Community Partners:
The Osoyoos Museum, Osoyoos, BC

Web Site:
http://www4.vip.net/osoyoosmuseum/

Project Directors:
Leslie Plaskett, Osoyoos Museum
Dr. Andrea Walsh, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria
Email: awalsh@uvic.ca

Student Researchers:
Student Summer Works program: Kim Dertien, Anthropology
Youth Community Action program: Adrienne Bonfonti, Anthropology
Course Credit: Abi Godfrey, Anthropology
Summer Research Students: Abi Godfrey, Anthropology and Sarah Cook, Anthropology and Art History

Collaborators:
Clarence Louie, Chief of the Osoyoos Indian Band
Brenda Baptiste, Director of the Nk'mip Desert & Heritage Centre

The focus of this CURA project is a unique art collection at the Osoyoos Museum: 205 visual documents comprised of pieces of children's art from the Inkameep Day School in Oliver, B.C. as well as photographs of the children taking part in school activities. The art and photographs were created during the years of 1931-43 during the residence of Anthony Walsh, the teacher and principal of the one-roomed schoolhouse who based his teaching on the importance of art in education.

Though Walsh had no formal pedagogical training, he saw that to lift the children out of an atmosphere of discouragement and frustration associated with Western intrusion on aboriginal lives, they had to express themselves through their own culture and values (B.C. Provincial Archives, MS-2799). Walsh is recorded as stating he simply let the children teach him about what they were interested in before he could start teaching them. Interested in Native arts and crafts himself, Walsh encouraged creative expression in art, song, legend, dance, and music seeing this as a positive way to encourage the children in their education. Walsh devoted a small allotment of regular curriculum time to creative expression everyday.

To date, seven archival collections located in Victoria, Vancouver and the Okanagan Valley have been examined and researched. During the summer of 2002 Andrea Walsh and student researchers worked with both Leslie Plaskett of the Osoyoos Museum and Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band. They conducted interviews with former students of the Day School and those Oliver residents with memories of the school and Anthony Walsh.

A database of digitized images has been created for the Osoyoos Museum collection as well as a bibliography and resource list for information on the Inkameep Day School and related topics. Some of the Osoyoos Museum works have been selected for the exhibition "Drawing the World" at the Vancouver Art Gallery from June 27 through September 28, 2003. The project will culminate in June 2004 with a major exhibition at the Osoyoos Community Museum to be accompanied by a catalogue and a web site.

Teacher Anthony Walsh in the Inkameep Day School (from the Osoyoos Museum collection)
Painting by Thith-hak-key (from the Osoyoos Museum collection)
Inkameep students performing in costumes and masks of their own design

For more images and information,
see the Inkameep School and Anthony Walsh