Journey Towards Reconciliation

Aesthetic Representation:

When creating my aesthetic art piece that connects to my journey, I chose to create a flower that represents growth. At the bottom of the flower I wrote “Through Knowledge We Grow Together.” During my research I learned that knowledge has the power to bring people together, and by everyone having the opportunity to be educated on the past, we can grow and learn to make better for the future together. I created the flower using words I included within my paper. Some of the words written were voices, thoughts and emotions of survivors of the residential school system and some of the words were my thoughts and emotions from throughout my journey. Other positive words were words written stating what we need to do now and moving forward. The painted colours in the background each represent residential school families in different ways. Red represents the lives that were lost, blue represents the tears that were shed and black represents the pain that the indigenous people have endured. At the very top of my piece I have included the quote that has stuck with me for the past month; “Truth is the basics for justice in our society and the building blocks to our society” (TRC Booklet p. 2). The truth, I believe, is one of the biggest pieces needed to be able to move forward.