Mark Atleo, Sockeye Salmon, 1960s

Residential school Survivor Mark Atleo (b.1952) of Ahousaht First Nation, British Columbia, whose Nuu-chah-nulth name is Kiikitakashuaa, created his painting Sockeye Salmon in the early 1960s, when he was seven years old and attending Alberni Indian Residential School. It depicts a deep-blue salmon marked with bright yellow and green patterns, its body caught within the black lines of a fishing net, surrounded by swirling purple waters. Rendered in tempera paint, the image reflects what he had learned in his early life: before being taken to school, his grandfather had taught him to tie knots and to fish. Created in an institution designed to sever Indigenous children from their languages, cultures, and families, this simple yet vibrant depiction of a salmon in a net is both a personal memory and a profound act of cultural survival.

The art class in which Atleo made this painting was led by volunteer teacher Robert Aller (1922–2008), who encouraged children to paint what was important to them rather than replicate European models. While residential school classrooms typically silenced Indigenous voices, Aller’s approach allowed moments of truth telling through children’s art. Survivors later recalled how many children painted images of home, family, and culture—subjects denied to them in daily life.

In Atleo’s case, the sockeye salmon carries layered significance in Nuu-chah-nulth traditions. Salmon are not only a source of food but are understood as living relatives who return each year, sustaining both physical life and cultural continuity through reciprocal relationships among people, waters, and the more-than-human world. The salmon symbolizes abundance, sustenance, and renewal. As opposed to simply depicting an animal, Atleo was expressing a world view in which human life is inseparable from the cycles of the natural world. In doing so, he asserted visual sovereignty: a child’s capacity to affirm identity and cultural ties, even under oppressive conditions. Years later, he explained that the salmon and net symbolized the circle of life his grandfather had shared with him, linking ancestral teachings from the past to his own experience as a child and to the knowledge carried forward into future generations. In capturing these lessons, the painting preserved ancestral knowledge that the school sought to erase.