Does art offer the best path to heal historical wrongs?
CBC Radio | Posted: October 21, 2016 6:19 PM | Last Updated: October 26, 2016
The Secret Path is a powerful film about an Indigenous boy who dies escaping a residential school. Does art — films, books, and music — offer the best path to heal historical wrongs?
More from this episode:
For decades the horrors of the residential schools went largely unnoticed by the majority of Canadians. In 1967, a story in Maclean's magazine called, "The lonely death of Chanie Wenjack" changed that. The 12-year-old boy escaped from a residential school and tried to walk 600 kilometres in late October back home to his father in Northern Ontario. His near frozen body was found later beside railroad tracks.
Wenjack's story started an awakening that is still ongoing to this day. This week on the 50th anniversary, it's being retold in many ways, The Secret Path, a multimedia project by Gord Downie is one of those ways.
The story of the residential schools has gone through a political transformation and it is increasingly surfacing in art — films, books, music.
Our question: Does art perhaps offer the best path to heal historical wrongs?
Guests
Joseph Boyden, award-winning author of many novels including Three Day Road and The Orenda and most recently Wenjack the story of Chanie Wenjack who ran away from residential school and died of exposure in 1966.
Twitter: @josephboyden
Twitter: @josephboyden
Susan Aglukark, Inuk singer and songwriter, winner of three Juno awards and recipient of The Order of Canada in 2005.
Twitter: @S_Aglukark
Twitter: @S_Aglukark
Ry Moran, Director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba.
Twitter: @rymoran
Twitter: @rymoran
Ken Coates, Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy University of Saskatchewan.
Twitter: @kenscoates
Twitter: @kenscoates
Links & Articles
CBC.ca
- Secret Path
- Why all Canadians need to follow in the example of Gord Downie
- With Secret Path, Gord Downie is illuminating a way forward to Indigenous artists
- Meet the journalist who inspired Gord Downie and Joseph Boyden to write about Chanie Wenjack
- "I want the reader to be Chanie": Joseph Boyden tells Chanie Wenjack's story
- Gord Downie's Secret Path brings hope to Chanie Wenjack's family, 50 years after boy's death
- 'The most emotional thing I've ever done': Jeff Lemire on illustrating Gord Downie's Secret Path
- Chanie Wenjack: a 50-year-old tragedy rises up to inspire a new generation
- Arts in the North: the past will prepare youth for the future
- A reconciliation reading list: 15 must-read books
Maclean's
- The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack, by Ian Adams (Feb. 1, 1967)
- Joseph Boyden imagines Chanie Wenjack's final, terrible hours
- Winnipeg's new art project stares down racism in the face
Globe and Mail
- The author's novella Wenjack tells the story of an Objiwa boy who froze to death after fleeing a residential school
- We Can't Make the Same Mistake Twice exposes Canada's barriers to reconciliation