Artist Robert Burke returned to his hometown of Fort Smith last week to show a set of paintings that share, for the first time, his 10-year experience at residential school.
The series of tryptics, or large, three-paneled paintings, take onlookers through the chronology of indigenous children being removed from their families, through the school days, to being recognized as survivors, and ending with the adjudication that resulteed in the Indian Residential School class action settlement.
Burke, now 71, said much of what Canadians know about residential schools comes from static, black and white photos of children in lines with nuns in the classroom.
“But when that was happening, these pictures of static individuals, nobody’s talking about the psychological implications of that whole dynamic,” he said. “The audience gets to see the dynamics of residential school through the imagery I’m using.”
Many of the paintings show a mix of the positives and negatives of the schooling experience. Some show the students playing hockey during winter, while another called “Fun and Games” shows a child being shocked in an electric chair by white men in robes.
Though the experiences of residential school survivors have been brought to the forefront over the last few years through the workings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Burke said the exhibit is wholly representative of his personal experience.
“Everything I did is my story. It’s my story. It’s not from books I read, not from people I talked to. It’s my story,” said Burke, who now makes his home on Vancouver Island. “It’s a voice that hadn’t been heard by anybody. I’m representing a lot of Aboriginals that all went through the same thing, and we just went on about our lives. Some of us never went back and thought about it, but others, like myself, I had an opportunity to think and paint about it, so I did.”
While the show follows on the heels of the TRC’s final report, Burke said the timing is purely coincidental, though fortunate.
“As long as (the public is) thinking about it, it’s a good time to put that imagery out,” he said. “Things are no different now. Indians are just as poor today as 50, 100 years ago. Prejudice is just as rampant as it used to be. Things haven’t changed. So you’ve got to keep painting this kind of stuff, educating people.”
Burke said it’s the latest, but not the last, of his shows depicting “social issues” that impact indigenous peoples. For his next show, he plans to paint about the Aboriginal experience of the correctional system.
“That’s a significant aspect of our lives. You’re always in and out of the newspapers, you’re in and out of TV, you see some guy being handcuffed here and there, but there’s a lot of prejudice that has to be exposed as part of that,” he said. “The Aboriginal is a f***-up, but so is the system that’s affecting them or charging them.”
Prior to The Residential School Experience, Burke painted a series called The Silent Breed, depicting the history and personal events of his childhood as a mixed race child of a Dene woman and African American soldier who was stationed in Fort Smith during the construction of the Canol pipeline throughout World War II.
Though much of the imagery deals with difficult subjects, Burke said he tries to make the paintings beautiful and colourful, and to keep the conversation positive.
“This is just one series of events in my life. I’m not going to paint residential school for the rest of my life,” he said. “This is just one series of events, and once this is done, essentially I’ll forget it.”
The Residential School Experience is on display at the Northern Life Museum and Cultural Centre in Fort Smith until July 28, after which it will travel to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife.