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Arts & Communication Reconciled futures

partnered to teach them about cedar bark basketry. On
final evaluations, this was another of the activities that was
especially well received by the youth.
On Friday, the final morning of the camp, they were
given a brief presentation by the YVR Art Foundation — a
non-profit that provides scholarships and study grants to
emerging artists, including one program that offers grants
to high school students. Later in the morning, Karen
4
taught them about sketching animals in the natural history
exhibition Wild Things: The Power of Nature in Our Lives.
This exhibition featured many taxidermies of local animals.
All of Karen’s drawing classes were designed to give them
the skills to create artwork that could be fabricated into
metal.
It should be mentioned that while this was a well- Figure 5. Hummingbird sculpture designed by a member of the Oregon
intentioned project, Karen felt some pressure assisting Jack Creek Band, an Interior Salish community, ready for installation.
inexperienced artists to produce a tangible deliverable in City of Vancouver Photo. Copyright (c) 2019. Reprinted with permission
1 week. She arranged for her then-husband, Haida artist of the City of Vancouver.
Marcel Russ, to attend the last afternoon of the camp to help
students finalize their designs. (Karen was also supported
with supervision at various times during the week by
an intern from the Education Team, Jasmine Wilson,
who was a Musqueam community member enrolled in
NITEP, but she was not an artist and could only assist with
supervision). 5
Members of the Green Infrastructure team came to
visit the students on the last day of their camp and were
greatly impressed by the caliber of the designs that were
being produced by the youth. I do not think we could
have met the public art deliverable so effectively if we had
not had the funds made available to work with trained
artists for this program. The nine students designed seven Figure 6. Four swimming salmon were created by Musqueam and
sculptures: a hummingbird (Figure 5), four individual Squamish youths. City of Vancouver Photo. Copyright (c) 2019. Reprinted
with permission of the City of Vancouver.
salmons (Figure 6), a collaborative sculpture of a heron
and sun panel by the three boys from Tsawwassen First as a result.) Initially, a launch event was planned for the
Nation (Figure 7), and a Raven (Figure 8). summer of 2019, but installation did not occur until
Although the youths produced their designs on time, December 18, 2020. An acknowledgment panel (Figure 9)
there were several delays in getting the pieces fabricated was later created to commemorate the project, but the
and then powder coated by the city. (Powder coating is delay in installation and the onset of COVID-19 prevented
a finishing treatment that does not use solvents, such as any other type of celebratory activity.
paint, and is considered more environmentally friendly
5. Lessons learned
4 MOV staff also mentioned the upcoming Native Youth One of the most powerful moments I remember from
Program at the UBC Museum of Anthropology, although my school days was a cultural program that was offered
several of the youths were still too young to be eligible.
5 The Indigenous Teacher Education Program (NITEP) at at Sooke Elementary on Vancouver Island when I was
the University of British Columbia is a five-year concurrent in Grade 4 (age 9 – 10) in 1980. One afternoon a week,
program. Students and alumni are using their NITEP if we had our work done, we would be taken out of our
education to advance Indigenous educational priorities in classroom to spend time with a T’Sou-ke (Coast Salish)
classrooms, schools, organizations, and communities. (See elder in the library and learn cultural activities such as
the NITEP - The Indigenous Teacher Education Program; Cowichan (Coast Salish) knitting and different styles of
https://nitep.educ.ubc.ca/about/) beadwork. As a young person growing up off-reserve,

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 7 doi: 10.36922/ac.2488