Two First Nations Artists Pull Their Work From a Calgary Gallery Over a Residential-Schools Debate
Two First Nations artists have pulled their work from the University of Calgary's gallery in protest over a controversial event on campus. The event at issue: the day before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a group set up a table on the University of Calgary campus inviting students to debate whether residential schools were an act of genocide.
In 2022, the House of Commons backed a motion recognizing Canada's residential schools as genocide. After learning of the event on campus, the two discussed it and decided to remove their art.
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The university's statement is procedural rather than substantive: it does not endorse the views expressed by the organizers of the event, the statement said, but it is bound by regulation to permit free expression. That is a genuine bind, and also a way of not quite answering whether this particular invitation was worth issuing.
Inviting students to debate whether residential schools were genocide is not testing a live open question, since the House of Commons backed a motion in 2022 recognizing them as genocide. Arguing the other side of that at a card table is re-litigating a vote, not modelling inquiry.
What went in the art's place is the more interesting statement: in its place they left a letter to the school and sage for smudging. That is an argument too, just not one that takes questions from the floor.