A piece of art that measures 40 feet by seven feet tells the story of 126 years of residential schools in Canada.
The artist collected artifacts from the schools and other institutions to put together what he calls his most important piece ever.
The “ Witness Blanket” is now on display at the University of Regina.
One of the first people to get a look at it was Blair Stonechild.
He is a professor at the First Nations University and is a residential school survivor.
For him, the experience was not horrible but it was not good either.
He attended Lebret residential school from kindergarten until Grade Nine in 1965.
The art work is bordered in cedar and looks a lot like a First Nations blanket with each square containing a different piece of residential school history.
Everything from photographs to braids of hair to little shoes and small handprints on a school door are pieces in the puzzle.
Stonechild says people need to know the history of the schools.
“To quote Sir John A MacDonald, he basically said the problem is that they are growing up with savages so if you take them away from their homes they will grow up like civilized people, that was his solution,” he says.
The FNU and the University of Regina brought the “Witness Blanket” to Regina as part of its national tour.
It will be on display at the Innovation and Research Centre at the University of Regina until the end of February.
U of R professor and lead on Indigenization, Shauneen Pete, says the artwork is getting a lot of attention
“People walk by and they are drawn in, and then there is this quietness that comes over them, then there is a realization…Oh, that’s what this is all about it. It’s not just this incredible craftsmanship, there is a message here,” she says.
One-hundred-and-fifty-thousand First Nations children were taken from their homes and placed in residential schools between 1870 and 1996.
Many of them were subject to physical and even sexual abuse.
In June of 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an apology on behalf of the government of Canada.
Since then, nearly $2 billion dollars have been set aside for residential school settlements.
At last count, more than $1.6 billion had been paid out.