I was deeply shocked when I learned about the existence of residential schools and the terrible suffering of the children of the indigenous peoples of Canada, forcibly placed in them!
I was born in the Soviet Union and involuntarily draw an analogy with Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars and Chechens to Siberia. I am Belarusian but I speak Russian, not Belarusian. This is the result of a policy of forced Russification of all who do not belong to the "titular nation". But even in the USSR there was no complete ban on the use of the native language, as was practiced in residential schools!
I am satisfied that this shameful practice has been stopped but my heart is filled with sadness for the Indian children who were separated from their parents and suffered physically and mentally for many years. Many of them died before becoming adults. They will never be able to wear national clothes, sing songs in their native language and dance at the Pow-Wow festival.
To them I dedicate my diptych painting. On it they are already adults dressed in festive clothes and dancing in the cosmic heights above the vast expanses of their native Canada.