The Museum of Vancouver is pleased to announce its newest feature exhibition There is Truth Here: Creativity and Resilience in Children’s Art from Indian Residential and Day Schools. Curated by Andrea Walsh, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, and originally displayed at the Legacy Art Gallery in Victoria, the exhibition has been adapted with additional works from the MOV collection. Sharon Fortney, Curator of Indigenous Collections and Engagement at MOV, facilitated bringing this exhibit to Vancouver.

There is Truth Here, opening on April 5, 2019, focuses on rare surviving artworks created by children who attended the Inkameep Day School (Okanagan), St Michael’s Indian Residential School (Alert Bay); the Alberni Indian Residential School (Vancouver Island) and Mackay Indian Residential School (Manitoba). The focus of the exhibition is not on the schools themselves, but upon witnessing the experiences of the survivors as conveyed through their childhood artworks – for some the only surviving material from their childhoods.

There is Truth Here brings a new line to bear on the role of art as part of children’s knowledge, identity, and experiences of Indian Residential and Day Schools. Through paintings, drawings, sewing, beading, drumming, singing, and drama produced by children and youth who attended schools in British Columbia and Manitoba the exhibition seeks to contribute in vital and new ways to dialogues and initiative about truth telling, reconciliation, and redress in Canada.

To offer context and a unique, local counterpoint to the exhibition MOV is excited to announce a partnership with Capture Photography Festival, who have had the opportunity to commission Roxanne Charles, an artist and member of the Semiahmoo First Nation, who will be producing a local response to There is Truth Here. Roxanne will be drawing inspiration from archival photographs from MOV’s collection of everyday life at St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission, BC.