In a joint project, the Junior and Senior School libraries at Trinity College School are creating art installations to honour and raise awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) and children. Through the creation of “micro galleries” the libraries hope to spark education and conversation about the issues surrounding MMIWG as we look towards the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation on September 30th.

Micro galleries are a project of The Canadian Library (TCL), an organization that is working at the grassroots level to support libraries in creating these art installations. Essentially, a micro gallery involves taking an existing hardcover book and covering it in Indigenous-inspired fabric. On the spine of some books are the name of an Indigenous woman or child whose life has been lost, while other spines remain blank in recognition that some victims are unknown. As an organization, TCL “believes that art, which traverses many boundaries, brings people together and transforms lives. TCL hopes that the visual representation of the books covered in glorious Indigenous fabrics and the names of those lost, printed on the spines of the books, will evoke a sense of empathy, understanding and desire to see change.”

Ms. Shelagh Straughan in the Senior School library and Ms. Sarah Torrible in the Junior School library were both inspired by this initiative to create small collections here at TCS as a community project. Beautiful pieces of fabric were procured from Hiawatha First Nation, which were then used to cover books to be placed on a shelf as a visible tribute to the lives of the individual First Nations, Metis and Inuit women and children they honour, as well as to prompt community education and action on the continued inequities that impact Indigenous people.

To learn more about the TCL and the micro gallery initiative, visit www.thecanadianlibrary.ca.