For my aesthetic piece that I completed for the Truth and Reconciliation project in my ECS 100 class i decided to paint an image that has an important message in it. Before I get into explaining that message, I will explain what each part of the painting is. The first thing is the pencil sharpener and the pencil that is being sharpened. For my aesthetic piece I really wanted to try and focus on the idea of how the church and government used residential schools in an attempt to assimilate indigenous children and get rid of their culture. With that being said, the pencil sharpener is used to represent the residential school system and history of why the schools opened in the first place. Some of the first residential schools opened in the 1870s and the last school did not close until 1996. The schools were opened in an attempt to assimilate indigenous children and completely wipe out the indigenous culture. That is why i chose a pencil sharpener to represent the residential schools. When you put a pencil into the sharpener to sharpen it, the pencil ends up being cut down until there is nothing left. That is what the schools where opened to do, cut down the indigenous culture until there was nothing left of it. That is what the pencil that is in the sharpener represents, the indigenous culture. Since the pencil is in the sharpener it is being cut down. That can go to show what happened when an indigenous child remained in the school, their culture and beliefs were being cut from their lives. The man that is holding the pencil in the sharpener represents the church and the government. They were holding the children in the schools and allowed their culture to be stripped away from them and there was nothing they could do about it. They could not leave without punishment and they were forced to stay. It is beyond important that individuals continue to educate themselves on the events that occured within the schools so they have a better understanding of Truth and Reconciliation.