Healing Together: New sculpture at Brandon University dedicated to truth, reconciliation

A new sculpture dedicated to truth and reconciliation in southwestern Manitoba is also a symbol of personal healing for the artist who helped create it.

Cree artist Kevin McKenzie, who hails from Cowassess First Nation on Treaty 4, led the team that came up with Healing Together, Brandon University's new art installation, which was dedicated Friday.

The sculpture, which will be illuminated at night, has been placed across from the Healthy Living Centre on Louise Avenue on one of the busiest footpaths at the university. 

McKenzie, an assistant professor at the university, wore his grandfather's buckskin jacket with Northern Cree floral beading to the official unveiling and smudging. He says designing the sculpture was a personal healing journey.

"When I was challenged to design the sculpture, there was this whole spectrum of emotions that popped up," he said.

The first was revisiting his father Robert's experiences at the Lebret Industrial Indian Residential School in Lebret, Sask. Even though he died many years ago when McKenzie was 17, the artist says his father's teachings have been a big part of his research at the university.

"It was quite a long time ago that he passed away … these are all kinds of repressed memories that I had to bring up," McKenzie said. "It was quite an emotional roller coaster for me. But, at the same time, it did have this healing process as well … It was a double-edged sword."

He says his grandmother, who died two years ago at the age of 102, was also traumatized. While she did not attend residential school, two of her siblings did. One never returned.

During the design phase of the sculpture, McKenzie worked with the people across Brandon to better understand how they interpreted the model. He received descriptions of it being a wound, a birthing wound, a constellation or a river among other things.

Mackenzie says it showed him the different interpretations people can have about reconciliation.

The sculpture is to meant to heal the community, McKenzie says. It was kept abstract in design because the concepts of truth and reconciliation are themselves abstractions. It's up to those who view the sculpture to explore their own path of healing and reconciliation, he says.

"Art is very powerful in that sense where it can speak for the unspoken, and it can address concepts and ideas that are that are hard to verbalize or to think about."

Healing Together joins different spaces, installations and actions dedicated to reconciliation on campus, says Chris Lagimodiere, Indigenous adviser to university president David Docherty.

He describes the sculpture as part of a larger drive to foster a united community.