[Craic] FW: Canadian artists AA Bronson and Adrian Stimson explore the power of apology and their shared history re the Siksika reserve in Alberta

[David Walsh]

This interview on q with Tom Power is well worth listening to

Canadian artists AA Bronson and Adrian Stimson explore the power of apology and their shared history — their ancestors were sworn enemies. Aired: Dec. 31, 2020

To listen to this interview, click the ‘x’ to eliminate the pop-up and you will see “Play full episode” – this interview is the first one.

[Full episode] AA Bronson and Adrian Stimson, Lucy Liu, Jon Bon Jovi | q with Tom Power | Live Radio | CBC Listen<https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-50-q/clip/15815618-full-episode-aa-bronson-adrian-stimson-lucy-liu>
The interview is the first one and starts after 30 seconds.

 David

Interview with AA Bronson and Adrian Stimson
Play Episode
Share Episode   [Full episode] AA Bronson and Adrian Stimson, Lucy Liu, Jon Bon Jovi | q with Tom Power | Live Radio | CBC Listen<https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-50-q/clip/15815618-full-episode-aa-bronson-adrian-stimson-lucy-liu?share=true>

AA Bronson is an artist living and working in Toronto and Berlin. In the sixties, he left University with a group of friends to found a free school, a commune, and an underground newspaper.

AAB:  My great-grandfather was a missionary, the first missionary to the Siksika reserve, which is one of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the one nearest Calgary. He was very focused on destroying Native culture — as were all the missionaries — but he was particularly focused.

H: So it’s about exposing your family legacy and their role in establishing the residential schools?

AAB: Yes, my great-grandfather founded one of the first residential schools, somewhere between 1883–1884. And, well, the little drama that happened; he was only there for 11 years, and then he was transferred to another reserve because there was a kind of uprising, which has been squashed in written history. You can’t find documentation of it; it’s very, very difficult to find anything about it. But what we know happened was there was a tuberculosis epidemic amongst the children in the school. [With] tuberculosis, you need lots of air and sunlight, and you need to get out into the open air. He was more or less locking the kids in school. He wouldn’t let their parents see them once they were sick because he was afraid the parents would get them to revert from Christianity back to paganism, and then they’d die of the disease, and their souls would go to hell because they weren’t Christian. So he kept them locked up in the school, and they died in the school without ever seeing their parents.

H: How did you uncover this?

AA Bronson: There’s a family story about it. That’s what took me to this project eventually. There are stories from my father and my grandfather. My grandfather was the head of another residential school, and my father consequently grew up on a reserve. So the whole relationship to the Native peoples is very alive and well in my family history, just through storytelling. And from each generation, you get a different kind of story. My father couldn’t cope with it; he ran away from home when he was 14, whereas my grandfather was a very pro-Christian missionary, but like the choir. My great-grandfather was more like the innovator — developed the written language for Siksika, and translated big chunks of the Bible into Siksika. But he also took the kids away from their parents; they weren’t allowed to speak their own language. And despite the fact that he could speak it — which seems really bizarre — they had to dress in Victorian British clothes.

H: In what ways will you address this in your art?

 AAB: I’m doing a project called “Public Apology to Siksika Nation.” I want to apologize on behalf of my great-grandfather. Through doing the research on this, I met Adrian Stimson, who’s a Siksika native. He’s a Canadian artist who about a year ago moved back to the reserve. He was living in Saskatoon, and incidentally he received the Governor General’s Award a few weeks ago. I am working on the project together with him.

H: Where will it take place?

AAB: We would like to do part of it on the Siksika Reserve and another part of it in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/craic-integralshift.ca/attachments/20210102/9bcea5e7/attachment-0001.html>