“A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquencable faith in their mission, can alter the course of history” – Mahatma Ghandi
I have been a synchronized swimmer for 11 years now. When we first were told about this project, I knew I wanted to incorporate my swimming into it. I have drawn three silhouettes in the pool representing myself in this course. The first photo is the silhouette on the surface level of a pool. The reason I chose to draw that is because my knowledge on reconciliation and the history of Indigenous was ‘surface level’. I knew the basics that the average person in society would know. The second photo is the person being pulled underneath the water. It is representing that once I got to this class and my knowledge expanded on the history of Indigenous, I realized that I did not know near as much as I thought I did. I did not ever think about the impact it would have on Indigenous people after they got out of those schools. The last drawing is representing me, partially out of the water. This is where I want to one day be. I want to be above the surface level knowledge. I want to be an educator, who knows so much information on stories that seem to be forgotten, and teach people in our society that there is so much more than ‘they were treated unfairly.’
I created each drawing purposely to be in different color. The first photo of me on the surface level. It is representing my knowledge on reconciliation which I would consider to be ‘the basics’. It is in vibrant color because I thought that what I knew was ‘good enough’ and that ‘I knew more than the average person’. Since I knew this stuff I thought I was helping reconciliation in our society, which I believed was a positive thing. I thought that since I was educated on it throughout elementary and high school that there would not be anything that I don’t know. That all changed once I watched Muffins for Granny. Muffins for Granny was one of the most powerful, intense, raw documentaries I have ever seen. It opened up my knowledge and made me realize that there is so much that I do not know about the history of Indigenous. It also registered in me that if I have this little of knowledge on the history of Indigenous, that so many other people in our society must also not know the depth of historic events that really did happen to them.
That is where my second drawing came in and it is in grey, black and white. I chose to not add any color because I want my art piece to express that those colors means sadness. There is so much sadness throughout this whole topic, but what makes it more sad is that these stories seem to be slowly starting to be forgotten and not recognized the way they deserve. Our society is not being taught the unembellished truth that happened to those Indigenous children and the impact it has had on them and their families. Once I started to read ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ it came to my attention that I really did not know what the term ‘reconciliation’ truly meant. There are countless facts in that book that I did not know prior to reading it, but one that really stuck with me was on page 4. On page 4, it states that it took over 100 years for the Canadian Government to recognize the consequences of residential schools and it is because the government and their families weren’t affected and did not realize how much the school destroyed their families. It is overwhelming to take in that the government did not do any selfless acts to help these families who went through trauma.
My last drawing is me doing what we call an ‘eggbeater boost’ in synchro. In synchro, it symbols you are strong and I believe it has the same meaning in my project too. One day, I want to be able to know and recognize innumerable stories of the Indigenous and teach children in the classroom that we are to never stop reconciliation with that culture. We cannot just tell students the surface level information of what happened to their whole culture, we need to tell them the stories that will leave an imprint on them that they will never forget. We need more people watching Muffins for Granny and reading Truth to Reconciliation because that video and book does not sugar coat any suffering that happened to the Indigenous families. It discloses all the ugliness that happened on them during residential schools and the impact it has had on the rest of their lives. I chose this drawing to have some colour, but not as much as the first one. That is because this is a topic that does not have happiness. This photo gained color back from the previous one because it is showing that I am strongly educated in the topic of Indigenous history and that I promise to carry on my knowledge to others in society so we never forget the disturbing stories of what the Indigenous people had to go through.