This eportfolio is submitted from the mature and privileged vantage of an uninvited guest of settler descent who is grateful to be living, researching, creating and exhibiting within the traditional and unceded lands of the Okanagan Indian Band (Spallumcheen, Syilx), Splatsin of the Secwepemc Nation, Neskonlith Indian Band (Switsemalph), Adams Lake Indian Band (Sexqeltqin), Little Shuswap Lake Indian Band (Skwlāx te Secwepemcúl̓ecw) and Tk’emlups te Secwepemc within Secwepemcul’ecw.
About Me
I, Patricia L Smith (Patti), am an artist and educator of British Columbia’s privileged white dominant (patricolonizing) culture, with family members of First Nations and Metis ancestry.
When I could no longer teach for SD #83 due an extended medical disability leave, I suffered a major identity crisis, including what it means to be a Canadian. My doctor prescribed a single visual art course a semester for my sanity. I therefore commuted to Thompson Rivers University for three years, accidentally earning another degree – a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. What can I say? I am a dedicated lifelong learner. This led to choosing TRU’s new Human Rights and Social Justice MA program over an MFA elsewhere, as visual expressions were encouraged.
Indian Residential Schools (IRS) closed in my formative years. I have three sisters-in-laws whose mothers had been severed from their ancestral communities due to the Indian Act’s sexist policies. I had witnessed and participated in Canada’s ‘unsettling’ surrounding two pivotal reports – the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future 2015 and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIWG) Reclaiming Power and Place 2019. Motivated by the question ‘How does a she/her 4th generation ‘mature’ Canadian ‘settler’ artist reconcile having been so blinded and deafened to Indigenous issues, particularly of MMIWG2S, while growing up in BC?’, I began to do ‘the work’, bearing witness and immersing into historical and contemporary research, seeking ‘Herstories’. I selected the course completion strand of the MAHRSJ so that I could take more electives.
The abbreviated artist statement that has accompanied Our UnSettling Canadian HerStory at Armstrong Spallumcheen, TRU and Verna Brown’s art galleries as a result of my MAHRSJ work:
All of this research and work emerged from Smith’s journey to reconcile a Canadian identity crisis—as a mature, white settler with younger kin woven into her lineage of First Nations and Métis heritage. The myth of peaceful settlement unraveled, revealing truth: Canada is rooted in the violent and genocidal oppression of First Peoples, driven by European, hetero-normative, Christian men in pursuit of land and profit.
Patricolonial governments ensured that inconvenient truths remained unwitnessed —disease-laced blankets, harms inflicted upon Mother Earth, the unacknowledged burials of children at Indian Residential Schools, and systemic racism—all silently swept beneath society’s rug.
Omitted from history are the herstories of our grandmothers—Red, White, Yellow, and Black. Indigenous women were especially targeted for erasure through the Indian Act’s sexist assimilation policies, the ’60s Scoop, and the ongoing MMIWG2S+ crisis.
Today, gender-based violence continues to rise. Indigenous women, girls, and 2-Spirit people face rates of victimization higher than any other group. Many open-hearted, culturally empathetic, and herstorically accurate conversations are needed—toward truth, healing, and the end of gender-based violence.