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| Quilt block, Witness Blanket, Can Museum of Human Rights Pic, S. Sutter |
Other half and I made a long overdue drive and camp trip from Ont to Winnipeg, MB this fall to see dear friends.
We all became friends thru helping trips we made with teens in 2010 and '12. They tend to the spiritual needs of the inner city indigenous community.
Another thing we wanted to do on this non-working trip was to visit the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
The exhibit that I keep thinking most about is something called the Witness Blanket on the 4th floor of the museum. It's a series of panels in wood that sort of mimics the quilt blocks idea. But the content preserves detail about the residential school system, so that it never happens again.
In the middle of the panels is a doorway as if to a chapel. But it looks like something out of a horror movie.
There are artifacts the artist has collected or had donated to him, like alphabet blocks and hockey skates, embedded in the quilt blocks.
One feature that caught my eye was a paltry few piano keys. This, in context with the horror movie chapel entrance, knocked the wind out of me.
I've been chatting with a grade school friend of mine over the last few years about the therapeutic benefits of playing music on memory retention and recovery. (We were in the high school band together, she played percussion and I played flute. But her non-concert band instrument is piano.)
Here was a situation in which the western church music tradition is associated with real life horrors.
This doesn't mean music in the European tradition can't be therapeutic. But there are situations where it can be distinctly not.
The piano or organ keys were the only music representations on the blanket. If there were other ones, I didn't notice them on this visit.
Of course, that doesn't mean our indigenous friends aren't musical people. Just that this generational experience was particularly devoid of joy.
The next day, we met with another friend for a picnic in St. Vital park, a beautiful well-utilized public green space on the Red River. When we picked her up, she caught us up on how she had been playing something like an honour song or strong woman song on her iPod and dancing like no one was watching. Another part of the conversation was about drumming.
Driving and picnicking with my friend gave time to listen. And this put a real live human form to the terrible legacy of residential schools.
This visit with people I love and are patient with me showed me I need to be prepared always to have my most knee-jerk assumptions challenged. Reconciliation is a lifelong journey.
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| Pic, S. Sutter |
Postscript. While the Human Rights museum does feature many thought-provoking displays, the architecture of the building is something you keep thinking on as well. It's grounded in rock, wrapped in windows that are translucent from the outside, and has a spire that's more clear glass. To my mind, the structure mimics our individual development as humans toward kindness and charity - still struggling up from the earth's crust, the majority of our time seeing through a glass darkly, with thin slender moments of being our best selves occasionally scratching at heaven. Current times (2025) remind us it's a never ending struggle, and we still have very far to go.
