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I walk slowly past the vamps, past the eagle staffs, the buffalo skull, the miniature canoe set on a small lake of blue silk. The space is reminiscent of a traditional longhouse, and the air is thick with the smell of sweetgrass and sage, which are burned nearby. Aboriginal music plays softly in the background, all of it contributed to the project by musicians from across North America.

I haven’t been told to not speak, but silence feels appropriate. I have been asked to not lean over the vamps, to give them their space, as one would a grave. There are tissues available, and I understand why a person could be overcome by a tremendous sense of loss. Used tissues are collected, I’m told, and the tears burned with the tobacco sacks.

I am unsure how to take it all in: as an art critic I am to analyze and compare what I’m seeing, though I’m not sure what I’d compare this to. As a man with a wife, sisters and nieces, I’m outraged. As a white man, I’m conflicted; I know I’m not responsible for the violence, but as a descendant of the culture that has allowed, and continues to allow, so much harm, what is my role in stopping it?

Walking With Our Sisters is a potent political statement that is not presented as a political statement. The installation was scheduled long before the current federal election was called. Yet the election campaign is under way, the gallery is within walking distance of Parliament, and the installation, intentionally or not, lays bare the need for political action. So many women, so many girls, so many lives taken, so many families torn asunder.

In one corner there’s a collection of tiny vamps that represent aboriginal children who died in residential schools. I look at them and wonder why so many people persist in the delusion that indigenous Canadians are getting a free ride through rich government programs. Personally, I can’t understand how an aboriginal person would trust any government program, with so much harm having been programmed upon them in the past.

What: Walking With Our Sisters,

When & where: to Oct. 16 at Carleton University Art Gallery