The Scream

Kent Monkman explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences—across painting, film and video, performance, and installation.

This haunting scene depicts Royal Canadian Mounted Police, priests, and nuns ripping Indigenous children away from their parents to send them to residential schools. The effects of boarding schools are still felt today through physical and emotional trauma, language loss, culture change, and disruptions in the transmission of cultural knowledge. Such stories are often missing from popular narratives of governmental policies towards Indigenous peoples in both Canada and the U.S.