manifest destiny?

manifest defenestration.

& that's a real long way to fall 

ink, oil acrylic, photo paper.

 kamloops Indian reserve church, located in tk’emlúps te secwepemc built in 1858 by the first catholic missionaries to arrive in kamloops 35 years before the opening of kamloops indian residential school just across the reserve.

photos were taken from a book titled “early indian village churches wooden frontier architecture in british columbia “ published by u.b.c press in 1977 just one year before kamloops indian residential school officially closed its doors to students. this book documents the architectural design and early colonial history of catholicism and thus the spread of the genocide of indigenous people and culture in so-called british columbia. the author of this book clearly had little understanding of the violent colonial assimilation afflicted upon indigenous people by the canadian state and was someone who believed that missionaries, churches, and the residential school system exist for the benefit of indigenous people. 

This work is a response to witnessing history being written by mindless subjugators while Indigenous accounts of place, land and the significance of colonial architecture are erased or co-opted by colonists.

It is time for settlers in so called “canada”, and across the globe to take time to understand that the genocide of indigenous people and the violence and oppression we face today, did not begin, or end with residential schools.

These pieces are large printed collages of the photographs from the book, with superimposition of acrylic, oil & ink. ( original dimensions approx. 4 ft. x 5.5 ft. )