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Around the world, communities are grappling with the traces of systemic violence and human rights violations that exist in the landscape around us.
How do we remember injustices when the physical signs of that history are no longer visible? What do we do with the buildings and structures that still stand? And how are the memories embedded within these sites both painful scars and opportunities for healing?
In this episode Ry Moran talks with Carey Newman, Oliver Schmidtke, and Tavia Panton about sites with difficult histories in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom and what to do with them.
Visit www.taapwaywin.ca for transcripts and more information.
[This episode contains discussions of Canada’s Residential School system, please take care. Resources for support are available on our website, should you need them.]
In this eight-episode series, host Ry Moran (founding Director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation) goes in depth on why the truths of Indigenous Peoples are so often suppressed and why we need truth before reconciliation.
Over course of this season, we visit with Survivors, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, academics, artists, and activists, exploring the opportunities and barriers for truth telling, and ways we can move forward together.
This podcast is presented by the Libraries and Archives of University of Victoria where host Ry Moran is the Associate University Librarian-Reconciliation. It is produced in the territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples.
Visit www.taapwaywin.ca for transcripts, shownotes and more information.
[This episode contains discussions of Canada’s Residential School system, please take care. Resources for support are available on our website, should you need them.]
Ry Moran
In 2012 Carey Newman submitted an application to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for an ambitious project: to collect a piece of history from every residential school in the country, and bring them all together in an art installation.
Carey Newman
I don't think I had any idea when I came up with the concept, how it would continue to resonate for me personally, but also, in this sort of work of truth, this work of - toward reconciliation.
Ry Moran
The project would take him and his team across Canada, collecting almost 900 in total, all assembled together to create the Witness Blanket.
Carey Newman
It's constructed of objects and stories that have been gathered from residential schools, churches, government buildings, and traditional, contemporary Indigenous buildings and cultural structures, from across this country.
Ry Moran
The project was made possible through the funds set aside in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, because it was recognized that compensation alone would not be enough to promote the healing so needed by families, communities, and the country as a whole. In addition to truth-telling, and public education – commemoration was understood as an essential part of healing and reconciling these difficult history.
Carey Newman
I usually credit the Survivors with providing the opportunity because they earmarked the commemoration fund out of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement so they were effectively spending their own money to commemorate, and to remember and that kind of - that generosity of spirit, of commitment to truth, that's, I've learned a lot from, just from that act.
[music]
Ry Moran
Of the roughly 139 recognized residential schools in this country, less than twenty remain standing in some form or another. The rapidly disappearing traces of this systemic injustice makes preservation and memorialization even more important and even more contentious.
But decisions of what to do with these sites need to be conducted with the utmost care – because these places are deeply powerful sites of memory.
Around the world, communities are grappling with the traces of systemic violence and human rights violations that exist in the landscape around us.
This episode is about these places that have tangible connections to human rights abuses. About how we remember injustices when the physical signs of that history are no longer visible, and what we do with the buildings and structures that still stand.
We’ll be talking to Carey Newman about bearing witness to the truth of our collective history in this country -
Carey Newman
In fact, I'm, I'm convinced that we need to give enough space to the truth that it becomes part of who we are, it becomes part of what it means to be Canadian.
Ry Moran
And speaking with Oliver Schmidtke about Germany’s path working to reconcile its dark past –
Oliver Schmidtke
So, how do you reinvent yourself and still live with the legacy of this horrific injustice, right?
Ry Moran
Before hearing from Tavia Panton about her work teaching Liverpool’s next generation of local historians.
Tavia Panton
Revealing the truth in this way and revealing a more nuanced, and accurate history is not about oppressing anyone, it's about empowering people who have been left out of that.
Ry Moran
My name is Ry Moran, this is Taapwaywin: talking about what we know and what we believe, a podcast from the territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples and the library and archives of the University of Victoria.
