Indigenous artwork vested with legal rights

WINNIPEG — An art installation honouring survivors of residential schools is being recognized as a “living entity” in an agreement combining Indigenous teachings and Western law.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and First Nations artist Carey Newman signed an agreement Friday to be joint stewards of The Witness Blanket, comprising more than 800 items collected from the sites and survivors of residential schools.

Newman, a Victoria-based Kwagiulth and Coast Salish artist , said he has never felt ownership of the 12-metre-long installation, but rather a responsibility to honour the survivors’ stories it carries.

In devising a way to share the responsibility with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Newman said he and the Crown-owned museum came to an “unprecedented” agreement that would vest legal rights with the artwork itself, rather than treating it as a transfer of property.

“It’s a Crown corporation really following through on the idea of being Indigenous-led, of reconciliation,” Newman said as he arrived in Winnipeg on Thursday for the signing. “By putting the rights with the work, and putting responsibilities with ourselves, we’ve become collaborators trying to figure out our way forward.”

Heather Bidzinski, the museum’s head of collections, said the museum will care for The Witness Blanket working in cooperation with Newman to ensure the artwork’s rights are being respected in keeping with Indigenous cultural practices.

The stewardship agreement will be ratified both in written documents and an oral ceremony to be held near Newman’s home territory of Kwakwaka’wakw.

The son of a residential school survivor, Newman said in creating The Witness Blanket, he feels he has only scratched the surface of understanding reconciliation and decolonization.