George Littlechild

Artist’s moving tribute to Indigenous children who never made it home.

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The air shimmered with ice crystals and Edmonton’s downtown streets were eerily deserted as I walked to the Art Gallery of Alberta for George Littlechild’s exhibition, Here I am – can you see me? Despite the bone-chilling temperatures, the show, which continues until March 14, hummed with visitors. Groups of people lingered, chatted, and then fell silent as they gazed at drawings honouring the thousands of unidentified Indigenous children who attended – and often perished in – Canada’s residential schools.

A wall-sized photograph overlooks the exhibition like a sentinel, reminding viewers that every aspect of this show is grounded in history. It shows a fierce, frowning nun amidst a group of children from the Ermineskin Indian Residential School, open from 1916 to 1973 in Maskwacis, Alta., 70 kilometers south of Edmonton. It was one of over 139 government-sponsored residential schools across Canada operated by churches to forcibly convert, isolate and assimilate Indigenous youth.

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Detail of installation view of “George Littlechild: Here I am – can you see me?,” Art Gallery of Alberta

Detail of installation view of “George Littlechild: Here I am – can you see me?,” Art Gallery of Alberta

Edmonton, 2021 showing his mother, Rachel Littlechild, as a girl (courtesy the AGA; photo by Charles Cousins)

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Installation view of “George Littlechild: Here I am – can you see me?,” Art Gallery of Alberta

Installation view of “George Littlechild: Here I am – can you see me?,” Art Gallery of Alberta

Edmonton, 2021 (courtesy the AGA; photo by Charles Cousins)

One of the children in the photo, in the centre of the front row, is Rachel Littlechild, the artist’s mother. She survived, but Littlechild believes the trauma of her experiences there led to her severe alcoholism. She died on Edmonton’s skid row, a few blocks from the exhibition, when she was just 37.

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George Littlechild, “I Draw You For Those Who Say Residential Schools Never Happened. Uncle Alfred Littlechild, Your Life Ended Because You Died While Young At The Ermineskin Indian Residential School Of Unknown Causes,” 2018

George Littlechild, “I Draw You For Those Who Say Residential Schools Never Happened. Uncle Alfred Littlechild, Your Life Ended Because You Died While Young At The Ermineskin Indian Residential School Of Unknown Causes,” 2018

mixed media on paper, installation view of “George Littlechild: Here I am – can you see me?” at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, 2021 (courtesy the artist and AGA; photo by Charles Cousin)

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George Littlechild, “Homage To The Late Uncle Louis Littlechild, Who Died At The Ermineskin Indian Residential School, 1921 - 1933. Auntie Tillie Said He Was An Artist And Nice Looking,” 2021

George Littlechild, “Homage To The Late Uncle Louis Littlechild, Who Died At The Ermineskin Indian Residential School, 1921 - 1933. Auntie Tillie Said He Was An Artist And Nice Looking,” 2021

mixed media on paper, installation view of “George Littlechild: Here I am – can you see me?” at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, 2021 (courtesy the artist and AGA; photo by Charles Cousin)

This show, composed of 22 unframed and intimate mixed-media drawings, begins with Littlechild’s uncles, Alfred and George. They attended the school but died there or shortly thereafter. Their portraits flank a bone-chilling work, Sister, Nun, The Problem, depicting a girl with short-cropped hair whose eyes seem to follow the viewer. Blood-red tears stream down her cheeks. A nun, her menacing face encircled by arrows that form an accusatory halo, hovers above her.

For Littlechild, a renowned Plains Cree artist who lives in British Columbia, the tragedy that unfolded at the school left a legacy of intergenerational trauma in his family, setting in motion a chain of events that led his childhood in foster homes.

As a Sixties Scoop Survivor, he was separated from his culture and community. He conducted his own search as an adult and eventually reconnected with family members from the Ermineskin Cree Nation, and heard stories about the school. This personal connection gives the show extraordinary power. Littlechild’s portraits – based on archival photos of children that the elders he spoke to at Maskwacis were unable to identify – made the tragedy of their fleeting lives spine-chillingly present.

In Littlechild’s portraits, the children look directly at the viewer with despair, defiance and reproach. As he explains in his gallery talk, they were touched by adults only when they were being slapped, beaten or raped. Symbols of their suffering fill each work’s turbulent, swirling background: floating doors and windows refer to children looking out, some gazing longingly at their family, but unable to run to them.

In one image, Unidentified Child From The Ermineskin Indian Residential School #7, what at first seems like falling leaves turns out, on closer scrutiny, to be oats. For these hungry and malnourished children, porridge and rancid food scraps were a common meal. Meanwhile, as Littlechild relates, the clergy held banquets and grew fat.

The two priests and two nuns represented in this show are austere and scowling. In Did She Turn the Other Way While The Priest Abused The Children And Did She Too Abuse the Innocent? #1, Littlechild scribbled number signs across the nun’s wimple. Like boastful notches on a bedpost, they indicate the number of children she managed to convert.

Numbers, in the context of residential schools, have another ominous connotation: Children were assigned a number, forced to sew it into every item of their clothing. They became known not by their name, but by their number.

Loved youngsters, forcibly removed from their homes, became nameless. The thousands who died in residential schools were buried in unmarked graves, often dug by classmates, and remain unidentified to this day.

Littlechild says he hopes this inaugural show can travel to other venues so “as many Canadians as possible” see the work and learn what happened. Already word is spreading and visitors are flocking to the gallery. After more than a century of silence and denial, Canadians seem ready to hear the hard truths of elders and look into the eyes of the children Littlechild almost miraculously brings to life. ■  

George Littlechild: Here I am – can you see me? at the Art Gallery of Alberta from Nov. 6, 2021, to March 14, 2022.

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