Baranyai: Legacy Rooms help lift our cultural blinders
The Tragically Hip's Gord Downie has died.
The Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Legacy Room is a softly lit space in the back of Miss Lily’s Café in Picton, Ont. Indigenous art graces the walls. A couch nestled among the tables and chairs offers a cozy spot where visitors can talk — and listen — or peruse titles from a lending library.
This Legacy Room is the first of hundreds of planned public spaces to promote reconciliation and cross-cultural understanding. Together, they will fulfil the vision of Assembly of First Nations regional Chief Morley Googoo for “safe zones” across the country where indigenous and non-indigenous people can speak openly and learn from each other.
It’s a vision shared by the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund. Downie has worked to share the story of 12-year-old residential school victim Chanie Wenjack, who died running away from an Indian residential school, with millions of Canadians, through his music and a graphic novel co-authored with Jeff Lemire. Last Monday the musician was appointed to the Order of Canada along with 28 First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders, for their work on indigenous issues.
Fittingly, music played a big part in establishing Picton’s Legacy Room — in this case, songs about reconciliation written and performed by intermediate students at Sophiasburgh Central School. Non-profit arts organization Darkspark led students in a four-day workshop delving into Canada’s colonial past. The students distilled their thoughts and feelings into music, recorded in a mobile studio.
Darkspark co-founders Melissa Larkin and D’Ari Lisle worked with educators to deliver the workshop, supported by the Canada 150 fund.
“There was a lot of shock and shame and distress over the history,” Larkin notes. “None of them were aware that residential schools existed.”
The workshop began with an empathy exercise. Students sculpted their homes in playdough. The homes were arranged into a community, then destroyed by a rolling pin representing an alien invasion.
Students were challenged to articulate: “How would this make you feel?” Their answers are recorded on flip-chart paper: terrified; confused; helpless; heartbroken. “Evil” reads one response, a keen insight into how victims often look inward for reasons they’ve been attacked. Another says: “want revenge.”
Seeking a public venue to present the students’ work, Larkin and Lisle approached café and bookstore owner David Sweet, who agreed to donate the space for a permanent Legacy Room, launched on June 13.
“It was so inspiring, the songs they came up with, and the message they were getting across,” Sweet observes.
Plans are in the works for a smudging ceremony, as well as community events throughout the year. Sweet notes a space above the bookstore can be used as a “pop-up legacy room” for performances.
The historic town is an apt location for Canada’s first Legacy Room. A bronze statue in the centre of town commemorates Sir John A. Macdonald, who won his first court case in Picton. Many feel his legacy should be more rigorously debated as not only a Father of Confederation but, the residential school system.
Picton is also a 30-minute drive from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory where, in 2007, protesters staged a railway blockade during a National Day of Action to draw attention to indigenous poverty, suicide, school dropout rates and unresolved land claims. Ten years later, to our national shame, these problems remain.
“We’re not trying to bash this country,” Larkin adds with feeling. “I love Canada. . . . But we need to understand the full picture of this country and not be living with blinders on.”