Skip to content
Widening the Story – Artifact 11(footnote)

Rotten Potatoes

Photo of three rotten potatoes on an aluminum plate. The rotten potatoes were part of the exhibition Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario. Mona Stonefish included rotten potatoes in the exhibition to evoke the dehumanizing feeling of being denied comfort and nutrition in Indian Residential Schools. In doing so, Mona Stonefish creates space for museum goers to experience uncomfortable feelings and sensations as part of their learning.

Indian Residential Schools:

The investigations underway at former Indian Residential Schools across the country have revealed what we, who survived Indian Residential Schooling, have known all along. Many children did not return home from Indian Residential schools. We carry this truth that has for so long been silenced, discounted, and denied. We have worked tirelessly to bring forward the truth so that people will begin to understand the heinous crimes committed in the Indian Residential School system. More and more, archival evidence confirms what we have said all along, agents of the church and state forcibly stole children from our families and communities, denied us the necessities of life, including adequate nutrition and any semblance of caring, and subjected us to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. They tried to eliminate us by stripping us of our identities and depriving us of our lives. But they were not successful. I work hard to shed light on these historical truths as well as the ways oppressive, even genocidal, ideas and practices continue today to target us. ~ Mona Stonefish

Between 1828 and 1996, the Canadian state and its agents took over 150,000 ᐊᓂᔑᓂᓂᐊᐧᐠ, ᐃᓄᐃᐟ, ᒥᓇ ᐊᐱᑕᐃᐧᑯᓯᓴᓇᐠ (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) children from their families.2(footnote) These stolen children were held in Indian Residential Schools as wards of the Child Welfare system. These institutions, and the agents of them, attacked the individual children as well as their collective and relational identities.

Authorities including educators, nutritionists, nurses, doctors and those in religious orders denied these children adequate education, comfort, and nutrition and subjected them to various experiments. As children targeted with elimination strategies, they were among society’s most vulnerable, yet they were forced into labour.3(footnote) Many institutions kept farms that grew potatoes and other produce. Those in charge of the institutions expected even the youngest to fill and haul heavy food sacks.

The rotten potatoes represent the connection between home economics, eugenics, and agriculture. All of these fields of study and practice shared an interest in the white settler control of life and lives through, for example, selective breeding and land occupation. Selective breeding involves choosing parents to produce offspring with desirable characteristics. While humans have used selective breeding on plants and animals this way for thousands of years, eugenicists attempted to adapt those selective breeding ideas and practices for the “betterment” of humankind. Eugenicists made assumptions about which humans were “better” and “fit.” They based these assumptions on racist, classist, and ableist stereotypes. Racism, classism, and ableism are intersecting forms of discrimination that cause uneven experiences of oppression.

Canadian eugenicists aimed to improve the human race by dehumanizing and eliminating those wrongly labelled as “unfit.” They also used this idea to put those deemed “unfit” into institutions.

Withholding nutrition and water are still used as weapons of elimination:

ᓂᐱ, ᐱᒪᑎᓯ (the water, she’s alive), and the fish are an important part of our diet. But the white settler efforts to control all life is disrupting and poisoning the water and aquatic life. We don’t even have clean drinking water. They say move out to be discriminated against in cities and towns so the government can continue stealing the little bit of land that we have left. The government doesn’t care if we don’t have drinking water.

Part of eugenics is to stop us from eating our way. We need credit for our diet. Processed foods are not conducive to our diets. My grandmother created a garden in the forest so we could eat well. If discovered by the state, she would have been criminally charged for growing her own food. They tried to starve us to death. ᔕᑯᐨ ᓄᑯᑦ ᐣᑭᐱᑭᑭᓄᒪᐃᐧᐠ. ᐅᑭᐱ ᑭᑭᓄᒪᑯᐣ ᐅᑕᓂᑫ ᐅᑯᒪᐣ. ᑲᐃᐧᐣ ᑕᐡ ᓂᐸᔑᒋᑕᑯᑕᒧᐊᐧᓯᐣ ᐅᐱᒥᑲᐊᐧᓇᐣ (but my grandmother taught me. She had the teachings of her great grandmother. I don’t take a step outside their footprints). There is now a mismanagement of food, but it’s ᒥᒋᒪᐣ ᑫᑭᐅᒋ ᓇᑕᐃᐧᐦᐃᑯᔭᐠ - ᑲᓂᑕᐃᐧᑭᑐᔭᐠ (the food that will heal us—what we plant). We need healthy food from the ground. ~ Mona Stonefish

Footnotes

  1. Note on terminology: we use the word “artifact” as truth told through lived experience and expression and as something to be understood from multiple perspectives. This is very different from the way artifacts have traditionally been treated in archives and museums as objects for display that reproduce a singular master narrative. We encourage learners to question official archives and artifacts as neutral and objective truths. ↩

  2. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, “The Survivors Speak: A Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” 2015, (Source). ↩

  3. Although survivors and their families know the genocidal truth of Indian Residential Schools, the surfacing of over one thousand unmarked graves at Indian Residential Schools in western Canada in 2021 is more irrefutable evidence of the ways First Nations have been targeted for elimination. Phil Heidendreich, “‘The Story Was Hidden’: How Residential School Graves Shocked and Shaped Canada in 2021,” globalnews.ca, Global News, December 31, 2021, (Source). ↩