"It’s affected me in my view of life. To be able to change somebody’s scope of their own lives and how they believe in themselves, that’s how it’s affected me," he said.

The Indian Act allows the government to be in charge of some aspects of Indigenous life such as status, land, resources, and education. In its early versions, The Indian Act aimed to "kill the Indian in the children," as Stranger put it. Children were placed in residential schools where they were taught to forget their language and culture, and abuse of the children was rampant throughout the system.

Stranger said this document "has prompted more than 140 years of confusion and loss of culture for almost every Indigenous individual in Canada. The outcomes of this document have exposed Indigenous people to widespread abuse, trauma, and loss of life."

The first part of the exhibit contains old photos of Stranger’s family — his grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, cousin, and parents. A tall display of The Indian Act divides the room with dirt on the floor representing the graves of the children who died in residential schools, and a tree made with traditional cloths and ribbons symbolizes the ceremonies he participated to heal from trauma.

On the other side of the room, his vibrant illustrations created with coloured pencil and black paper, hang on the wall and depict Stranger’s experience with his culture.

All those symbols are a representation of what Stranger experienced during the Sun Dance lodge and other ceremonies he attended that helped him deal with the trauma he gained from something that happened many years before he was born.

"I kept drawing because I felt a closeness to my culture. I wasn’t on the reserve practising and doing things with people," the artist from Peguis First Nation said. "This brought me closer, and it was my ceremony. It was my way of being closer to something that felt good.

"Whenever I turned to my culture, to believing in something better, good things came, it was never bad. I’m just trying to help people, to communicate that there are better things than this (The Indian Act)."

Growing up impacted by his grandparents’ experiences, Stranger said he decided to turn the racism, the exclusion and the abuse into something positive for him.

"I got tired of it. There’s a breaking point in a person’s life where they get sick with putting up with things, and things that aren’t supposed to be existent," Stranger continued. "And I hope this (exhibit) one day will show the youth and will show people that things have to change."

I am not an Indian is the result of his efforts to turn something that has ruined the lives of many into an artistic expression that can help others understand the impacts of this document.

"I can only thank God that they survived and they are a testament to our cultural survival. I never knew why they valued family so much, and it was because they didn’t have a fair start."