#historical-trauma

#historical-trauma

From 1850 to 1887, the federal government forced Native Americans onto western reservations. Then, between 1896 and 1960, the government forcibly separated hundreds of thousands of Native American kids from their families and enrolled them into over 400 federal boarding schools across 37 states.

Miao wanted to explore the lingering cultural grief of a historic atrocity, stating, 'That's a ghost story.' This reflects the fragmentation and feelings of grief that come with being haunted by something lost.

Videos of these harrowing monologues, prerecorded by actors speaking in French, were projected onto a mysterious opaque box at the center of the performance space, as audience members listened through headphones and read English subtitles. Then venetian blinds shrouding the box slowly rose to reveal glass walls and, inside them, a sinister diorama-a replica of RTLM, or Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, the radio station that fuelled the catastrophe.