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Textual Analysis: Walking With Our Sisters

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Walking With Our Sisters was very intimate, which made it a commemoration while still being detailed art. Walking alongside the vamps, instead of just looking at them, made the experience more personal. The conclusion, spoken by the Aboriginal women working with the installation, expressed the need to dismiss blame, and instead search for forgiveness and reconciliation with the institution that had helped to cause the pain. The installation was letting viewers into a very private part of families’ lives. Behind the details there was grief and suffering. Some of the vamps were so personal that they made me feel like I was intruding. I felt embarrassed, as if I had seen something that wasn’t for me. The vamps symbolized a part of a family’s past, and the heartache that had happened there. The vamps gave a greater perspective of the hardships Aboriginal women and families faced, and still face. The vamps of the children exhibited the robbing of potential, innocence, and joy. It is hard to see a visual representation in person rather than hear a number of missing people. The amount of vamps was shocking, to realize each set represented a woman, missing or murdered. …show more content…

I did not want to accept that every set of vamps represented a person. The nicer the vamps looked, the easier it was to believe they were just art. When they were structured and flawless, they could have been created by an artist, and could be seen more as a showing than a memorial. It was when they had slight imperfections, or had names and personalization, that reminded the viewer the pain behind the art. The vamps were a family’s way of remembering women they hadn’t seen in years, and some couldn’t have closure because a person in their life had simply gone missing. To see the vamps as a memorial to so many women who had been ignored by the media and law enforcement was a difficult reality to

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