Stanley Hunt’s Residential School Monument

In 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Like many of us, Kwaguʼł master carver Stanley C. Hunt was shocked at the news, and he responded by creating a massive red cedar sculpture. He worked on the monument for years, completing it in 2024.

The Monument is not a traditional totem pole or memorial pole. It features 130 unsmiling children’s faces beneath a large raven that looks down on them. Emblems such as the maple leaf, cross, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and North-West Mounted Police acronyms are carved upside down. The whole is painted black and orange. The many faces are there to reflect the scale of the harm and the deaths. They are all different, reminding us that every child who was sent there was an individual – valued, loved, full of potential. The massive sculpture is carved from a tree trunk 18′ tall and 4′ wide. It was transported by a joint effort of the Coast Guard, the Canadian Navy and Canadian Army, left uncovered throughout its journey so the children’s faces could see. It was welcomed with ceremony, then washed and touched up with the assistance of the staff at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

The Gabriel Mackinnon team was able to work directly with the artist to illuminate the sculpture, which is experienced from all sides, taking care to reveal the raven, and the carved faces representing the spirits of the lost children.

The artist reflected his surprise that the sculpture would be welcomed at a national institution, when the piece could be considered quite controversial. The monument was unveiled in a ceremony on National Indigenous People’s Day in 2024, with traditional drums, dances, songs and speeches. It holds a place of honour in a quiet hall at the Canadian Museum of History as a monument to the children who never returned from Canada’s residential schools.