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Story Publication logo November 20, 2016

Signs of Your Identity, a FotoEvidence Book

Author:
MIKE PINAY, Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School (1953-1963).“It was the worst 10 years of my life. I was away from my family from the age of six to 16. How do you learn about family? I didn’t know what love was. We weren’t even known by names back then. I was a number.” Image by Daniella Zalcman. Canada, 2015.
English

For more than a century, many Western governments operated a network of Indian Residential Schools...

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Signs of Your Identity, by Daniella Zalcman. Image courtesy of FotoEvidence.
Signs of Your Identity, by Daniella Zalcman. Image courtesy of FotoEvidence.

Pulitzer Center grantee Daniella Zalcman's "Signs of Your Identity" work is now available as a hardback book.

"Signs of Your Identity" documents stories of indigenous Canadians who were placed in boarding schools run by the Church in order to force their assimilation into the dominant culture. Zalcman uses double exposure portraits to portray her subjects. These multiple exposure portraits juxtaposes survivors who are still fighting to overcome the memories of their residential school experiences, with the sites where those schools once stood, government documents that enforced strategic assimilation and places where, even today, First Nations people struggle to access services that should be available to all Canadians.
Purchase the book here.

"Signs of Your Identity" is the fruit of the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award. The Book Award is given each year to a photographer whose work demonstrates courage and commitment in documenting social injustice. The 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award was made possible through the generosity of the Grodzins Fund.

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