A Public Apology to Siksika Nation is an artistic research project by AA Bronson towards Indigenous reconciliation. Bronson’s great-grandfather, the Rev. J. W. Tims, was the first Anglican missionary to arrive on the Siksika Nation. Part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Nation was one of five First Nations to sign the seventh treaty between the Crown and the First Nations in 1877, after the buffalo genocide endangered their way of life. In 1883, Tims arrived, and in 1895, he fled. For the past two years, I have been working as the project’s researcher: sifting through archives and secondary literature to uncover the causes of Tims’ flight (a rebellion against cultural genocide and repressive residential school policies) and situating the story within broader histories of settler-colonial dispossession and cultural genocide.
A first version of the Apology was presented at the Toronto Biennial of Art in 2019, alongside a historical exhibit of archival documents regarding Tims’ time with the Siksika, 14,000 copies of a book containing the apology text, my historical essay, and archival images and documentation, and a response exhibit of works by Adrian Stimson, a Siksika artist whose great-grandfather, Old Sun, was one of the Siksika chiefs during Tims’ stay on the Nation. The project is ongoing, with active plans for further performances of the apology and exhibitions of related work.
The book was included in a 2022 exhibition, Inheritance, at the Art Gallery of Edmonton. It has been published in a limited hardcover edition by Mitchell-Innes & Nash and is available for purchase in Europe (from Esther Schipper Berlin) and the United States (from Printed Matter).
Media coverage of the Apology Project: