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

[Greg Gillis]

Powerful David heard this interview yesterday very moving!

Greg


On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 11:11 AM David Walsh via craic <
craic at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

>
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> This interview on *q with Tom Power is well worth listening to*
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> 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
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> 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.
>
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> *[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.
>
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>
>  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>
>
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> *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.
>
>
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