Statement

When Mary Louise asked me to participate I didn't realize how much my life would change. This piece is very much a product of not only the ‘Wildfire’ process, but as well many things, some difficult to speak of, but all needing a voice. 

I was grateful that the artist* took the time to visit, it gave us an opportunity to get to know each other a little bit as she shared her thoughts and motivations for her piece. She impressed upon me the need to make important what was at the core of Truth and Reconciliation. There seemed to be a heaviness when she spoke and I remembered her saying "that although the residential schools was a 'big thing, it was only one thing when you considered it all", which made me think I must look to a wider scope to understand "it all". Armed with her reflections and a photo of her piece I set off to create.

What I didn't realize was the impact of that week’s news articles, they tore at my mind and heart - definitely giving me a wider scope... I had already read, more like cried, my way through the Residential Schools stories and now listened to current news filled with suicide stories of First Nation children: those that had to leave their small communities just to gain an education, transplanted to large cities, overwhelmed by it all, they found the act of suicide was their only solution; the unfathomable situation of the children of Attawapiskat under 'suicide watch'; the movement in Nova Scotia to remove Edward Cornwallis's statue from a prominent location in the city and the efforts to ‘tell the truth’ of the settlement of Nova Scotia - to some considered ‘Unceded Lands’ and learning that Cornwallis scalping proclamation was the means to gain control of Indigenous lands - just to named a few, all caused a rupture in my mind that tore away the history learnt to new realities and understanding, which is what I believe is required for reconciliation — the illusions stripped and
the truths told. 

Throughout the process I opened myself up to whatever was to come and it did come: first the anger at the deception rage within me and then inspired by the strength of Spirit within a people that despite continued efforts even today, could not be defeated — it lives on and beats even stronger.

My work speaks of the necessity to peel off the layers of deceit and see the truth of the past, the truth of the present and to share these realizations, speaking up to the wrongs in hopes of affecting a positive change toward reconciliation.

* The artist who came before this piece wished to have her name and art removed from the project at large.