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Come out to see Daniella Zalcman's "Signs of Your Identity" exhibit at National Geographic Saturday, November 12 through January 2017 in an exhibit for FotoWeekDC. Zalcman's work documents survivors of Canada's Indian Residential Schools, a network of schools used to forcibly assimilate indigenous youth into white Canadian society.
For more than a century, the Canadian government operated a network of Indian residential schools that were meant to assimilate young indigenous students into western Canadian culture. Indian agents would take children, as young as two or three years old, from their homes and send them to church-run boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their native languages or observing any indigenous traditions.They were sexually and physically assaulted routinely, and in some extreme instances, subjected to medical experimentation and sterilization.The last residential school closed in 1996.The Canadian government issued its first formal apology in 2008.
Generations of Canada’s First Nations forgot who they were. Languages died out, sacred ceremonies were criminalized and suppressed. These double exposure portraits explore the trauma of some of the 80,000 living survivors who remain. Through extensive accompanying interviews, they address the impact of intergenerational trauma and lateral violence, documenting the slow path toward healing.
If you would like to learn more, attend Zalcman's artist talk on Saturday, November 12 at National Geographic. She also recently published a book with the FotoEvidence Book Award.
"Signs of Your Identity" Exhibit
National Geographic Museum
Saturday, November 12, 2016, 10:00 am - Sunday, January 22, 2016, 8:00pm
1145 17th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036