In the early 19th century in Canada, boarding schools for indigenous children were founded to eradicate indigenous culture, and this by any means. Residents from these repressive institutions were punished for speaking their native languages or observing any indigenous traditions, routinely sexually and physically assaulted, and in some extreme instances subjected to medical experimentation and sterilization. The last residential school closed in 1996. After nearly two centuries of such treatments, generations of Canada’s First Nations forgot who they were as languages died out and sacred ceremonies were criminalized. “In brief, these schools intended to whitewash or forcefully assimilate indigenous kids who were kidnapped from their reservations. On top of that, there was rampant physical and sexual abuse”, explains photographer Daniella Zalcman, who just published at FotoEvidence a series of double exposure portraits that explore the trauma of some of the 80,000 living survivors.
Despite the mass generalization of such barbarian practices, this chapter has been completely erased from history books. “This school system existed in the U.S. as well. This seemed to me like a huge failure of the North American governments, educational systems and media that we had not managed to tell this terrible story”, Zalcman goes on. “I ran away 27 times. But the RCMP always found us eventually. When I got out, I turned to booze because of the abuse. I drank to suppress what had happened to me, to deal with my anger, to deal with my pain, to forget. Ending up in jail was easy, because I’d already been there”, explains for example Marcel Ellery, a former student at Marieval Indian Residential School from 1987-1990.
The Canadian government issued its first formal apology in 2008, failing though to acknowledge the scale of the situation. “In Canada, the thing that struck me the most is that the HIV rate among indigenous population is one of the highest in the world, and the infection rate continues to grow at a high speed. Reading through medical journals and articles before I got there I really couldn’t find any explanation. Then, I realized that every single HIV positive indigenous Canadian I spoke to had gone to residential school, and almost nothing was written on it”, Zalcman continues. And yet, “I was raped at school. He was an old man, the janitor. I didn’t tell anyone for decades, because I thought people would judge me. The only person I ever told was my mother [who went to Muskowekwan Residential School]. All she said was, ‘That’s how I was brought up, too’”, recounts Seraphine Kay, a resident at Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School from 1974-1975.
“Double-exposure adds an extra layer of storytelling”, Zalcman argues. “This story deals with the past and with memory and for me, a straight series of portraits wasn’t going to be enough to tell that story. So, I created multiple exposures with portraits and sites relevant to former students’ experiences.” The testimonies that accompany each portrait also help dive more deeply into the complex vortex of trauma. As the Canadian government recently created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that aims at educating children about what happened in residential schools, Zalcman’s documentation could serve as important pedagogical material. “A lot of kids are visual learners and relate much better to individual stories than they do to desiccated, generalized history”, she says. And exhibited, as at Anastasia Gallery, in NYC, until January 15th, her work shows how vast documentary language can be. “Is my double exposure work reportage? Maybe not. Is it journalism? I think so. More and more people are agreeing with me and are expanding the definition of reportage. That’s not photojournalism at all, but its storytelling, and it’s incredibly powerful.”
Laurence Cornet
Laurence Cornet is a journalist specializing in photography and an independent curator based in New York.
Daniella Zalcman, Signs of your Identity
Published by FotoEvidence
$55
http://fotoevidence.com/book/25/hard-copy
http://www.anastasia-photo.com/daniella-zalcman-signs-of-your-identity
