University Affairs - November 2016

southern ontario’s first residential school has a long stretch of pavement leading up to its doors. It’s a powerful sight for Sherlene Bomberry, who attended the Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford, Ontario, from 1966 until it closed in 1970. Now, she volunteers as a tour guide at the site, now called the Woodland Cultural Centre. “The hardest part for me, going back, was walking up the laneway,” she says.

In September, artists and residential school survivors travelled up that path for the Mush Hole Project, a three-day performance and installation. The project was designed as a response to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the calls to action it released last year. The project title comes from the school’s nickname – so-called by students because of the “mush” they were served at meals beginning

Truth and Reconciliation

Residential school serves as canvas
for multi-artist installation

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Campus Ici et là Here and there shortly after its opening in 1834.

Andrew Houston is a founding Mush Hole
collaborator and a theatre professor at the Uni-
versity of Waterloo. “Site-specific work is about
using the site as a resource for animation,” he
says. “You’re finding ways to represent it, to bring
it to life.”
The event offered tours by residential school
survivors during which participants heard survi-
vors’ stories and encountered work by 35 artists.

Naomi Johnson, a Mohawk artist and artistic director at Woodland, used the laneway for her piece – a Thanksgiving address written in Mohawk, a language she does not speak. “For me, not having my language is a direct impact of the residential school system,” she says.