Memory History Story Exhibit Notes

Coast Salish People Acknowledgement

  • Acknowledgement to the Coast Salish people, specifically the Squamish and Tsleil Waututh Nations, on whose traditional territory the North Vancouver School District and the Gordon Smith Gallery reside.
  • Expressing value for the opportunity to learn, live, and share educational experiences on this traditional territory.

Introduction: Memory History Story Exhibit

  • The exhibit "Memory History Story" serves as a resource for students, educators, and visitors to examine how individuals and communities learn.
  • Following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's calls to action, the B.C. Ministry of Education developed a new curriculum focused on indigenizing all areas of learning.
  • This change involves adding and altering content in various subject areas and the methods used to teach these subjects.
  • The First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) provides valuable online learning resources to ensure that the issues and concerns of BC First Nations are meaningfully addressed.
  • Curatorial decisions for the exhibit were influenced by questions and emotions, with the understanding that art serves as a medium to record emotions, memories, stories, and histories.
  • Using the First Peoples Principles of Learning from FNESC, works are grouped into areas that reflect:
    • Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story.
    • Learning supports the well-being of the self, family, community, land, spirits, and ancestors.
    • Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).
    • Learning requires exploration of one's identity.
  • Text for the exhibition includes key words from the First Peoples Principles of Learning, with translations provided by the Squamish and Tsleil Waututh Nations.
  • Blank spaces in the text purposefully show the loss and near extinction of the Halkomelen language (Tsleil Waututh Nation).
  • Art pieces exhibited record artists' memories, histories, and stories of their experiences, depicting a wide array of experiences such as relocation, forced settlement, residential schools, loss of family and culture, connection to spirits and the land, and discovering and reviving cultures.
  • Viewers are challenged to interpret, research, and question their understanding of these works and the events that have influenced these artists' lives.
  • The hope is that dialogue about the historical and current issues of Indian Residential Schools in Canada and the ongoing work of reconciliation expands for visitors.
  • Educators are encouraged to "go forward with courage" and "go forward with compassion."

Memory History Story

  • Gallery installation and opening of "Memory History Story."

The Lesson: Responding to Residential Schools Through Art

  • Activity based on the work and process of artists George Littlechild and Jane Ash Poitras.
  • Both artists use research and mixed media to explore history, story, and memory centering around cultural loss, exploration, and re-learning.
  • Students will respond visually to Canada's historical and current issues surrounding residential schools.
  • Students will make emotional associations with color, imagery, text, symbols, mark-making, and patterning, using the work of Poitras and Littlechild as inspiration.

Indigenous Principal of Learning

  • Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story.

Big Idea

  • Art connects us by reflecting the world through time, place, culture, and other contexts.

Content, Skills, and Vocabulary

  • colonialism, residential schools, reconciliation, discrimination, civilize, inferior/superior, symbolism and metaphor, emphasis, variety, repetition, collage, layering, pattern, mark making, painting & glazing
  • The TATE is a resource for definitions of art terms.

Materials

  • paper, image bank, pre-mixed tempera paint with matt acrylic medium in primary and secondary colors, scissors, white glue, brushes, oil pastels, pencil crayons, and stencils

Step #1: Memory (remembering), History & Story

  • Introduce the unit by telling the story of Shi-shi-etko (Campbell, 2005) or Learning from generation to generation (see: FNESC resources).
  • Remembering the past is a major theme in the story of Indian Residential Schools.
  • Show images of residential schools and provide context and information on Canada's history of the residential school system.
  • Introduce the art project by showing images of contemporary indigenous art, such as Kent Monkman, George Littlechild, and Jane Ash Poitras.
  • Create a dialogue, asking the following questions:
    1. How do these images differ from the story(s) you just heard?
    2. Why were indigenous children forced to attend Indian Residential Schools?
    3. How were Indian Residential School buildings different from school buildings today?
    4. What were some of the features of an Indian Residential School?
    5. How did the way children were treated at Indian Residential Schools make them feel about themselves?
    6. How was daily life for students at an Indian Residential School different from daily life of students today?
    7. How did students learn to survive in the schools?
    8. What issues faced students when they returned home after residential school?
    9. What is reconciliation?
    10. What is the role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?
  • Kent Monkman's work is used to show a narrative approach to depicting events of Canada's past, as showing a different artistic approach from that of Littlechild and Poitras.
    1. What is the artist's intent in including collaged imagery, symbolism and text?
    2. How do symbols connect with the story that is reflected in the art?
    3. How do you think the artist feels about Residential. Schools? Why?
    4. What artistic techniques a 1 choices does the artist use to express opinions?

Step #2: Gathering Imagery and Text for the Collage

  • Have students create a list of words and symbols to choose from as a resource for their mixed media works.
    1. Use resources such as "Learning from Generation to Generation" and the list of words and phrases provided.
    2. Referring to the selected art, find and connect symbols with meanings.
  • Provide image categories (e.g., group photos, maps, school buildings, living conditions, school labor, classrooms, everyday life) on historical and current issues of residential schools in Canada for students to observe and collect from.

Step #3: Creation Process

  • Students will be tasked with creating an artwork using collage and mixed media techniques in response to their learning about the issues of residential schools, using imagery, symbols, and texts.
  • Explain collage as an artistic process; explain variety in composition.
  • Provide instructions on how to create an overall interesting composition using: image selection, text, emphasis, repetition (changing scale).
  • Demonstrate arranging images into a composition and gluing them down. Encourage students to play with a variety of compositions and how images can interact with each other before gluing them down.
  • Students: select and arrange their images on paper to tell a story, and paste them down using white glue.
  • Discuss the impact of colors on emotion. Discuss the colors you have (possibly limit this project to primary and secondary colors); warm versus cool, subtle versus intense. Ask students to associate emotions with the different colors.
  • Demonstrate painting and glazing with paint and acrylic medium.
  • Draw students' attention to the different qualities that can be achieved, the opaque and translucent properties of applying the paint.
  • Students: paint and glaze their compositions using both opaque and translucent application of the paint, and choosing colors based upon emotion.

Step #4: Finalizing the Composition

  • Have students add text, symbols, and patterns to their work.
  • Their focus should be on content, mark making and adding emphasis to the composition (use oil pastels and/or pencil crayons).
  • Acknowledgement of colleagues who provided direction and refinement of the lesson; Brad Baker, Kory Bogen, Raphael Choi, Todd Clark, Stephanie Makie, Yolande Martinello, Heather Myher, Meghan Parker, and Catherine Schechter.

Resources

  • Grade 5/6 Indian Residential schools and Reconciliation lesson plan.
  • Leclair, B. (2023) Lesson plan: Shi-Shi-etko by Nicola I. Campbell & Kim LaFave. Winnipeg School Division.
  • Images from Residential Schools
  • Library & Archives Canada searchable archive with over 1000 images on Indian Residential Schools taken from Library and Archives Canada Link

Art Vocabulary and Definitions

  • Tate Gallery, London: Link

Featured Artists

  • Jane Ash Poltras: Link
  • George Littlechild: Link
  • Kent Monkman: Link

Artists For Kids

  • Artists For Kids was established in 1989 through a generous partnership among some of Canada's finest artists and the North Vancouver School District.
  • Its mission, through the sale of original prints created by its artist patrons, is to build an art education legacy for the children of British Columbia.
  • The Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art is home to a stunning collection of work created by its patrons.
  • Artists For Kids provides a variety of art enrichment program opportunities for thousands of students of all ages each year including the popular Paradise Valley Summer School of Visual Art.
  • 24 slide powerpoint Canadian Residential Schools on the resource page of AFK's website
  • Link
  • connections, reflections and creations