Toronto's Luminato festival makes a return, addressing Canada's dark past
CBC
If you are walking through Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, you might see a pile of thousands of buffalo skull replicas stacked atop of one another.
The bone-chilling art installation, part of this year's Luminato Art Festival, is the work of Jay Soule, an artist from Chippewas of the Thames First Nation
Built on Genocide is the latest piece by Soule, who is of Chippewa and Lebanese descent. Soule creates art under the name "CHIPPEWAR"; a play on the words "Chippewa" and "warrior".
The festival, normally held in June but pushed to October due to the pandemic, features the work of 400 artists, some of which highlights a dark part of Canada's history.
Soule said the idea came to him around five years ago when he was researching Canada's first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, and found old photos of giant buffalo mounds of skulls and bones.
"John A. Macdonald gave the executive order to clear the plains as a means of starving Indigenous peoples off their lands," Soule said. "It essentially was used as a military tactic to steal their land and resources."
In the mid-19th century, an estimated 30 to 60 million buffalo roamed the prairies. By the late 1880s, fewer than 300 remained.
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