Today marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which recognizes the impact of the residential school system while honouring the children who never returned home and the survivors of residential schools, along with their families and communities. We recognize this day through continued learning guided by Indigenous art and artists. We invite all visitors to spend some time in the the J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous + Canadian Art to engage with art from several perspectives. Above is a work by Anishinaabe/French artist Caroline Monnet, who works with media from film, installation and sculpture. Her practice comments on the complexities of Indigenous identity and the impact of colonialism. In the work here, The Flow Between Hard Places, Monnet materializes sound into monument. A towering presence, it’s a vertical concrete sculpture that embodies a soundwave of the word pasapkedjinawong (the Anishinaabemowin word for “the river that passes between the rocks”), as spoken by Elder Rose Wawatie-Beaudoin. Like steady river waters, these undulating waves echo the rise and fall of the pitch and tone of the soundwave. Learn more about the work at the link in our bio. The AGO operates on land that is Michi Saagiig Nishnawbe territory. Toronto is governed by treaty 13 between the Mississauga of the Credit and the Canadian government. It has also been occupied by other Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Wendat confederacies. Since 1701, Toronto is governed by the Dish with One Spoon treaty between the Anishinabeg, the Haudenausonee and allied nations to peaceably share and care for resources around the Great Lakes. Toronto is now home to a large diverse urban Indigenous population and always has been a trading center for First Nations. All people living in Canada are treaty people, including those who came here as settlers – either in this generation or in generations past – those who are arrivants, and those who came here involuntarily, particularly as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. As treaty people, we are all a part of a treaty relationship based on the recognition of respect, cooperation, partnership and Indigenous rights.