REGINA — Local Indigenous artists are teaming up with Regina’s business improvement districts to honour the lives lost at Saskatchewan’s residential schools.
The Footprints Commemorative Indigenous Art Project is a collaboration between the Regina Warehouse Business Improvement District, Downtown Business Improvement District and nine local artists who were commissioned for their work.
The artists created posters for storefront windows and stencils for residents to paint sidewalks on Dewdney Avenue and in Victoria Park.
“We allowed the artist to really come up with what they felt would be representative of the times that we are currently experiencing and the news that has recently come to light,” Leasa Gibbons, executive director with the warehouse district, said.
Madison Pascel, one of the artists commissioned for a poster, said her grandmother, or kokum, was a student at the Lebret Indian Industrial Residential School for about nine years and survived.
She is grateful she could take part in this project and said it’s a great way to remember and reflect.
“My work is starting to morph into honouring my kokum and dad because they have grown up with this hanging over their heads and they persevered,” Pascel said.
“It’s nice to have the community rallying around them and over something like that that is just so big and we don’t know exactly what to do,” Gibbons added.
The original goal of the project was to have residents paint a set of footprints for every body found at provincial school sites.
“We’ve quickly realized that we are chasing a phantom number,” said Gibbons. “There are so many graves that we just don’t know about that we have asked our volunteers (on Dewdney Avenue) and downtown to just do as many as possible.”
Gibbons added that the hope is the paint will last through the winter so they can revaluate what they look like in the spring.