[music fades out]
Ry Moran
It’s becoming better understood that one of the largest human right’s failures in Canada is the residential school system - a system which cloaked the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples under the guise of education. As we heard in the statements of Survivors and so clearly documented in the reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, these institutions were ripe with every kind of abuse. These so-called schools were used as weapons against Indigenous peoples in an effort to destroy cultures, traditions, languages, families, and identity.
While many Canadians are still grappling with better understanding the truth of what occurred in these places, there remains a vocal set of Canadian society also demonstrating an outright unwillingness to listen and embracing outright denial from others.
But the residential schools system the violation of human rights that occurred there is the part of the truth of our history. And it is this heavy legacy, and the efforts to make that truth known, that Carey’s work in the Witness Blanket honours and commemorates.
Carey Newman
Hello, my name is Carey Newman. My traditional name is Hayalthkin’geme. I come from the Kukwekum, Giiksam, and WaWalaby’ie clans of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation on the northern end of Vancouver Island. And from Cheam of the Sto:lo Nation along the upper Fraser Valley, which is Coast Salish territory. Through my mom, I'm English, Irish, Scottish settlers stock from Saskatchewan. I'm an artist, a carver, and I'm the inaugural Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices here at the University of Victoria.
Ry Moran
Carey and I have known each other for a long time -
Ry Moran
In your words, how do we know one another, Carey?
Carey Newman
Do we really know each other Ry? [Laughter].
Ry Moran
That's a good question.
Carey Newman
I guess we met like, way before all of this stuff, right? Like, I made your wedding rings.
Ry Moran
We really got to know each other once I started working at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, getting into the habit of having pretty frequent discussions about concepts like ‘truth’ and ‘reconciliation.’
Carey was actually one of the first interviews we conducted for this project - back before we even had our own recording studio. So one morning in December we were just sitting at this little desk over at the university radio station.
Carey Newman
I'm gonna have a hard time with this. [Laughter]. Because I keep looking at you.
Ry Moran
I'm not gonna look at you.
Carey Newman
This is weird, like when we - normally when we have these conversations we're sitting over a counter.
Ry Moran
Yes.
Carey Newman
We're, you know, like -
Ry Moran
On the phone.
Carey Newman
It's not often that I sit across from you and look you directly in the eyes.
Ry Moran
It's, it's kind of like a -
Carey Newman
Disconcerting.
Ry Moran
- moment, you know.
[music]
Ry Moran
Carey has worked on large-scale projects for years, but the Witness Blanket is monumental in every sense of the word, stretching 10 feet tall and 40 feet across.
It’s a Blanket in an abstract sense, constructed out of pieces of cedar arranged with the utmost of care, held together with steel cable that allows movement and flexibility. Weaving together objects and stories, Carey’s work draws on both his Kwakwaka’wakw and Coast Salish ancestry – in his Kwakwaka’wakw culture blankets are representative of identity, while in Coast Salish traditions, they are used to both honour and protect.
When you stand in front of the Witness Blanket, it absolutely envelops you.
It’s a work so dense with meaning, it demands time to look, listen, feel....
And most importantly, witness.
Carey Newman
When I started I kind of had this idealized version of what I thought the project would be, I thought it would like, come to be a visual representation of reconciliation. But the reality is that it's become a visual record of truth. And it holds stories. And within the stories is the deeper truth that we're talking about. I haven't even as the maker, or the artist behind the blanket, been able to synthesize and understand all levels of the truth that's held within the work, that I was part of creating. I think that's an indication of how big the truth is.
[music]
Ry Moran
Carey is an intergenerational Survivor. For him, this is a deeply personal history.
Ry Moran
I was thinking about, if we could, and if you're okay with it, I want to talk to you a bit about St. Michael's Residential School.
Carey Newman
Yeah. So St. Michael's is in Alert Bay. That's where my dad grew up for part of his life. But it actually isn't the school he went to, he went to Sechelt. However, other of my aunts and uncles did go to St. Michael's. So we have a pretty strong family connection to, to that school and to, to the town.
