Saige “Nalakwsis” Mukash, 415 Braids, 2021

415 Braids by Cree and Abenaki artist Saige “Nalakwsis” Mukash (b.1996) is a drawing depicting two hundred pairs of braids and fifteen single braids, each one delicately rendered and each one representing a child. Nalakwsis created it in response to the discovery of 215 potential unmarked graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School at Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, British Columbia. The title extends that number to 415, acknowledging the 215 children identified through these findings as well as those who are yet unaccounted for across the country. Through its accumulation of repeated forms, the work is both memorial and testimony, transforming absence into presence and silence into a visual chorus of mourning.

This formal repetition echoes the magnitude of the loss while also refusing to let individual lives be subsumed into abstraction. Each braid is distinct, drawn with small variations that signal individuality even within the collective. The sheer number overwhelms the page, creating a field of visual density that compels the viewer into sustained attention. In this way, Nalakwsis translates the statistics of mass graves into a tangible encounter with both loss and survival.

At the centre of the work lies a profound act of reclamation. In Cree and other Indigenous traditions, hair—particularly braids—carry deep spiritual meaning. Braids embody strength, memory, and relationship to community and land. To braid one’s hair is to weave together strands of identity and continuity. In residential schools, the forced cutting of hair was among the first acts inflicted on children, a violent severing of cultural identity, kinship, and autonomy. By filling the page with braids, Nalakwsis reverses this erasure. What was cut away is here regathered, restored, and honoured. Each braid becomes a vessel of resistance, testifying to the endurance of Indigenous identity despite attempts to destroy it.

The work is also rooted in kanawâpâtahmowin, the principle of seeing with responsibility. To look at 415 Braids is a call to ethical witnessing, not a passive act. The viewer is invited into a relationship with the image, accountable to the children, their families, and to the truths the work holds. The quiet repetition of the braids creates a rhythm of mourning but also of vigilance—an insistence that remembrance is not enough without responsibility and action. Nalakwsis also expands the space of Indigenous art into digital realms. Shared widely on social media in the wake of the Kamloops discovery, 415 Braids became part of a viral memorial that extended beyond gallery walls into collective consciousness. In doing so, the work asserts Cree and Abenaki visual sovereignty in the digital age: the right to represent, circulate, and mobilize Indigenous imagery on Indigenous terms.

Ultimately, 415 Braids is both a lament and an affirmation. It confronts the devastating legacy of residential schools while also demonstrating the capacity of Indigenous art to hold grief, memory, and continuity at once. In the proliferation of braids, viewers encounter not only what was lost but also what endures: the strength of cultural traditions, the resilience of community, and the unbroken responsibility to remember.