6-mural exhibit recasts Waterloo region history through Indigenous lens

The history of Waterloo region is often told through a settler narrative, including murals on the sides of buildings in the downtown cores of local towns and cities.

A new art exhibit aims to decolonize the stories told in murals showing Ontario region's history and tell them from a local Indigenous perspective.

The murals in the exhibit were created in 1950 by artist Selwyn Dewdney. They were commissioned by the Waterloo Trust and Savings Company and put up in the company's King Street branch until 1993, when they were donated. The region says in a document titled "Where To See Regional Public Art" that the murals "cover more than 600 square feet and depict Waterloo County from pre-history years through the 1940s."

Dibaajimowin, Stories of this Land opened at the Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum this week. Curator Emma Rain Smith joined CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition to talk about the project.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Host Craig Norris: Can you give us an overall sense of what the exhibit is about?

Emma Rain Smith: This exhibition is just an attempt to reframe the region's narrative. So it takes a very multimedia approach. We have a lot of audio of oral histories from local folks, as well as a ton of arts and tech setups as well.

Norris: What language is Dibaajimowin and what does it translate to in English?

Rain Smith: Dibaajimowin is Ojibway, which is my language. We try to capture as many as the local Indigenous communities in the exhibition, but I thought the title would be great coming from me. 

So it kind of directly translates to just storytelling. But I chose it because I felt if you broke it down, it was a little bit more of a methodological life practice. So 'dib' translates to heads and 'aajim' translates to the action of story or the process of stories and 'owin' is just a formal way to end a word that I find often associated with words, like larger words, like love and respect that have to do with the way you set up your life.

It's the act of telling a story, but I feel like it comes as more of a recalling and pulling stories from your head throughout your life. 

Norris: How are you reworking these murals to tell stories through an Indigenous lens? 

Rain Smith: We set up and present the murals as they are on one end in contrast to sort of a large open explorative space. But we also take a few of the murals and sort of dissect them digitally and subject them with some of the local stories that we have from people.

Specifically, there's one mural about farming, early Mennonite farming and clearing the lands in settlement here, and we contrast it with some photos from Wisahkotewinowak, which is a Indigenous food sovereignty farming program here.

Norris: Why were these specific murals chosen for the project?

Rain Smith: These murals were actually hung in the Region of Waterloo's cafeteria for several years and were presented as the region's history. But take in mind that these were created back in the 1950s and they were created specifically for a bank and insurance company. So they weren't ever going to tell an accurate history. They were always going to lead toward that sort of industrial, capitalist viewpoint anyway. 

But then when Waterloo Trust closed down, they were presented to the region and the region, because there are some very historically accurate aspects to these pieces, were presented as the region's history. 

Then when folks and Indigenous elder Jean Becker and some researchers saw these, they thought, hey, this isn't an accurate way to tell history. We should try and work with these and create a learning opportunity.

Norris: What triggered you to think about doing a project like this about the region?

Rain Smith: This is actually several years in the making, so it is a sort of before COVID thing where we had had these plans to do in-person group talks with the murals present and then with COVID, it sort of shifted to smaller one-on-one interviews over Zoom that developed into this. 

It was just that elder Jean Becker had sort of seen these murals and her stories in the exhibition as well and she's done a lot of work in the region since the 1990s trying to uplift and create Indigenous spaces and so it just stems from those conversations that we need to expand and and let people know that we're still here and we're still present, we're still contributing to community.

Norris: There are people who may remember the original murals, right? And then people who are coming, maybe they're laying eyes on them for the first time. What do you hope they take away from it?

Rain Smith: The murals, they're not a bad thing. They were just of their time and it's OK to look back and reframe these stories. 

I hope that in 10 years, people look back on this exhibition and try and reframe it as well. This is also going to be of its time, everything we do. I take a very cyclical timeline approach. We should always be looking back and looking forward and just say, yeah, these, these stories don't exist in a sort of bubble to itself. Our stories exist parallel to each other and we need to recognize that.

• LISTEN | Curator Emma Rain Smith talks about the inspiration for Dibaajimowisn, Stories of this Land: