The Aboriginal Peoples Committee Room of the Senate of Canada.

AuthorJoyal, Serge

Recognizing a disturbing absence of Indigenous representation within the federal Parliament buildings, the author endeavoured to acquire and donate Indigenous artwork and artifacts to display in the Aboriginal Peoples Committee Room of the Senate of Canada. With help from a group of senators in an effort to make Indigenous cultures visible and tangible to parliamentarians who used the room, as well as to visitors interested in the Senate and its history.

The construction of Canada's Parliament Buildings began in 1859 on unceded Algonquin territory. At the time, Indigenous representation was not deemed important enough to be incorporated into the capital's new buildings. Until 2000, little of Parliament's interior or exterior decor reflected the centuries-old presence of Indigenous peoples all across Canada, except for small, discreet bas-relief sculptures carved into the facade of Centre Block in 1918 when it was rebuilt after the fire of February 3, 1916; eight architectural works by Indigenous artists, carved from soapstone and Indiana limestone and installed around the House of Commons Foyer as part of the Indigenous Peoples Sculpture Program in the early 1980s; and the bust of Senator James Gladstone [picture: Bust of Senator James Gladstone by Rosemary Breault-Landry, Gatineau (Quebec), 2000, [C] Senate of Canada] from the Blood (Blackfoot) First Nation, who in 1958 became the first Indigenous person to be appointed to the Senate. The bust was unveiled in 2001 and placed in the Senate antechamber.

It was not until 1997, when a former interior courtyard of the Senate was converted into a modern committee room and designated the "Aboriginal Peoples Committee Room" that Indigenous peoples were finally acknowledged by name in the Parliamentary Precinct. The House has had the Commonwealth Room since the 1960s, and the Senate has had the Salon de la Francophonie since the 1990s. Therefore, both linguistic communities were already well-represented in the Parliament Buildings. In the years after it was inaugurated, the Aboriginal Peoples Committee Room had hardly any direct references to Indigenous realities: there was no Indigenous artwork or artifacts to properly represent their history, culture or identity. This modern committee room, where meetings were often televised, did not provide any visible Indigenous presence in Parliament.

This re-appropriation of an important space for Indigenous peoples within the Parliamentary Precinct, though...

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