Artistic ray of light shone through residential school blackness

We cast admiring eyes over the exhibited paintings and drawings, some on paper and others on deerskin, that illustrated daily life for the Indigenous student artists back in the 1930s: mothers tanning hides, fathers working as cowboys, children playing games and imagining animals riding horses.

Into the dark, horrific story of Canada’s residential schools, a ray of light shone in the person of Anthony Walsh – a white teacher who encouraged his Osoyoos Indian Band students at the Inkameep Day School to express their Syilx culture through art.

Not only that, he entered their artwork in international competitions, where they won prizes every year. In 1938, the British Royal Family bought a painting by Francis (Jim) Baptiste called “Indian Boys In Training” for the Buckingham Palace art collection. Walt Disney, Lawren Harris, Nellie McClung, Emily Carr – all admired and congratulated the students, aged 6 to 16. They became well known across Canada and in European cities where their artwork was exhibited: Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, and Vienna.

We discovered this intriguing story at the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos, the small British Columbian town just north of the U.S. border where we’ve spent the winter. Pronounced “INK-ah-meep,” the centre is owned by the Osoyoos Indian Band, and tells – through exhibits, movies and exterior displays along hiking trails – how they lived and continue to live on their semi-arid lands.

Children from the Osoyoos Indian Band attended residential schools from the 1890s to the 1970s in Cranbrook and Kamloops. But from 1915 to 1950, they could attend the Inkameep Day School and live with their parents.

Walsh taught at the small wooden schoolhouse from 1932 to 1942, urging his students to depict their everyday lives in their artwork. And they did, illustrating a complex mix of their heritage (as Syilx people of the Okanagan nation) and North American popular culture.

Drawings and paintings included in the exhibit show kids playing games, nativity scenes, rock paintings, animals dancing and playing tug of war, women tanning hides, horses, cowboys, and rodeos (their fathers worked as cowboys on the European settlers’ ranches). There’s an actual leather saddle, carved spear, basket for collecting roots, beaded purses, embroidered gloves, and deer painted on a deerskin vest by Baptiste.

But one thing the exhibit doesn’t explain is why the federal government had ever allowed Chief Baptiste George to build the school in 1915, when the government was actively using residential schools to eradicate Indigenous language, culture and traditions. So, I asked Marketing Manager Derek Bryson, who was manning the front desk the day we visited.

The answer, Derek said, was rooted in the 1800s when Americans lauded certain “civilized” Indian tribes who went willingly onto reserves, and used force when other tribes did not. The Osoyoos Indian Band had heard rumours and stories of battles in the U.S. and, in 1877 when they were forced onto their reserve, they went quietly.

“That was seen as a good thing,” said Derek. Chief Baptiste George, who had educated himself in English, said that in return for good relations with the government, he wanted a day school on the reserve so children could live with their families and avoid residential schools. The band paid for the school and the government agreed to send teachers.

“While it seemed good, the idea was to implode us from the inside out,” Derek said, since most teachers were sent from residential schools.

However, the government hadn’t foreseen Anthony Walsh. He had never intended to teach; he was asked to fill in for six weeks at an Indigenous school in Vernon B.C. and liked it so much he stayed for another year, before moving to Osoyoos with his unusual idea of teaching and learning through sharing cultures.

“Within three weeks I realized that these Indian children were of a creative and talented people,” Walsh wrote in an account published by the Osoyoos Museum. “And they were not dirty and decadent as thought by many of their white neighbors.” 

From drawing and painting, he led the children to make masks and costumes, then write and perform plays. Then came singing, dancing (banned by the government at the time), and a mock radio station – I.N.K. – and for seven minutes each day, children took turns as announcers. Over the years, as the children’s artwork won prizes, they became known across Canada and Europe.

The children received permission from the Indian Agent to leave the reserve and travel by train (a first!) to Vancouver where they presented songs on CBC radio. Then they went by boat (another first!) to Victoria, where they performed plays, dances and songs for a huge crowd in a park.

“Many other creative things were to happen, and wherever they went up and down the valleys they helped to bring understanding and a lessening of prejudice,” wrote Walsh.

“The thing that impressed me most was not the sincerity of the young actors in full costume and masks, the haunting melodies of the songs, the graceful movements of the dancers…but a new light that appeared in the eyes of the parents and the old people. For they had witnessed something that brought back memories of distant days, when they had held their head high and were ashamed of no one.”

Of course, not all was rosy during Walsh’s years, cautioned Derek. All that attention placed the children under the gawking eyes, scrutiny and criticism of others, including art connoisseurs. On the other hand, “it was a good ‘heritage moment’ for Indigenous people when they were considered less than human.”

During the Second World War, Walsh submitted his resignation letter in 1942, saying he was going to serve with the Canadian Legion War Services and expected to be sent overseas, according to a timeline on the Inkameep Day School website. However he ended up serving in Port Alberni and Victoria in the Casualty Retraining Centre.

Sadly, a string of replacement teachers, none of whom stayed long, abruptly snuffed out Walsh’s ray of light. The art classes ended and students focused on religion and catechism. In 1943, a teacher burned most of the existing artwork, although some was saved by people who hid it for years. By the mid-1940s, many of the students had gone to residential schools in Kamloops and Cranbrook.

But Walsh’s years still had lasting impacts.

“My grandmother was part of that day school,” said Derek. “He was strict, but he was caring. It gave her an opportunity to become more than what she was told she could be.”

While band members dealt with (and still deal with) alcoholism, addictions and the continuing damage done by residential schools, Derek said his grandmother “got a heads-up about how to do things like keep her nose down and hang on to her goal of being a social worker.”

Francis Baptiste’s granddaughter Taylor Baptiste became an artist as well, and is now searching for the lost headdress her grandfather wore in a famous black-and-white photo.

Since 1998, children from the Osoyoos Indian Band (and non-native children) attend Sen-Pok-Chin school, where they receive a contemporary education, along with instruction in the Okanagan language and culture. 

After viewing the exhibits inside and out, we hiked the trails through sagebrush, antelope brush and ponderosa pines that led to several sites where sculptures and reproduced shelters illustrated how the Syilx people lived in this semi-arid desert country. The children’s artwork often depicted fishing, gathering and hunting traditions, which included honouring the four food chiefs: bitterroot, Saskatoon berries, salmon and bear.

In our Canadian travels, we’ve been learning more and more about residential schools, in northern Ontario and in Alert Bay, B.C. Recently, we ‘attended’ a moving virtual tour of the Mohawk Institute, a former residential school in Brantford, Ontario. Our $10 ticket helped support the “Save the Evidence” campaign to turn the school into an interpretive historic site. Coming face to face with the darker sides of Canada’s history is painful, but necessary if we’re ever to achieve meaningful reconciliation.

When Walsh wrote later about his Osoyoos years, he acknowledged the challenges his students faced after he left.

“Among this small group that had brought such joy to others, and opened up new channels of exchange and acceptance, a number died tragic and premature deaths,” he wrote. “They became broken in spirit and the light of gladness that had once lit their eyes became glazed. But for a few brief years they had experienced happiness.”

Walsh received the Order of Canada in 1990 for his work at the Inkameep Day School as well as at a homeless shelter in Montreal that he founded in 1952. He passed away in 1994.