Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The challenge of reconciliation • 337cross this cultural divide, and neither does it have to in order to have a high impact.Acts of resistance sometimes take place in “irreconcilable spaces” where artistschoose to keep their residential school experiences private or share them only withother Aboriginal people. 209 This is also essential to individual and collective reclaimingof identity, culture, and community memory.The Commission notes that the use of creative arts in community workshops promoteshealing for Survivors, their families, and the whole community through therecovery of cultural traditions. In conducting surveys of 103 community-based healingprojects, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (ahf) found that 80% of those projectsincluded cultural activities and traditional healing interventions. These includedElders’ teachings, storytelling and traditional knowledge, language programs, landbasedactivities, feasts and powwows; and learning traditional art forms, harvestingmedicines, and drumming, singing, and dancing. The ahf report observed,A notable component of successful healing programs was their diversity—interventions were blended and combined to create holistic programs thatmet the physical, emotional, cultural, and spiritual needs of participants. Notsurprisingly, arts-based interventions were included in many cultural activities(drum making, beading, singing, and drumming) as well as in therapeutichealing (art therapy and psychodrama). 210The Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s findings make clear that creative art practicesare highly effective in reconnecting Survivors and their families to their cultures, languages,and communities. In our view, this confirms yet again that funding for community-basedhealing projects is an urgent priority for Aboriginal communities.Art exhibits have played a particularly powerful role in the process of healing andreconciliation. In 2009, nationally acclaimed Anishinaabe artist Robert Houle, whoattended the Sandy Bay residential school in Manitoba, created a series of twenty-fourpaintings to be housed permanently in the University of Manitoba’s School ofArt Gallery. In an interview with CBC News on September 24, 2013, he explained that“during the process memories came back that he had previously suppressed ... [butthat] he found the whole experience cathartic. At the end, he felt a sigh of relief, a sighof liberation.” 211Over the course of the Commission’s mandate, several major art exhibits ran concurrentlywith its National Events. During the British Columbia National Event inVancouver, for example, three major exhibits opened, featuring well-known Aboriginalartists, some of whom were also Survivors or intergenerational Survivors. A number ofnon-Aboriginal artists were also featured. Their work explored themes of denial, complicity,apology, and government policy. Two of these exhibits were at the Universityof British Columbia: Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools at theMorris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and the Museum of Anthropology’s Speakingto Memory: Images and Voices from the St. Michael’s Residential School. Both exhibits