Carey Newman, Witness Blanket, 2013–14

Witness Blanket, created by Hayalthkin’geme, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Coast Salish artist Carey Newman (b.1975), is composed of 887 items—bricks, braids, school desks, photographs—gathered from seventy-seven Indigenous communities. The work is framed in cedar, evoking the protective and ceremonial qualities of a woven blanket. Each object is a witness, carrying the weight of memory and the strength of survival through the era of residential schools. Among them is a drawing by Art Thompson (1948–2003), made during his youth at Alberni Indian Residential School in the late 1950s and discovered by Newman after Thompson’s death. Positioned near the top centre of the installation, it anchors the work in the lived creative acts of those who endured the system.

Newman’s personal connection to the project, rooted in the experience of his father, Victor, at St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission, British Columbia, deepens the work’s relational power. Victor’s journey from silence to healing through testimony mirrors the broader movement within Indigenous communities to reclaim narrative sovereignty. The eighteen-month gathering process for Witness Blanket, which brought together items including a child’s boot from Carcross, Yukon, and a pebble from Inuvik, Northwest Territories, reflects a ceremonial act of remembrance. These objects are not mere artifacts; they are carriers of spirit, story, and resistance, countering the colonial erasure that residential schools sought to impose.

Rather than offering closure, Witness Blanket disrupts the settler desire for a linear reconciliation. Its fragmented composition—pieces from schools, churches, and cultural sites—embodies the ruptures caused by cultural genocide, as documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The cedar frame, referencing Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw traditions, asserts Indigenous presence and sovereignty. Far more than a passive memorial, the work is an active site of ethical witnessing, calling settlers and Indigenous Peoples into relationship and responsibility.

Witness Blanket transforms trauma into testimony, aligning with the ethos of truth telling and reconciliation. Here, art becomes a sovereign act of witness. The collective assembly of objects reflects the strength of kinship and community. Its incompleteness reminds us that reconciliation is an ongoing process.

Importantly, the work critiques institutional frameworks of ownership. Newman’s “living document” agreement with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg resists the conventional transfer of title, instead embracing a relational model grounded in Indigenous treaty principles of ongoing responsibility and reciprocity. This approach, detailed in Picking Up the Pieces (2019), ensures that the blanket remains a living entity, responsive to community voices and evolving understandings. At twelve metres long and two-and-a-half metres tall, it is both a physical and spiritual presence, a sovereign archive that demands engagement, reflection, and action. Witness Blanket is not only a cornerstone of contemporary Indigenous art but a call to uphold Indigenous truths, to honour Survivors, and to walk together toward justice. It reminds us that memory, instead of being static, is ceremonial and alive.