Native school legacy exhibit arrives
“We tend to think of reconciliation as an achievement,” says Rev. Canon Travis Enright, taking a break from the final setup of Truth and Reconciliation: A Special Exhibit on the Legacy of the Residential Schools.
“We ‘achieve’ reconciliation. But I think people who have experienced Indian residential schools — both church and survivors — have realized that it’s more of a way of being. We have to learn to live being a people (of ) reconciliation.”
It’s with this spirit of ongoing education, understanding and healing that Bishop Jane Alexander of the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, along with volunteer/curator Lay Canon Barbara Burrows and Enright — who is also the diocese’s Canon Missioner for Indigenous Ministry — have brought the exhibit from St. James Cathedral in Toronto where it originated, to All Saints’ Cathedral, 10035 103rd St.
The exhibit opens Tuesday and runs until Nov. 11. It covers 262 years of the relationship between the Anglican Church and Canada’s indigenous people, from 1753 to the present day, in five sections titled Beginning, Truth, Apology, Healing and Reconciliation.
Spread throughout the cathedral, it is bolstered by local art and artifacts. In a striking display, red dresses are hung around the pews, representing Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women.
“We’re trying to have a tactile experience versus a much more intellectual, flat experience,” Enright said Monday. “We’re trying to have some more tableau type stuff — something that’s a bit more artistic in feel.”
Enright said he didn’t know much about residential schools until he was well into adulthood, even though his mother, grandmother and grandfather were survivors of the system. He recalls taking Canadian history classes in university that didn’t touch on aboriginal history. It wasn’t until his grandmother’s death that he learned the truth.
“Here I was — I’m a status First Nations person living in this city, went to university and had no real understanding about what this was,” he said. “We need to continue to have places where (we) can revisit our history so we can share this in a way that’s really profound and earth-shaking.”
Edmonton is the second city to get the exhibit. Burrows said it will move on to British Columbia and Newfoundland after All Saints’.