Ry Moran
St. Michael’s was an imposing structure, one that absolutely towered over the community of Alert Bay.
The building was the first thing you saw as you arrived in the community via the small car ferry that left from Port McNeil on Vancouver Island.
Like so many of the residential schools built in the 1920s, it was a pretty stout building -- H shaped with its 4 floors lined with rigid rows of windows. Constructed out of a red brick it had, at one point, been painted white. But by the time Carey visited for the Witness Blanket, this same paint was peeled and flaking off, giving the building a distinct feeling of decay.
Carey Newman
And when we went up there, we had organized to speak with lots of different Survivors, we had organized to have a walkthrough of the school, to gather a few different objects.… We had an opportunity there to, to kind of go with some of our ways, right? Kwakwaka'wakw ways, that's Kwakwaka'wakw territory. So a lot of the interviews that we did with Survivors were actually in the big house, which I thought was a really powerful place to sit and listen to that history. And one of the people we spoke to was my uncle, Edwin, who's the, the Chief of our family, and who went to St. Mike's.
Ry Moran
At the centre of the Witness Blanket is a wooden door - the white paint is cracking, betraying its age and instantly drawing one’s mind into the past.
This door is one of the objects Carey gathered while walking through St. Michael’s residential school.
Carey Newman
the reason that we gathered the door was because some of the stories we'd heard about what had happened in that room, so behind that door. And then, fast forward to when I'm making the Witness Blanket. One of the very, very last contributions to come in was a piece of artwork by George Littlechild, who submitted this very poignant charcoal sketch, charcoal drawing, called 'a priest and his prey.' So I ended up transferring the image to the door, to the inside of the door, thinking about, you know, the stories that I'd heard about what happened behind there.
Ry Moran
After the Blanket was finished, Carey went to on talk to George.
Carey Newman
And he - as I'm sitting in his home, he says, 'Carey, I don't know if I ever told you this, but the - I made this drawing after listening to Survivor testimony at the TRC event in Vancouver, and it was in response to a Survivor story. And that Survivor was your uncle.' So here we are, and I'd been there and I'd heard my uncle talk about his experience. And I'd gathered this door. And then unbeknownst to me, I had placed this image that was inspired by his, his testimony, on a door from the same school as he attended. And it seems to me like those two, those two stories found each other, right. And those two truths found each other. And my uncle's recently passed. So it's kind of become a little bit more difficult to, to think about and talk about that, that time. But I remember sitting on the dirt floor of the big house, listening to him share.
Ry Moran
Opened in 1894 by the Anglican Church initially as a day school, the school remained in operation until 1974.
The year later after it closed, the building was transferred to the ‘Namgis First Nation, and was used for a variety of purposes over the next several decades, from administrative offices to a carving space for artists.
Like so many other residential schools across the country, St. Michael’s was a place where terrible atrocities happened – it’s also a place where the memory and trauma are not easily washed away.
By 2015, the community had come to the decision that the building had to be demolished.
[sound of the crowd filters in]
Alex Nelson
What's gonna unfold in the next hour. First of all, we know why we're here. We know why we're here.
Ry Moran
On a chilly day in February of 2015, as the sun tried to break through broken overhead cloud which threatened rain, Kwakwaka’wakw Elder Alex Nelson addressed the crowd gathered before the former residential school. An event that was also recorded as part of the archive of the Witness Blanket.
Alex Nelson
And so, as we move into this program, we have searched diligently and honorably, to our ancestors to help guide us. Because we've never been in this real situation before, where there's a demolition of a building. And so we have healing practices that we've searched deeply for. And so as the ceremonies go on, we've tried to use our hearts to help guide us.
Ry Moran
Deborah Hanuse, former elected Chief of the ‘Na̱mg̱is First Nation, also spoke to those gathered.
