Todd: First Nations artist gives authentic tackle ’decolonization’

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Patricia June Vickers is a painter, a healer of trauma, a member of the eagle clan from the northwest B.C. village of Gitxaala and a sufferer of incest who’s impressed not by the church as an establishment, however by the teachings of Jesus.

Given her distinctive story, the Ts’msyen lady’s portrayal of residential colleges, decolonization and Christian symbols are difficult, and extra frank and multi-layered than what we usually hear as of late.

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Vicker’s artwork exhibition at Regent School, on the College of B.C. campus, titled Therapeutic Journey, explores the tragic problems related to what she calls “the atrocities” dedicated by clergy and others in Canada’s residential college system, which her father and grandmother attended.

In an unsettling, profound manner, the exhibition interweaves conventional Indigenous spirituality — with sacred animals and birds — along with her devotion to the two,000-year-old ritual of communion, which she has continued to cherish since first participating in it as a 15-year-old.

The youthful sister of the acclaimed Ts’msyen artist Roy Henry Vickers, she is a robust painter in her personal proper. And for 30 years she’s additionally been a sought-after practitioner of trauma therapies resembling neuro-feedback. Her abilities are primarily based on what she discovered by means of a gruelling journey to grasp her rage, a outcome largely of being sexually abused by her father.

Due to her discomfort with the church individuals who ran the now-defunct federally funded residential-school system, Vickers doesn’t formally seek advice from herself as a Christian. But she continues to take part within the liturgy of the E-book of Widespread Prayer, which was first created within the 1500s by what’s now the Anglican Church.

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“The actually large phrase now’s decolonization,” Vickers stated. “To me colonization is a curse. And a curse is a non secular act. A curse can’t be reversed (in conventional Indigenous spirituality). It could actually solely be remodeled.”

To her which means, regardless of the positions taken by some decolonization activists, there is no such thing as a going again. “The one manner is ahead.”

To Vickers, that requires factual historical past, truth-telling and the transformation of the previous, which she believes solely comes by means of genuine dialogue and mutual respect.

That’s partly why her artwork exhibition, which evokes empathy for kids who attended residential colleges, consists of a number of photographs of transformation, together with massive raven figures, usually seen as shape-shifters.

“The raven is the one who brings gentle into the world,” Vickers says. And, to her, so does Christ.

Vickers believes there’s profound connection between conventional Indigenous spirituality, which she calls “medication,” and “the teachings of Christ,” which she differentiates from institutional church buildings. Because of this, a few of her work embody phrases from the E-book of Widespread Prayer, coated by photographs of sacred bears, eagles and ravens.

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Now dwelling in North Vancouver after years in northern B.C. and on the College of Victoria (the place she obtained a PhD), Vickers recounted being raised by her mom, a white college trainer, and father, an Indigenous fisher who had attended Anglican St. Michael’s residential college in Alert Bay for a yr earlier than refusing to return. Existence was chaotic.

“My father has been described as a pedophile,” she stated in a latest panel dialogue dedicated to her exhibition at Regent School, a post-secondary Christian establishment. “I grew up with incest. It was tough to make sense of that. To seek out which means. Though I don’t actually know if I used to be in search of which means, I feel I used to be trying extra to know.”

Vickers, 68, can’t totally clarify the origins of her father’s “distorted” emotions and behavior, however believes he was “dehumanized.”

She has obtained permission from her siblings and grownup youngsters to speak about her dad, who died a decade in the past, and the household historical past, which incorporates agonizing consciousness her father’s mom, her grandmother, Tsi-ii, additionally attended residential college.

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Whereas Tsi-ii had 9 youngsters, and “solely had good issues to say about her time in Indian residential college,” Vickers stated her grandmother’s phrases have been belied by the way in which “she was bodily violent along with her youngsters and grandchildren.”

The exhibition features a poignant portray portraying her grandmother as an intense-looking woman, clutching to her chest a booklet bearing the phrases, “Trying Unto Jesus.”

Vickers’ non secular and social views could also be particular to her, however additionally they supply a glimmer into a few of the views of the virtually 900,000 Indigenous folks in Canada who self-identified as Christians within the 2021 census, 47 per cent of the overall variety of Indigenous Peoples. That compares with an equal quantity who stated they’re secular, plus 4 per cent who put themselves within the class of “conventional (North American Indigenous) spirituality.”

Given Vickers’ extraordinarily tough childhood, which led to what for her have been unexplainable bouts of anger, she started to discover in-depth remedy for what she would finally notice was PTSD. “I grew up with incest and feeling ashamed.”

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When she realized her “dissociative amnesia” was hurting her 4 younger youngsters, she sought assist at age 36.

Now she works as an intergenerational trauma therapist with numerous Canadian psychiatrists and therapists, together with Gabor Maté, writer of The Delusion of Regular: Trauma, Sickness and Therapeutic in a Poisonous Tradition. She is amongst those that supply an “Indigenous, built-in method to therapeutic” by means of Raven’s Name Canada.

Vickers’ personal practices contain “prayer by means of a (paint) brush,” sweat-lodge ceremonies, understanding of the “neurobiology of trauma,” and centuries-old Anglican companies.

“I might say probably the most highly effective expertise I grew into was by means of the E-book of Widespread Prayer, and communion particularly. It was transformational for me.”

Her exhibition, which runs to Jan. 24, features a room titled “Holy Communion,” which incorporates small patterned stools in a semicircle, evoking childhood recollections of kneeling with different younger folks on the altar.

The ceremony has been integral to her private effort to cleanse her soul. “We want the supernatural,” she says. “It’s all the time there for us.”

dtodd@postmedia.com

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