The
Inkameep Day School Art Collection
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.
For
more images and information,
see the Inkameep
School and Anthony Walsh
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