Using art to illuminate the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Report

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) Report, is an important step in Canada’s journey to reconciliation, but it can be difficult for many to access and understand. Through their Future of Canada Project “Echoes from this land: visioning – revisiting Truth and Reconciliation”, Briana Palmer and her team of collaborators are seeking to make the TRCC Report’s 94 calls to action more accessible through the process of visual art.  

To learn more about the project, we sat down with Briana Palmer, associate professor in the School of the Arts and principal investigator on this project, as well as two of the project’s collaborators—Carmel Whittle and Patsea Griffin who are both part of the No Borders Arts Festival and Thunderbird Sisters Collective.  

Your project is a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s call to action #83, which calls for Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to undertake collaborative projects and produce works that contribute to the reconciliation process. Can you tell me about how your project is approaching this? 

Briana Palmer: I met Patsea and Carmel at a workshop where we began talking about what it might look like if we tried to represent elements of the TRCC in a visual way. Our conversation evolved into this project where we are engaging 94 artists from across Canada to visually represent all 94 calls to action included in the TRCC Report.  

These artists are from a huge variety of backgrounds. Some are from universities or other institutions, some are based at community print centres, and there is a mix of artists from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. There is no requirement to be a professional artist to take part in this project—the main goal is engaging people who want to be a part of the changing landscape of Canada.  

Through this project, we want artists to ask what truth and reconciliation means, how the calls to action were developed, and to also think about how we can enact the calls in our daily lives. 

Carmel Whittle: What I love about the process of engaging 94 artists is that we are truly welcoming everyone.   

When it comes to the 94 calls to action from the TRCC Report, Indigenous communities are in a bit of a quandary at times. On one hand, this work really has nothing to do with us in the sense that non-Indigenous people should be the ones taking on the work of truth and reconciliation. However, on the other hand, it’s important for Indigenous people to be represented–’nothing about us without us’.  

This project, which is calling on both Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups to participate, will allow us to see visual interpretations of the calls to action from many perspectives. Working with groups across Canada gives us the opportunity to acknowledge the territories and Indigenous communities, and to hear all voices working towards the same goal.  It is incredibly important for the teachers and knowledge keepers in building the bridges and supporting the TRC calls to action. The stories of knowledge keepers live within the 94 calls to action and their involvement will be really beneficial in non-Indigenous understanding of the calls to action.  

Essentially, we want to take the 94 calls to action off of the bookshelf and recognize that just because they have been written doesn’t mean our work is done.  We have to continue to engage and educate in order for us to understand and move forward in supporting the calls to actions in our communities.  

Patsea Griffin: This project is going to give voice to the missing, the murdered, and the silenced through both the artist and the art. I’m looking forward to the poetry, the stories and the prints that will be part of this work.  

What medium will the 94 artists be working in? What will the final product look like? 

Briana Palmer: There will be three components to this work.  

Firstly, each artist will participate in feedback sessions where they will gather with ten fellow artists to discuss their work and answer questions about their positionality and perspective. We want to engage in discussions around not appropriating culture or causing trauma to Indigenous communities when depicting a call to action. 

The second component will be discussions held by knowledge keepers. These talks will be recorded and then digitally projected alongside the prints at a final exhibition. They will also be hosted online so the participants can access these talks when they are creating their call to action and the public will be able to access them beyond the life of the project. 

For the primary visual element of the project, each artist will express a particular call to action through printmaking. Using this format is complex because historically, the printing press was used by western society to disseminate colonial knowledge and ideologies. However, by using printmaking as the medium for this project, we are subverting this by using the same technology to disseminate information rooted in decolonization.  

For those artists who don’t have experience in printmaking, we will partner them with experts who can teach them the technical skills they need. This project is about engaging community and fostering connections between artists, universities and communities through the media of print.  

In culmination, there will be six printed editions of the 94 calls to action that will be housed at institutions across Canada, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions. The print portfolios and videos will become this incredible resource for Canada going forward.  

Carmel Whittle: There is also some other collaborative work being born out of this project.  In bringing together many different artists from different walks of life, there are ideas popping up in addition to printmaking in response to the 94 calls to action. These ideas are taking the form of oral histories in some cases and are being represented through music as well. These other forms of art are already being woven into the fabric of this project.   

You have talked about including artists who aren’t professionally trained—can you tell me a bit more about this approach as well as how you selected the 94 artists?  

Carmel Whittle: Part of the reason we extended this opportunity to people other than professionally trained artists was to be as accessible as possible and attract people from different communities.  

Typically, when doing a call-out for this type of project, you get hundreds of applications that you then have to judge or critique. We didn’t want to approach the work this way. We wanted to decolonize the process and instead of having people compete for spots, we approached artists through a grassroots network. Many people who would normally fall through the cracks and not be selected for this kind of work are included here.  

We want to develop relationships with these artists and have artists develop relationships with each other and with the knowledge keepers involved in the project.  

This project is a learning and a living experience for us all. The whole process is collaborative and in a way that’s respectful to the 94 calls to action.  

Briana Palmer: Absolutely. This project is about the journey to understanding and having difficult conversations regarding the 94 calls to action. The 94 artist creators are folks who are really interested in having this conversation and doing the work that is needed. The artwork that will come out of this project will be evidence of this journey.  

Are there other ways in which you are approaching this project through a lens of decolonization?  

Briana Palmer: Colonization is so insidious and it takes a real conscious effort to remove this way of thinking as we work on this project.  

For example, it is easy to think we can just ask artists to make an image to represent one of the calls to action and that’s it. What we need to do is actually take the time to really understand our own positionality and our own perspectives, to do the research, have the difficult conversations and work collectively to understand the calls.  

Listening and documenting the process is what this project is really about and the cherry on top will be that we end up with some fantastic visual prints.   

How do you think this project will have an impact on the future of Canada? 

Briana Palmer: As a visual artist, I think about the AIDS pandemic in the 80s and the way in which art really shone a light on what was going on. Artists were able to move things from a place where the LGBTQ+ community was being villainized to a place where the public had a better understanding of the situation.  

There were so many artists and communities that came together to change the way we looked at AIDS and I feel like that’s the power that artists have and that’s what we are trying to do here. We are taking the TRCC Report off of the bookshelf through visual knowledge sharing.  

When you are standing in front of something visual or listening to a knowledge keeper share a story, subject matter can take on a whole other life. And that’s what I’d love to see happen here.  

Patsea: I hope that with this project, we can bring people together to better understand the 94 calls to action. I can admit that I don’t know them all myself and seeing them represented this way will increase understanding and bring people together to talk about them.  

Carmel: In our protocols and teaching as Indigenous people, we look at the seven generations before us and the seven generations that are ahead of us. We need to have these conversations and do everything that we can to ensure that the recommendations outlined in the TRCC are respected and acted upon.     

Even if what we are doing is just a drop in the bucket—a very large bucket that needs constant tending to—the work is so important in sharing knowledge and cultivating empowerment.  

This project is about learning differently, choosing to live more consciously and to start asking more questions through the use of all creative mediums.