Deborah Hanuse
It has been said that those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it. Demolition of this building will not erase the legacy of the Indian Residential School, nor will demolition of this building erased from our memories the generations of children who walked through those front doors. These children will not be forgotten.
Ry Moran
I was there that day of the ceremony, one of the many people gathered to witness, something that our producer Karina wanted to ask me about.
Karina Greenwood
What was that experience like of standing in that crowd that day?
Ry Moran
I think for me for so much of my my journey along this pathway has just tried to be present just as a witness.
I think one of the most striking things that I remember, or felt, was the sound of the events after most of the speeches, after Bobby Joseph and everyone had finished speaking, where, at that point, people were either being given or were picking up rocks, and then we're throwing them through the windows. And it's hard to kind of describe exactly what those sounds were. But it was the sound of quiet, of crying, of sobbing, the sound of breaking glass, the sound of healing and consoling. You know, again, it's just one of those things, you can't really, it's hard to describe unless you were there.
One thing for certain is that you couldn't help but see that school when you arrived in and out of Alert Bay, I mean, it was so dominant in that community.
And we've heard this so many times across the country, what the experiences were of children as they were locked up inside of these schools, and not being allowed to leave and not being allowed to go home, while still being able to see home right outside the window. And I was visiting with somebody just the other day who said they could see their grandparents house, outside of their window, and literally could not get to it all year, they were not allowed to return home.
Ry Moran
One of the other speakers that day was Chief Robert Joseph – known to many as Bobby – another Survivor from St. Michael’s.
Bobby Joseph
It's important for us, this is our moment when we can begin to look at ourselves differently. To begin to know that all of us born no matter what color what creed, what race, as little children, we have value. And we should have been allowed to have discovered our purpose in life.
I was thinking the other day I stood on the top of those steps where those people are there. It was on my last day here. I had gone in to a pack my meager belongings. And I looked out and suddenly it hit me that I had nowhere to go. No sense of value. No sense of purpose. And I'm saying to all of you parents here Those of you who have young people graduating, you know how those young people feel when they graduate. It's a time for celebration. And I stood there those steps, broken and full of despair. The first time, when I was a little guy, and my mother was holding my hand, we were walking up towards the school, I didn't know that across this land, there were thousands and thousands of other little children whose hands were being held and were taken.
Ry Moran
Destruction is often equated to loss. But it can also be a powerful act of healing, one that reclaims agency as a first step in moving forward.
Bobby Joseph
I look at some of us Survivors. I think my God, I believe you've made it this far. What we have made it this far. And we're gonna go further and we're gonna inspire other people to walk with us. [Kwak̓wala] What else could I say my relatives, [Kwak̓wala] other than to express my gratitude for the kind of people you are [Kwak̓wala] because I ask you to have strong hearts [Kwak̓wala] so that we can go on [Kwak̓wala] so that we can go on taking care of ourselves and each other.
The Coast Salish have a really beautiful saying, they say ‘we have to hold each other up.’ We have to hold each other up. That's such a simple message.
And I want you to know that there are many emotions here today some really deep sadness some joy some tears, some confusion. But we're gathered here because we decided we would stand together that we would find the strength and the way to move forward from here.
[Kwak̓wala] That is all I have to say for now brothers and sisters. Thank you.
[applause]
Ry Moran
The St. Michael’s school was fully knocked down shortly after this ceremony. Its permanent removal adds a new layer of meaning to Carey’s earlier visit.
[music]
Carey Newman
Walking through that school, carrying not just his story, but the stories of the other Survivors who we spoke to, while we were there with me as I was, as I was seeing it, with different eyes. And subsequently, that school's been torn down, the community came together, and they had a ceremony to, to remove it. And so it kind of is extra important to me now, I think, that I went there. That we have the video of, of that place, of people standing inside, Stan Hunt standing inside talking about his experiences. Because it's a different kind of truth. In that way, it's more responsive. It was often quite emotional. In that process of gathering those stories and standing inside of, of those buildings, it represented such terrible memories for so many people. And yet they were willing to go there to share. And you can see in the eyes and you can feel in the way that people breathe, the courage that that took.
