An Indigenous mother-son artist duo pulled their pieces from a University of Calgary exhibit on Thursday following an on-campus debate contesting residential schools.
Full-time artists from Tsuut’ina Nation, Glenna Cardinal and her son, seth cardinal dodginghorse, removed seven of their art pieces from UCalgary’s Nickle Galleries on Oct. 8, citing the institution’s response to a debate held a week earlier.
Organized by Canadian Students for Free Speech, the debate took place on Sept. 29, one day before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and featured Rebel News reporter Drea Humphrey and UCalgary master’s instructor Tom Flanagan.
During the debate, the pair questioned whether or not the residential school system should be considered a genocide. The event sparked student-led protests the next week, demanding that Flanagan, a former long-time political science professor, have his emeritus title stripped.
Glenna and seth said they didn’t learn about the debate until the protests happened, and that if they had known before speaking at a talk related to the exhibit on Oct. 1, they would have changed what they said.
“I felt pretty disrespected,” said Glenna.
“I felt that we weren’t included or made aware of situations, and people didn’t realize that it would affect us as Indigenous people.”
She said she contacted the university and immediately expressed her disapproval of the event after learning about the debate, and that she and seth withdrew their pieces to stand in solidarity with the protesters.
“It just needed to be done,” said seth.
“It wasn’t something that we really overthought.”
Campus no longer felt like a ‘safe’ place, artists say
They announced their decision in a letter posted to seth’s Instagram on Thursday, written by both, who collaborate and produce art under the name Tina Guyani. They explained that it wasn’t an easy choice, but “it just made sense.”
Now removed, their work, including three from seth, two from Glenna, and two that they created together, was featured in the exhibit titled “Held Together,” which opened on Sept. 18.
According to the Nickle Galleries website, the exhibition brought together artists “whose practices engage differently with questions of relationship, place, and belonging” in the context of the “ecological intelligence of grassland species.”
Glenna’s and seth’s individual and co-created contributions centred on honouring their family’s heritage through art such as a painted buffalo hide, a beaded moss bag, and enlarged photographs of their ancestors, some of whom attended residential and day schools.
“A lot of our work talks about that history and kind of goes in different directions at times,” said seth.
“Our work that we do together tends to be very political — kind of talks about [the] ongoing effects of colonialism, things that have affected our family and community, as well.”
Because of the intimate nature of the pieces and both their subliminal and direct connection to the residential school system’s impact, they said it felt more powerful to pull their art than to leave it.
“We just came to the conclusion that it didn’t make sense for our art to be there, and that the school wasn’t a safe space for our work,” said seth.
“It normalizes the fact that our work could coexist with the denial of genocide, cultural genocide, all of that — having that exist in the same space as our work, and us not doing anything, it normalizes those two things to coexist.”
Glenna and seth thanked Nickle Galleries for the opportunity to showcase their work, saying they have no issue with the gallery itself, but with the institution as a whole.
UCalgary to review policies pertaining to civil discourse
Until the exhibit closes on Dec. 12, the now-empty displays have been replaced with sage and printed copies of their letter, which asks the university to reaffirm its protection of Indigenous students and people.
Glenna, a UCalgary alum who earned her bachelor’s in social work at the university, explained how the rhetoric affected her, saying she hopes the event will inspire the school to enact permanent policy change.
“It caused great harm for me, and just realizing that people could have this free speech — which is pretty much hate speech,” she said.
“As a person who has an aunt that went to school and never came home, I was really, really taken aback by it.”
Their family has gone to great lengths to verify the information passed down orally by their ancestors, including sifting through federal archives that confirmed Glenna’s aunt attended residential school and sustained punishment-related injuries before she went missing.
With Flanagan’s position as an academic who has researched the topic extensively, seth added that the debate was an instance of somebody “choosing to be ignorant” about the history of Indigenous people.
“Either someone is ignorant or uneducated, or both,” they said.
“It’s just an example where someone is being willfully ignorant.”
LWC contacted UCalgary for comment on the artists’ decision to pull their pieces from the exhibit and whether they were considering removing Flanagan’s emeritus title, but the university declined to comment.
UCalgary instead referred to an earlier statement posted online last Thursday, written in response to “several instances of free expression on our campus on a range of issues.”
“As a university, we have a responsibility to permit lawful assembly and expression, including when the ideas being expressed are unwelcome, upsetting or objectionable to members of our community,” the statement continued.
“Universities cannot become places where ideas are shielded from scrutiny. Engaging with challenging ideas and perspectives is fundamental to the role of a public university.”
The statement closed by saying that UCalgary encourages “all members of our campus community to engage with one another through respectful civil discourse” and that it is reviewing related policies in light of recent events.
