled with these survivors and so are our graveyards." said Sunchild.
Some carried on abuse, she added, and some emerged stronger than could possibly be believed.
"Many have learned to love themselves and others again. It is our honour to accompany them on their journey."
Sunchild said she hopes everyone can come to an understanding that will promote reconciliation and being able to heal together on a nation to nation basis.
"By learning and having an open mind you are helping everybody move ahead past the residential school era, but we must all know our collective history, and what it is, before we can close the door."
Sunchild Law is an on-reserve law firm that specializes in the resolution of claims advanced by the survivors of federally run Indian residential schools in Canada. Eleanore Sunchild, a Cree lawyer from Thunderchild First Nation who received her LLB at the University of Alberta in 1998, established her practice in 1999. It has now grown to the largest firm of its kind in Canada.
Sunchild Law currently employs seven lawyers who share Sunchild's commitment to the preservation of Indigenous cultures, languages, traditions, customs and practises.
Wes Fineday, a Cree elder and storyteller from Sweetgrass First Nation, was one of the speakers in a circle formed during the artists' reception for two exhibits at the Chapel Gallery last week.
"The story of our recent past is not something that's easy to listen to," he said. "But we do it not to cast blame or make people feel ashamed."
Fineday said the two shows are the memories of what has happened in Canada's recent past.
"We are not saying, 'you should be ashamed of this, but now that you know the history you have the responsibilty to create the kind of society you want to live forever."
The word reconciliation has been tossed around a lot, said Fineday, and he looks to artists to begin showing Canadians what it looks like.
"It is the artists who will begin to resurrect the sacred circles where our story can be shared and spoken of," he said.
Artists will lead the way and begin to create "the sacred space in which we can come together to speak."
Looking around at the artists in attendance reminded Fineday of another time when members of his society, which they called the scouts. They travelled far beyond the confines of their communities, bringing back stories of what they saw and heard.
"There were things we would have to prepare ourselves for, and much of this happened in these circles, he said.
Fineday talked about the ceremonies that accompany the sacred circle, including smudging before entering the circle - smudging of the head to open the mind, smudging of the eyes so the vision is clear, smudging of the mouth so it speaks the truth it understands and smudging of the heart to find the emotional courage to speak the truth it understands.
The circle is not a forum in which to gossip, debate or argue, he said.
"The circle is a sacred place. We seek to elevate ourselves to become the highest human beings we can become when we enter that circle."
He said, "I see these things happening and I think this is what reconciliation is, when people come together."
"More and more I see people learning how to care again," said Fineday. "For a time I thought 'these people have no hearts.' It was said the community would not be destroyed until the hearts of all the women lay on the ground. That has not happened. It will not happen."
Fineday said, "Now young people are beginning to rise up, beginning to learn about their roles, moving into the positions of decision making, assuming the mantles of leadership and we have to help find the vision to guide them."
