Artist behind residential schools monument says ‘truth needs to be told’

Celebrated Kwakiutl artist Stanley Hunt hopes his monument, unveiled at the Canadian Museum of History on Truth and Reconciliation Day, inspires reflection and healing.

Celebrated Kwakiutl First Nation artist Stanley Hunt has carved massive totem poles and other works around the world to great acclaim, from New York to Argentina.

But he says the work being unveiled at the Canadian Museum of History on Monday for this year’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which honours the lives of Indigenous children sent to residential schools, was personal.

“Most of those projects were done using your brain, mainly, right from beginning to end,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block.

“This project, I found we were using our heart more than we used our brain.”

The Indian Residential School Memorial Monument features 130 unsmiling children’s faces carved into a tree trunk more than five metres tall. It’s topped by a large black raven looking down on them and, Hunt says, “cradling the seed of life” in its beak. The entire monument is painted black and orange.

Hunt also carved the Canadian maple leaf and the initials for the Royal Canadian Mountain Police into a Catholic cross — all of which are inverted.

That was a change from his original design, he said, but a necessary one.

“The truth needs to be told for all of Canada,” he said.