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Mural raises awareness of residential schools

When you look closely at Duchess Park secondary's new mural, among the dozens of images you can see a silhouette of a woman sitting beside a black tree.
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Three key students that helped with the Gesture of Reconciliation art mural at Duchess Park secondary school. From left Alida Toms, 17, Tatana Lowen, 17 and Elizabeth Young, 17, stand with the mural. The unveiling over the lunch hour at the school Friday was the final step in the Project of Heart Initiative to raise awareness of the history of residential schools in Canada and the impact that history has on Indigenous people, from past to present day.

When you look closely at Duchess Park secondary's new mural, among the dozens of images you can see a silhouette of a woman sitting beside a black tree.

"She's sitting there with her hands raised up to give thanks to her ancestors for the beautiful culture and for the traditions and values that have been passed on," said Candice George, an aboriginal education worker who helped lead the project with colleague Angela Sanderson.

"And from her hand there's a beautiful wind coming up from one of her palms," said George after Wednesday's mural unveiling. "It looks like her thanks is going up to the wind and a spirit eagle is bringing those thanks and gratitude to the ancestors."

The woman is just one of the images George highlighted on the moosehide mural, stretched on a natural wood frame. The hide is strung up, George explained, on deer babiche, which is deer skin that has been cut into rope.

But the mural itself also serves to remember a dark past recalling Canada's residential schools. It existence is meant "to honour survivors and to honour the children who did not survive," but also to create a better tomorrow, George said.

In the top corner, written in syllabic on a drum that represents the sun, the title of the piece: healing with education.

The mural is the culmination of the Project of Heart initiative at Duchess Park Secondary to raise awareness of the history of residential schools in Canada and the impact the government-funded, church-run schools had on indigenous peoples.

The event coincided with orange T-shirt day in schools, also meant to create a conversation around Canada's history of forcibly removing indigenous children from their families.

George is a School District 57 facilitator for language and culture, an area of focus under the aboriginal education department's FOCI program: focus on cultural integration.

The work started last January, when George and another facilitator worked with eight classes, and 181 students in Grades 8 to 12.

"They all put a piece in the mural."

"The first step was to educate the students about residential schools," said George, who said many students were unfamiliar with their legacy.

Next, George brought in a survivor. He asked students to shout where they went to elementary school.

Then he asked: how many of your elementary schools had a graveyard?

"And nobody raised their hand," George said.

The Truth and Reconciliation Report found through its death registry 3,201 reported deaths between 1867 and 2000. More than 1,000 of those are not connected to a name.

But when the report was released in June, Justice Murray Sinclair, who headed the commission, said at least 6,000 children died and that the true number will never be known. With more than 150,000 passing through those particular hallways, that translates to at least one in 25 students dead.

George noted some schools had a 25 per cent mortality rate and in rare cases, half the student population died.

The tiles on the mural represent half of Duchess Park's student population to underscore that harsh fact.

The tiles also offer images across all cultures, George said, from east to west coast, and First Nation to those of all different nations.

"These tiles are placed strategically on the babiche and the hanging tiles reflect fringes of a traditional woman's dress," she said.

"The fringe represents not letting that negativity hang on to us and when we dance, the fringes move and it lets go of the negativity."

The fringe is especially symbolic for George, of both Stellat'en First Nation and Wet'suwet'en First Nation ancestry, because her grandmother and great grandmother were traditional women.

"What we have is a tree that represents indigenous cultures across Canada and it reflects that indigenous peoples are rooted within tradition," George said.

When George saw the finished project, and the crowd filling the school foyer where it hung, her heart filled with pride.

"I'm just overwhelmed with happiness and also sadness at the same time. More or less I'm honoured that the students put so much heart and so much effort into this beautiful art mural and actually opening their hearts and listening to the messages we had to share with them."