Ry Moran
This obligation to remember human rights abuses and genocide is not just a Canadian problem. To give us more context for how another nation is struggling to reconcile their dark past, we talked with Dr. Oliver Schmidtke, who was one of my – truth be told – favourite professors when I was a student here at UVic.
Oliver Schmidtke
I’m Oliver Schmidtke, I have been a professor at UVic for the past 20 years, political science and history, but also been directing the Center for Global Studies for the past 10 years. Might be of interest to your listeners that I'm currently based in Europe for the year while I am a Fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study.
Ry Moran
What I learned in Oliver’s classes stayed with me all the way through my work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – to the point where his course readings were on my shelf through to my time with the National Centre of Truth and Reconciliation. So it felt important to speak with him about these complicated interactions between history, memory, and place.
Ry Moran
… can you tell us a little bit about the broad trajectory of how memory has been sort of encountered, or confronted, or - or dealt with in Germany?
Oliver Schmidtke
Germany had to grapple with this kind of memory politics since the Second World War, you know, the task to commemorate, and in a way, address the legacy of the Third Reich and the Holocaust has been with the Federal Republic of Germany and the eastern part of the GDR since its existence, since 1949.
So, how do you reinvent yourself and still live with the legacy of this horrific injustice, right? That has been a fundamental question that Germany has been struggling with, and it started, you know, maybe understandably, but also politically difficult - in a difficult way, with a kind of collective amnesia, you know. Nobody wanted to talk about the past, you know, there was this very convenient myth of the zero hour, right? We start from scratch.
On a personal level, it was also a way to deal with trauma and very difficult memories, right? I remember I could never talk to my grandmother about her experience in the war, in the immediate post war period. She was definitely not supportive of the Nazis, but they'd been forced to flee the eastern provinces, but it was also 'I don't want to talk about it,' right? It's, you know, 'it's in the past, why touch on it?'
In the mid 60s, students started to revolt and questioned the strange silence that had, you know, been, in a way, imposed on the public arena in Germany in terms of addressing this past. And they started to question what did our parents do? But what was, you know, fascism and national socialism like here in our cities, right? These kinds of questions started to politicize a whole generation, which then gradually resulted in, I think, quite an honest, often painful way of addressing the past in post war West German culture.
And so I think there has been quite a concerted effort by post war German society, starting in the 70s, to take on this task in earnest and not look the other way, but - but confront also things of our collective past that tended to be divisive, politically, highly contested.
When I think we see a new phase now where the eyewitnesses are no longer around, or you're increasingly - we can no longer rely on their accounts, right? They can no longer go to schools. So how do we keep this memory alive in the new generation? For them, it's so long ago, right? They say, 'why is this still the dominant narrative of how we collectively commemorate Germany's past?' I think that's the phase we are in at the moment, things the political elite and mainstream media, they - they're still quite committed to keeping, you know, also the ethical commitment to 'never again,' commemorate what happens when alive. But for the younger generation, it becomes really something that happened in the very old past, right?
Ry Moran
Wonder if you can just kind of generally comment, too, on how some of the public memorialization maps on to this because I think these truths are becoming increasingly important to recognize in - in public spheres, there's this whole question about what do we do with the spaces where these atrocities occurred?
Oliver Schmidtke
I think first, for sure, the most obvious signs of Nazism, were you know, taken down you know, the swastikas, they were removed very quickly, but - you can appreciate the legacy also the built legacy of dictatorship, like the ones by Nazi Germany, you know, they persisted, right? And I think the more awareness that was created for the legacy of this rule, the more actually signs was discovered to say, look, you know, we need to dig deeper here and understand how it ties back to this.
