5Qs - Damage Done

Hearing the voices of  residential-school survivors

Tofino-based author and photographer Jacqueline Windh has just set out to spread awareness about her latest project, First Nations of the Pacific Northwest. Originally published in Germany as a museum-exhibit catalogue, the book contains not only informaton on culture and traditions of indigenous people of the coast, but also 16 portaits and testimonies of residential-school survivors—something, says Windh, that has never before been published in Canada.

Monday Magazine: How did you get involved with this project?

Jacqueline Windh: I was asked to do the photography first of all and then I said, “If you’re going to talk about how the natives were, there are issues now to talk about and not talk about them like they’re museum pieces.” Unlike most Canadian publishers, who say, “We don’t want to deal with that stuff,” they instantly said yes. I didn’t even know this was for the book at the time—the book is the museum exhibition catalog, so at the time we were talking about the museum exhibit.

MM: What made you want to get this to Canada?

JW: Canadians need to hear these stories. I grew up in Ontario and I never even laid eyes on a native person until I was in my 20s and I didn’t make friends with any until I was in my 30s, so I didn’t know any of this. So that was my motivation, for Canadians to hear these stories and understand.

MM: Why did you choose to not only speak with residential-school survivors, but also their children or grandchildren?

JW: I wanted to put that in so people realise that even though the schools closed years ago, it affects people now. When I talked to older people, they said, “Our young people don’t even realise they’re effected by it. They didn’t go, but they have parents who have anger issues, some of them have been abused, they don’t speak their language or know their culture.”

MM: What process did you go through to collect these stories?

JW: The depth of pain and real damage that has happened through those generations of abuse—sexual abuse, physical abuse, literally having the language beaten out of them—I didn’t realise when I started how much even a question, saying, “Hi, I’m doing a project on residential school, can I interview you?”, even that can trigger someone who’s in denial about what happened to them for 20 or 30 years—especially to have a white person come up and say that . . . My friend Mary Martin, who worked as a counsellor and went through residential school herself, she really advised me a lot before I started . . . I approached people very gently, usually with a letter. I’d say, “I’m doing this project, I’m interviewing people, can you just take a look and I’ll come back in a week and see if you’d like to be a part of it.” . . . Just keeping the approach to them gentle, but for the most part, they were people I had a connection with, like I knew one of their relatives or they had seen me at potlatches.

MM: What do you hope will happen with this book?

JW: I would really like to see a project like that that goes right across Canada. I don’t really know about the funding of it . . . but that’s what I’d like to see.

------------------
First Nations of the Pacific Northwest
7pm Thurs., June 11
Nellie McClung Library
FREE