The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation Day was on Saturday, but that doesn’t mean you should only think about the effects of colonial school systems on First Nations for just the one day a year.
Two new exhibits at the Galt Museum share the stories and experiences of residential school survivors. The traveling exhibit “Escaping Residential Schools: Running for their Lives” is a national touring exhibition developed by Ontario organization the Legacy of Hope Foundation over the past 20 years. It uses interactive audio and informational panels to tell the stories of seven residential school survivors’ experience to deliver more national perspective.
They tell the stories of their experiences in their own words and as well as the experiences of several children who ran away from the schools, some of who perished and some of the politicians responsible for the schools.
The local exhibit, Stolen Kainai Children: Stories of Survival, developed by University of Lethbridge sociology professor Apooyak’ii/Dr. Tiffany Hind Bull-Prete brings the issue h right home to Southern Alberta, breaking down the six different types of colonial schools designed to assimilate native children into the white world, of which residential schools were just one, and telling the stories of Southern Alberta survivors who went to different schools everywhere from Standoff to Calgary.
“ Her exhibit is more focussed on what happened to the Blood Tribe,” said curator Tyler Stewart, noting the last residential schools closed in the 1980s so the effects of them is still an important issue today.
“Dr. Hind Bull-Prete spent quite a few years working on this exhibit,” Stewart said, emphasizing the exhibit shows there were more than just residential schools in involved in the colonial school system each with their own way ways of operating and each with their unique effects, though residential schools get most of the attention.
“ The Blackfoot took back their education from the federal government in the 1980s and formed their own school boards so they could teach traditional Blackfoot culture, history and language,” he said encouraging everybody with even a cursory interest in Southern Alberta history needs to check out the exhibits, which run until March 3, 2024.
“ Truth and reconciliation needs to take place more than one day a year,” Stewart said.
“Museums have been institutions that participated in the processes of colonization,” Stewart explained in a press release.
“It’s important that we now take actions towards reconciliation by educating and raising awareness of the darker sides of Canadian history,” he said in a press release.
“ I hope people will take away the different voices of the colonial schools. The most important part of the exhibition is that the stories are in the survivors’ own words,” Stewart said.
— by Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
