• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

GRASAC logo

  • About
    • GRASAC’s Database
    • Where We Have Researched
    • Funding
    • About This Website
  • People
    • GRASAC’s Steering Commitee
    • Research Assistants
    • Profile Articles
  • Exhibits
  • Research
    • Research in Action
    • Publications
  • Learn
    • Great Lakes Treaty Timeline
    • Great Lakes Communities Map
    • Indian Residential Schools
      • Access Support
      • Provide Support
  • News
    • GRASAC News
    • Newsletter
      • Newsletter Stories
  • GKS4
  • Contact

Exhibition Review: Away From Home and Close to Home at the Dennos Museum Center

October 1, 2021 by Bradley Clements

by Bradley Clements

Image of the opening of an exhibition, featuring image and text panels and an arch with the words "Indian Training School."
The opening of Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories at the Dennos Museum Center. Curated by Janet Cantley at the Heard Museum. Photo by Bradley Clements.

Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories touches on many experiences of Indian boarding schools throughout the USA over their history from 1879 to the present. The exhibition emphasizes the agency of Indigenous peoples and children in resisting and reshaping these institutions. It features extensive didactic texts and archival images, as well as video interviews with Indigenous scholars and former boarding school students, and historical items and props.

Looking down at a small wooden classroom desk and chair. The desk has a clear pane set in its lid, under which are three books.
A child’s classroom desk, converted into a case displaying children’s books about Indigenous peoples published in the 1950s and 1960s. Curated by Janet Cantley at the Heard Museum. Photo by Bradley Clements.

The range of topics and experiences spanning the 142-year history in this ambitious exhibition can be overwhelming, especially when being adapted to new spaces in its travels across the USA. The exhibition does not simplify this diversity, setting evidence of the system’s violence next to testimonies of the use of school experiences to Indigenous ends. Nevertheless, commonalities emerge across this long American history, with parallels in Canada: the genocidal intent of the system’s formation, for the colonization of Indigenous land, and the responses of Indigenous peoples to resist these aims.

An exhibition panel titled "Physical Health" over a display case.
Historical and interpretive texts, archival images, replica and historical materials relating to poor health and care conditions at Indian boarding schools. Curated by Janet Cantley at the Heard Museum. Photo by Bradley Clements.

Away from Home was curated at the Heard Museum by Janet Cantley, as a travelling iteration of the Museum’s long-standing and influential Remembering Our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience. It is visiting the Dennos Museum Center on the campus of Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City from September 1 to October 20, 2021.

The exhibition and its local installation have been informed by committees of outstanding Indigenous experts, including Anishinaabek heritage experts Brenda Child and Eric Hemmenway.

More about Away From Home
A COVID-type face mask with a quillworked exterior, displayed in a case.
Mask by Jenna Wood (2020) in Close to Home at the Dennos Museum Center. Photo by Bradley Clements.

Importantly, the Dennos Museum Center paired Away from Home with Close to Home: Contemporary Anishinaabek Artists, a small exhibition of recent works by local Anishinaabek women and two spirit artists. The art of Kelly Church, Reneé Dillard, Jamie John, Yvonne Walker Keshick, and Jenna Wood is also paired with older pieces from the Dennos collections.

A bulrush mat and two quilled boxes in a display case.
Bulrush Mat by Renée Dillard (2020) in Close to Home at the Dennos Museum Center, with quillwork boxes of Yvonne Walker Keshick in the background. Photo by Bradley Clements.

Following Away from Home, the artists showcased in Close to Home make it clear that the genocides of which Indian boarding schools were a part did not succeed. Works such as Jenna Woods’ Mask (2020), use intergenerational techniques of working birch bark, porcupine quills, and sinew to form a symbol of the times we all navigate today: a face-covering to protect against COVID-19. Securing Anishinaabek futurities and resisting ongoing colonial forces like climate change and ecosystem destruction, Kelly Church’s Black Ash and Birch Teaching Baskets (n.d.) are inscribed in their interiors with instructions for maintaining relationships with these trees through basket-making in tumultuous times. These baskets literally carry teachings.

These artworks hit close to home in more ways than one: the artists and materials are local to the area, the messages relate to the times in which we are living, and the issues touch on intimate, emotional, and unresolved struggles.

Close to Home: Contemporary Anishinaabek Artists is on view at the Dennos Museum Center from September 1 until October 31, 2021.

Two bark baskets in a display case.
Black Ash and Birch Teaching Baskets by Kelly Church (n.d.) in Close to Home at the Dennos Museum Center. Photo by Bradley Clements.
More about Dennos exhibitions

Filed Under: Newsletter Stories Tagged With: Away from Home, Boarding Schools, Bradley Clements, Dennos Museum Center, Exhibition, GRASAC, Heard Museum, Residential Schools

Previous Post: « Autumn Epple: GRASAC RA Profile
Next Post: The Great Peace of Montréal »

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Les découvertes du McCord Stewart / McCord Stewart Discoveries
  • Mnaajtood ge Mnaadendaan: Miigwewinan Michi Saagiig Kwewag Miinegoowin Gimaans Zhaganaash Aki 1860 / To Honour and Respect: Gifts from the Michi Saagiig Women to the Prince of Wales, 1860
  • Communities as Collaborators in the Recovery and Reuse of Archival Data
  • The Oldest Native Scholarship Program in the USA
  • The Canadian Museums Association Moved To Action Conference

Tweets by grasac_org