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Indigenous artist residency explores meaning of unceded land and reconciliation

Chrystal Sparrow is the inaugural artist in an Indigenous cultural residency for the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh in Stanley Park. She wants to create a space where people can learn about Indigenous culture and reconciliation.

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Chrystal Sparrow, an artist from the Musqueam Nation, is the first artist in a cultural residency for Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh artists at Second Beach. She’s holding a hummingbird carved out of yellow cedar by her late father Irving Sparrow.
Chrystal Sparrow, an artist from the Musqueam Nation, is the first artist in a cultural residency for Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh artists at Second Beach. She’s holding a hummingbird carved out of yellow cedar by her late father Irving Sparrow. PNG

Chrystal Sparrow says she remains surprised at meeting people who live in Vancouver but don’t know about the Musqueam.

She’s a third-generation Coast Salish artist and fourth-generation fisherman who often has had to explain to people that her Musqueam ancestors have lived on land along the Fraser River for, as she said with a sense of understatement, “quite some time.”

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“They say, ‘I don’t know where that is,’ ” Sparrow said. “I say it’s close to UBC, in between the Point Grey and Shaughnessy golf courses.”

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Archeological evidence shows that there has been at least 9,000 years of continuous settlement on land at the mouth of the Fraser River the Musqueam have always called home. Vancouver, by comparison, was founded just over 130 years ago in 1886.

Sparrow hopes to use her position as the inaugural artist in a unique cultural residency to share stories not only about the Musqueam, but also about the other Indigenous Coast Salish people whose traditional territories include Vancouver and Stanley Park.

“There is a lot to share,” she said. “I think that it’ll be so enriching for people living in the city or visiting the city who don’t now much about the Musqueam.”

The Vancouver Park Board residency is in the building many people will recognize as the A frame by the Ceperley Park playground. Officially, it’s called A Frame Activation: Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Cultural Residency at Second Beach. The residency will rotate among artists from the three First Nations.

Although Sparrow is still trying to figure out what the residency will become, she said she has plans to use the space to be more than a studio where she can paint, carve and make art. She wants to turn it into a place to share stories about Indigenous culture and to give meaning to reconciliation.

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A former cultural programmer at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, she wants to bring in elders and women from the neighbourhood for a pot luck meal, show them her art and maybe even make some art together.

“I want to start to fill the space with opportunities to engage, to have relationships and even to hear stories that I may not have known from elders in my community,” she said. “It might remind them of a time when they were younger and using Stanley Park.”

Sparrow’s residency continues until July of next year. She said the residency is also meant to be a place for non-Indigenous people to come and learn about Coast Salish First Nations.

In addition to the Second Beach residency, recent reconciliation initiatives by Vancouver have included hiring a new manager of Aboriginal relations, renaming the north plaza at the Vancouver Art Gallery to two Indigenous names, and hiring a new Indigenous liaison in the engineering department and a reconciliation planner at the park board, according to a City of Vancouver report.

“Since the Year of Reconciliation in 2013, Vancouver has developed into the world’s first City of Reconciliation,” the report says.

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Sparrow said she considers herself fortunate to have learned about Coast Salish carving traditions from her late father, Irving Sparrow.

“It is a real privilege to be a Coast Salish women with a father who was a master carver who gave the time and believed in me before I even knew I would be an artist,” Sparrow said.

In addition to being an artist and a drug and alcohol counsellor with the Musqueam, Sparrow is studying to be an art therapist.

Sparrow said she wants the residency to be a place for people to talk about reconciliation.

“For me, the word itself means relationships,” she said. “It means sharing information and knowledge. It means working together. It means being uncomfortable and awkward around misconceptions about each other.”

Building a relationship, she said, requires more than feeling good together. It means facing difficult truths as well.

“Everybody should be learning and growing — not everyone is willing to do that because it’s uncomfortable,” Sparrow said. “I’m curious to work with reconciliation to talk about uncomfortable things so people can be free of having misconceptions and racism.”

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She says many Indigenous people have and are continuing to heal from the effects of contact with Europeans such as sexual abuse at residential schools. She’s worried that non-Indigenous people haven’t done the same kind of healing.

“Let’s talk about what we can learn together so you can heal and I can heal and we can have a relationship,” she said.

Sparrow opens the studio to the public every Monday for three hours starting at 5:30 p.m. The A-frame is at 8701 Stanley Park Dr. at Second Beach.

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