About They Were the Seeds

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When the initial reports came out that they had found the remains of 215 children at a former residential “school” in Kamloops, last spring, it seemed as though the entire nation was finally beginning to understand the depths of atrocities that occured in these institutions. But as more graves became uncovered, it started feeling like we were just tallying lives and no longer remembering that these were children, each life representing precious medicines lost to the world. I wanted to do something more to commemorate the lives lost and I kept being reminded of the words “they were the seeds” that I had encountered on social media. I started thinking about how there are thousands of flowers growing on these lands, each unique in its contribution to the whole. What if every child found could be represented by a flower in a beautiful garden? The goal for this project is to represent each child with a beaded orange flower and to have them all become part of a larger mural/ art installation that can hopefully then be auctioned or raffled off in some way with all proceeds going to the “Save the Evidence” campaign at the former Mohawk Institute in Brantford.

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