Study for nîtisân (My Sibling) is based on a Jules Breton painting and depicts four Indigenous siblings stealing a moment together during long hours of forced farm labour to secretly speak their language and harvest wild ginger—a medicine plant. Despite the buccolic serenity of the scene, the children are not out of harm’s way. Briefly reunited at a safe distance from the work camp buildings and the punitive gaze of their harsh schoolmasters, a young girl speaks softly in Cree to offer words of comfort to her homesick younger brother separated by a small creek. The painting reflects how the children’s work camps separated families and enforced strict gender binaries, but the children’s defiance in speaking Indigenous languages despite the risk of harsh punishment, and their practice of covertly harvesting medicinal plant knowledge, speaks to the resilience of Elders in preserving our ways of knowing.

— Kent Monkman