Buffalo Boy testifies: decolonising visual testimony in a colonial-settler society

Abstract

Introduction In this article, I will examine two visual projects by the artist Adrian Stimson: an installation entitled Old Sun (2008) and a performance-art event entitled Buffalo Boy's Confessional: Indulgence (2007). These works reveal and give shape to a particular chapter in Canada's history of colonialism: the long and unfinished story of the residential school system. This colonial system of schooling was founded and operated through a state- church partnership for more than a century until the final school closures in 1986. 1 In its attempts to 'kill the Indian in the child', the residential school subjected Indigenous children to a Euro-Canadian curriculum designed to obliterate generations of Aboriginal culture. This type of assimilative educational practice is clearly identified in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) as cultural genocide.2 In my focus on Stimson's two projects of visual testimony, I consider the questions: how can contemporary installation and performance art illuminate and interrogate the multifaceted ways in which settler colonialism inflicts trauma - in the past and present? What is the affective and critical force of Stimson's visual acts of witnessing and how do they engage the spectator? What decolonising testimonies and pedagogies can his projects perform in the 'now' of the art event (and beyond)? On 11 June 2008, the Prime Minister of Canada made a long-awaited public apology to the country's Indigenous peoples for the pain, suffering and hurt inflicted on them by the residential system of schooling. Responding to the apology from the floor of the House of Commons, Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, opened his remarks by remembering and honouring 'all of the generations who had never heard an apology, never received compensation, yet courageously fought assimilation so that Aboriginal people could witness this day'.3 Noting that the Government of Canada had taken full responsibihty for the racist pohcy that created the residential school, Fontaine stated: For the generations that will follow us, we bear witness today in this House, that our survival as First Nations peoples in this land is affirmed fore ver... Ne ver again will this House consider us the 'Indian problem' just for being who we are. Never again will the awesome power of government attempt to destroy us, to obhterate our cultures and languages from this land - the land we have occupied since time immemorial. Never again will there be an attempt 'to kill the Indian in the child'... Brave survivors, through the telling of our painful stories, have stripped white supremacy of its authority and legitimacy.4 In concluding, Fontaine notes that Indigenous people are - and always have been - an indispensable part of the Canadian identity. He then issued a challenge to all peoples Uving in Canada: 'We must not falter in our duty now: emboldened by this spectacle of history, it is possible to end our racial nightmare together.'5 Two years before this day of apology in the House of Commons, a court -ordered Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was reached between Survivors, churches and the Canadian Government. This agreement has five major components: a Common Experience Payment (CEP) providing a lumpsum payment to former residential school students; an Independent Assessment Process (IAP) providing compensation for students who suffered serious sexual, physical or psychological abuse; funding to support the creation of memorials and community heaUng initiatives; and a five-year Truth and ReconciUation Commission (TRC).6 As the cornerstone of the Settlement Agreement, the independent body of the TRC will focus on Ustening to the oral testimony of Survivors and former employees of the residential school system. Survivor testimony - the 'truths' of the previously silenced speaking subject - is central to the work of the TRC. …