It's important to understand how also the built infrastructure of our cities, of our lands, you know, they tell a story, but - but that needs also activism. And I think if you look back at who has pushed the commemoration of this past injustice forward in German, it has also been very much grassroots people on the ground. So, in Germany, in the 80s, we had this history movement, you know, small chapters, basically starting and their motto was 'dig where you stand,' try to understand local history and tie it back to the national history right? They're tied. But it makes sense of what you have left in your communities and where we live, right? So that then these sites became sites of learning, of collective learning, and understanding.
So sometimes knowledge you do have, research, but to make it into a broad public recognition of past injustice, just inscribed into our landscapes, and into our cities, I think that's a different kind of task.
[music]
Ry Moran
The violent history of colonialism has left traces of itself on the land and in the built fabric of cities around the world. Often rendered invisible, as Oliver described, the history of these spaces requires work and research to resurface.
So one museum worker in Liverpool is digging where she stands, grappling with the heavy legacy of Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade that exists within the space she works.
Tavia Panton
These contested histories, I think I heard a quote, by one of the local historians, he said something like ‘every brick in Liverpool have the blood of the enslaved within it’ Which is, yeah, it's very telling about these deep rooted connections.
Ry Moran
Tavia works at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool, which is the oldest contemporary arts centre in the UK.
Tavia Panton
Hi, I'm Tavia Panton. I'm the project facilitator for Bluecoat Colonial Legacies. This project is an arts and heritage project, working with young people from Toxteth Liverpool eight to explore the colonial histories of Liverpool and the Bluecoat building, and to create a public program of arts events.
Ry Moran
While we spoke, Tavia recounted the long and complex history of the Bluecoat.
Tavia Panton
Well it was founded in 1708, as a charity School for the city's poor and destitute youth. But a lot of the money that went into opening and sustaining the Bluecoat, in its earlier years, was derived from the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. So they think around 65% of that money, helped sustain that building.
Ry Moran
The funds and wealth amassed as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade were the foundation of the Liverpool’s growth and industrial development.
Tavia Panton
So Liverpool became the predominant port in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Europe. So by I think, 1795, it controlled 60% of the British slave trade and 40% of the European slave trade. And so the legacies of that, is that Liverpool are have over oldest Black community is one of the oldest Chinese communities.
Within that space, I think it's very present, sort of the effects of the transatlantic slavery in terms of how the city has been built, who the streets are named after, what statues are there. And also the inequality. So that's something that the Black community have been trying have been fighting and surviving and doing, like, you know, a really stellar job of addressing over the years.
Ry Moran
For a school that served the city’s poor children, the Bluecoat building is fairly ornate. But if you get close enough to the aged façade, old graffiti etched into the bricks from generations of former children is still visible to this day.
Ry Moran
You're working on this colonial legacies project at the Bluecoat? Why is it so important to dissect this? The connections between, you know, the histories and the Transatlantic slave trade? Like, what are you addressing when you do that?
Tavia Panton
I think it's important that, you know, the history of the place that you're brought up in, and, and the place you hope to grow up as well. And it's important because it empowers the young people on the project, to have the agency of understanding how their city functions in the relationship the different communities have with the place.
And I think, you know, they feel some of those, those negative legacies of colonialism. Like that sort of the racism that has been present in the city. And I think it's, it's important for them to understand and address where that comes from, and to disrupt the system that isn't necessarily designed to see them thrive in the way that they should.
I think there's also a lot of power in the truth. And I think it definitely, it's important for them to be able to own that and for the city itself to take accountability. I'm not speaking of blame, but have the responsibility to look at things as they are and to improve them for all communities.
Ry Moran
To think about it in a different way, Tavia is training the next generation of memory keepers -- ones who will carry a much deeper and honest history and collective memory of their city going forward.
Tavia Panton
With our project, I think it's something that, you know, many people in Britain with our curriculum, many young Black people, we kind of feel disconnected to what we're learning about, we're not we don't feel represented necessarily in the curriculum. So I think with this project and creating future anti-racist leaders, it's about bringing that awareness and that knowledge of themselves at an earlier age.
