For at least 116 years of Canada’s 150-year history, indigenous children were taken from their parents. “When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian,” Canada’s first prime minister said in 1879. “He is simply a savage who can read and write.” “Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence,” Sir John A. Macdonald told the House of Commons, “and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”

At the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Macdonald’s words hang across from a seven-foot by 11-foot painting of RCMP officers, nuns, and priests wrestling children from their mothers’ arms. The painting’s title is “The Scream.” “I wanted to reflect on the last 150 years. What has it meant to indigenous people?” Kent Monkman, the Cree artist who made the painting, told The Huffington Post Canada in an interview. “I wanted to offer an alternate perspective ... alternate facts,” he said with a chuckle. Monkman’s new exhibit, “Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience,” will be shown across the country in conjunction with Canada’s 150th birthday. It takes viewers through 300 years of history — from 150 years before Confederation to present day — through the eyes of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman’s artistic alter ego.

Cree artist Kent Monkman poses for a photograph at his new exhibition "Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience" in Toronto on Jan. 18, 2017. (Photo: Nathan Denette/Canadian Press) Massive paintings and historical artifacts present some of Canada’s most tragic chapters: The establishment of reserves and residential schools

The near-extinction of bison

The illness, violence, and poverty that came along with colonization. Monkman wanted to “walk us back through time” and “stitch together a counter-narrative that reflected on indigenous experience,” he said.

Kent Monkman’s painting “The Subjugation of Truth” shows Chief Poundmaker and Chief Big Bear in shackles. “One of the things that I wanted to achieve was to make history paintings that are reflective of events that have never been authorized to art history.” “Death of the Virgin (After Caravaggio)” takes its title from a 1606 painting commissioned by monks in Rome. Rather than depicting the Virgin Mary surrounded by apostles, Monkman’s version shows an indigenous woman dying in a modern-day hospital bed, surrounded by loved ones.