HBC blanket exhibition spreads misinformed propaganda

 

Artists are supposed to make us think about things in new ways, to expand our intellect and challenge our biases.

Sometimes, they just recycle the same old misinformed crap.

In Kamloops today, for one day only, at the Kamloops Art Gallery, Winnipeg artist Leah Decter has hung a bunch of Hudson Bay blankets four meters high and calls it an exhibition. She titles it “(official denial) trade value.”

Her premise is that the HBC blankets were used by the Company to purposely spread smallpox among the native population. This is neither a new claim, nor even new art. Several years ago, another artist created a very similar exhibit, rewriting history with exactly the same story, and brought it to the same art gallery.

The truth about the HBC blankets is that when smallpox was spreading among the native population, traders took blankets from their bodies and re-sold them. The purpose was easy money, not murder, but by doing so the smallpox spread.

That makes it no less tragic, but it’s a far different truth — a highly inconvenient one for those like Decter. While she claims the blankets were used to purposely spread smallpox, she’s guilty of spreading misinformed propaganda.