It's also about connecting through the generations as well. So part of the project is to bring on artists who've had their own explorations through race and colonialism in the history of their locale. And for them to be mentors for the young people. It's about giving them the tools to be able to navigate these things.
Ry Moran
When we think about some of the opportunities for change, for positive change, I mean, this is going to indicate that, you know, there's some fairly significant challenges that are still present. Can you give us a sense of what some of those deep rooted challenges are, that are tied directly to these histories that you're confronting?
Tavia Panton
I would say the main challenges about bringing the communities together. And to understand that revealing the truth in this way and revealing a more nuanced, and accurate history is not about oppressing anyone, it's about empowering people who have been left out of that.
[music fades out]
Ry Moran
Yeah it seems like in that too, there's like this requirement, or duty, or obligation, to keep repeating the same truths as well. So we're in this time where we're still trying to establish, I guess, the basic facts, or the basic kind of foundation of what this society is. And some of that stuff is really fatiguing to deal with, right? [tired laughter] Like it's ridiculous, like fatiguing is even a light word for it.
Carey Newman
It's so true.
Ry Moran
Yeah.
Carey Newman
Like, that's, that's the exhausting part, right?
Ry Moran
Yeah.
Carey Newman
I think that's, that's kind of part of that, the fatigue that comes from not just uncovering and understanding truth on a personal level, but when you're engaged in working to share that outwards, the different levels of resistance or obstacles that you encounter, everything from the kind of claim of ignorance, and often that's true, but it can only be true once, right? All the way to the act of denial or sanitisation, where there are people who don't believe that it's genocide, who don't believe that there was any ill harm intended. When, if you do go deeper into looking at the documentation of how residential schools were started, and that's just one small aspect of colonization, of the genocide we speak of, it's explicitly clear in the words of the founders, what was intended. And the intention was to assimilate and erase Indigenous identity, which is the very definition of genocide. So that part - you can probably hear the change in my voice because my blood pressure is rising because that's, that's what gets me is, is needing to explain that.
Ry Moran
I think that's a big, that's a big piece of all of this, like, when you're dealing with these histories, when you're dealing with sites, when you're dealing with objects, that inherently are so multifaceted - like, on the one hand, you've got this horrific story of, of trauma, of violence, of oppression. You've got the inverse of that too, which is the strength, the resistance, that resilience.
Carey Newman
Yeah, I have mixed emotions about how to deal with the site itself. And I think that what I've come to around that is - it's got to be up to the community to determine how they want to transform the site. And I think it's also important to recognize that even when the building has gone, until the site becomes something different, its presence is still there by its absence. So, in some cases, we see communities who have gone through the process of turning the school into something different. In other cases, we've seen communities decide that it needs to go. And the critical factor, I think, is what does it become? Even after you've torn it down, what does it become? Because if it doesn't become something new, then it's still a vacuum. If the building stands, but doesn't become something new, then it's - all of its associations are these horrible memories. And for a while, I was thinking, you know, we need to save them. And we need to save some, but we also - our community has to have agency.
Ry Moran
Remembering does not always have to happen at the sites themselves. And if some distance is needed, there are still tangible remains of these places in the Witness Blanket.
Carey Newman
I was thinking a lot lately, because I've been reading about, you know, the way that when people use the phrase, 'trauma informed,' but then people also talk about, you know, as Indigenous makers or writers, the different ways that you can position that trauma, and trying to - because I wasn't really thinking about those things, when I was making the Blanket, I was thinking about truth. And sort of coming to grips with the realization that if it's trauma focused, then it's not necessarily leading us forward. Like it could be really, re-triggering for people.
And I think, at least I believe that, because I made it with so much love, and so much care. Not just for my dad, but also thinking about my kid. And also thinking about all of the other Survivors, and made specific, intentional decisions around how to present different objects, like that door, how I transformed the face of it, so that it wouldn't be the same door. But I added elements to it, images, words, in an attempt to, to soften that moment of realization, if it were somebody who had faced that door in real life, as a child. And I think that because of those kinds of decisions and that mindset - and I'm, I'm obviously open to other opinions on this - but I think that, it doesn't ignore trauma, but doesn't focus on the trauma.
