We Knew… and Home Fires Burn for You

About the Artist

Brad Callihoo is a commercial photographer and videographer who grew up in Spruce Grove, South of what was the Michel Indian Reservation, where his father was a member. He always had a keen interest in sculpture, first being exposed to the process in Nui Sam, Vietnam, while assisting a mentor at an International Sculpture Symposium. Witnessing these 64 artists at work gave Callihoo the confidence to pick up a chisel and hammer away at a stone. The result has become the ongoing series, Emerging Feathers… — an array of stone sculptures depicting the rebirth of Native Heritage and Culture. From it a further series has grown, Broken Feathers…, which represents the results of oppression, but also the resiliency proven to still be here. Callihoo was lucky enough to spend five years living in Cambodia and traveling through large parts of S.E. Asia and India before returning to Canada in 2018. This exposure to so many varying cultures and spiritual practices was an inspirational quest, and although the chance to work on stones did not arise, many photographs were taken and video accounts of the lives he was involved with were produced. Attending a Powwow soon after returning helped him immeasurably on the journey back to reconnecting with life in the Western world. The revitalization of the spirit led to revisiting this stone pillar and shaping it into a memorial named We Knew… for the victims of the Residential School System and its survivors. Callihoo continues to pursue the ongoing series and is near completion of a book he is writing, chronicling his adventures and mishaps while living in S.E. Asia in prose and photographs.

• Facebook: Brad Callihoo Photography 

• Instagram: @billyotter  

• Twitter: CallihooBrad

• Website: billyotter.com (under reconstruction)

• Book, release date TBD: From the Edge of the Rez... by Billy Otter

The inspiration for this piece came to me after the publication of the Le Estcwicwe̓y̓ — The Missing discovered in Kamloops, British Columbia, allowing the world to share in the horror. It proved to be the first inkling that perhaps, just perhaps, the general populace was finally willing to listen, to believe what the community has known as truth, and has been painfully screaming aloud for decades.   

Children were being taken, and they were not coming home. They had been forcibly dumped into these places, and they were not coming back the same — if they even did return. The heartbreak and the suffering of all those involved: parents, children, and families, it all manifested into several generations of lost souls existing amongst our people — but no one wanted to hear this truth. 

This stone memorial is roughly four sided as an homage to the importance of the Cardinal directions in Native culture. The pillar is encircled by a ring of fire, showered with a constant flow of tears raining down from the multitudes of children who were lost and the families who agonized over their losses. These tears carry the hope that in their shedding, they may help in releasing the pain and suffering the children endured, and perhaps ease their continuing struggles in perseverance.    

Our Home Fires are an immensely important cultural symbol to acknowledge one’s place. One’s place in family. One’s place in community. That one place where comfort and safety were known. And those Fires burned on, never wavering, never weakening. They shone as a beacon, as a guiding light to lead the living back home, and too, as a sign for those souls who had crossed over to the Spirit World — a sign that showed that their loss was recognized and acknowledged in these homes.   

The intensely polished surface symbolizes the impenetrable reinforced face and walls of a government and its cruel, heartless institutional co-perpetrators, chosen willfully by them to do their bidding in secrecy. The rough, hand-scrawled message on its face is the last desperate act of those exasperated parents. Parents that had come to confront this daunting wall, seeking firstly the children that had been forcibly pulled from them, and then seeking answers, answers from a faceless bureaucratic institution that regarded them as little more than a problem that had to be eradicated to make way for the coming wave of supposedly superior immigrants.   

They fought as hard as they could, possessing no power in this battle; but at the very least they struggled to leave a message behind. A message to inform those agents of evil that even though they hid behind and inside those institutions — Your secrets, they Will Not remain forever buried.  

There is only one complete feather in this rock, and it faces in two directions, acting as a shimmering symbol to hope. This feather is the survivors. It is to represent them, to honour them, to salute those brave souls that made it out alive. Sadly though, most would forever carry within them the agonizing mutilations they somehow weathered in these supposed holy houses of worship. And sadly, so very often, remained hidden deep and harboured within them for the rest of their painfilled lives.    

They were taught in these schools, You are not worthy of the world we are bringing you into, while vicious attempts to “beat the Indian out of the child” rained down on them. Yet, they battled against these formidable odds, attempting to maintain their pride in knowing who they really were. If they did make it home, visibly scarred and battle weary, they found themselves lost between the culture of their oppressors, and their previous lives – now fitting in to neither. 

The remaining exposed feathers on the piece are damaged. They are disheveled and misshapen. They are incomplete, and they are distorted. Some severed cleanly, without thought, by the modern tools of their colonial oppressors. Others still, they are buried, struggling to break free from the bonds of their mistreatment at the hands of institutions they were forced to believe were trustworthy.    

The bright orange hand on one face of the stone carries forward the uncompromising message that indeed, Every Child Matters. It was placed by a child whose life has been impacted as a result of the generational traumas still evident in our communities, even though he is innocent and unaware of the large influence these factors are playing in the development of his being.    

But it will only be through the uncompromised Acceptance of Our Truth and seeking Knowledge of the breadth and depth of these events, finally bringing Awareness to the fore, that the healing and further advancement of our community in this world will be truly enabled.  

Mental-Emotional Health Resources

Discussions around Indian Residential Schools may have a strong emotional and mental impact on you and those close to you.  Here are some support options below that you and others can access. 

Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program

• Emotional, cultural and professional support services are available to Survivors and their families through a 24/7national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419

First Nations and Inuit Hope for Wellness 24/7 Help Line:

• Call their toll-free helpline: 1-855-242-3310

• Visit their website to chat and connect to a counsellor online. Support can be provided in English, French, Ojibway, Cree and Inuktitut.

Mental Health Help Line

• Call 1-877-303-2642 (Toll free)

• 24 hour, 7 day a week confidential service that provides support, information and referrals to Albertans experiencing mental health concerns.

24-hours Distress Line - Canadian Mental Health Association

• 780-482-4357 (HELP)

• The Distress Line provides confidential, non-judgmental and short-term crisis intervention, emotional support and resources to people in crisis or distress. We also support family, friends and caregivers of people in crisis.

Native Counselling Services of Alberta

• Phone: 780- 451-4002

• Open to any former Indian Residential School student and their family members regardless of their status or place of residence.

Resources for Mental Health - call 211

• Call 211 or Text info to 211 or Go online to chat