Ry Moran
On the inside of the door mounted within the Witness Blanket – below George Littlechild’s drawing, just at the height of the doorknob, are two small handprints.
Carey Newman
I wanted to make it so the door would stay open, because I didn't want, like symbolically, to close the door on things that happen behind it. And so when it was - when the blanket was finished, I had my daughter Adelyn come and put her handprints just below, George Littlechild's image of a priest and his prey. And just push the door open with her little, little handprints. And she came to Winnipeg this time, and it's the first time of - I think she's seen it since that time when she had those teeny little hands. And she's, you know, she's five years older now, six years older now, and her hands - she's like, 'Dad, look how small those hand print are' And it's another recontextualization, right? Thinking about, about the passage of time, but also seeing her as a little, little, little girl. And now as a little bit bigger child. It connects right? It connects to residential schools, that connects as a parent. It continues to remind me how different her life is, how different my life was as a child, to my father.
Ry Moran
Confronting the truth of what has happened in Canada is complex work. Confronting the presence of space, and place, and human rights violation within our midst is at the core of our understanding of who we are as a nation.
The past influences the world we live in right now. Across the country, sites of mass human rights violations continue to exist in our backyards.
Do you know where the closest residential school is to your community? Do you know if that school has a graveyard? Do you know the communities and nations that were forced to attend those schools?
Canada is not immune from some of the greatest failings in the world. We are not immune from struggling with the questions of preservation, of destruction, and what to do with these complicated difficult spaces that can at once harm and at the same time educate. These are histories that live with us today. There is still hard work to be done.
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Tavia Panton
I just hope that for the future, this work is sort of sustained. That when people are making an effort, that it's not a token effort and that the fear of getting things wrong won't stop people who want to engage in this debate, because you can always revise what you're doing.
I'm just I'm hoping that these projects that we're doing here are impactful, but that it's recognized, it's not the end of it. This is the legacy from, you know, 200 years plus of the transatlantic slave trade. So we've got 200 years work, at least, in front of us.
Carey Newman
That another aspect of truth and truth telling, and truth knowing, is how we integrate that into our identities, how we look at that as a country, or as, and as individuals, right? Like, I don't know how many times you've heard people say, you know, 'when do we get to move forward?' There's, there's that kind of rush to, to get to the, to the happy part. But I don't know that we should. In fact, I'm, I'm convinced that we need to give enough space to the truth that it becomes part of who we are, it becomes part of what it means to be Canadian. And once we get to that part of truth, or that level of engagement with truth, then we can start on the reconciliation, right? Because it's fundamentally altered who we are and how we understand this country to be.
Ry Moran
This podcast was created through the direct team work of an incredible group of people. It was written and produced by Karina Greenwood and myself, editing and consulting by Cassidy Villebrun-Buracas, mixing and mastering by Matheus Liete, and music by myself, Ry Moran.
Special thanks to the UVic Libraries team that assisted in countless ways on this production, and to MediaOne for audio content.
Maarsi to our guests Carey Newman, Oliver Schmidtke, and Tavia Panton.
Taapwaywin is made possible through the University of Victoria Strategic Framework Impact Fund, and with direct support from the University of Victoria Libraries and CFUV Radio.
This podcast was created in unceded lək̓ʷəŋən and WSÁNEĆ territories.
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Ry Moran
Okay, my friend.
Carey Newman
Well, it was pretty good to chat this way.
Ry Moran
It's pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah, we should just record everything we say, I suppose.
Carey Newman
Oh, please no.
Ry Moran
It would be bad for both of us. [Laughter]. That was good. I really appreciate your time.
Carey Newman
Thanks Ry. Thanks for having me.