Excerpts from a conversation between the artist Debra Sparrow, Atheana Picha, and the curator on September 16th, 2002

This blanket that you are going to have to be part of this beautiful exhibit, thats a blanket thats really meaningful to me because it belongs and is going to hang in the board room of our Vancouver school board. Way back when I first began to understand how valuable weaving was in terms of an educational resource for schools, it occurred to me that learning whatever I could historically, but then moving the challenges behind mathematics, sometimes in my frustration like I would be sitting there figuring patterns out and then thinking to myself “oh my gosh these women knew mathematics” and why did we never know about it. I would sit back and and look at my work and their work and just be in awe of it, and think to myself how wrong everything was. Then to get so involved with they dying process as well and figure out and know that it was science taking plants and pulling the color out of it, it was green and then it might turn purple. Again being in awe at the work they were doing, and again going to school in a colonial system and being assimilated we were being taught in a certain way and there was no room for other ways of thinking. I always rejected school anyway, I only got to grade eight and and then I quit. Walked away. So this was bringing the education that I felt I needed, that was part of who I was that I missed. So I was so excited but honored, as Atheana mentioned it teaches you not only about the mathematics, the science, and the social. But the social life around it. Being patient, being respectful. 

Years go by so finally I guess just before reconciliation, leading up to it and the conversations were getting deeper. It's called the Reconciliation Blanket but I actually feel its not. I feel like it was already there. Its about our whole journey to us coming back to who we always have been. I said I would never stop weaving till I wrapped the whole city of Vancouver in a blanket. It was kind of like a metaphor for me but that’s what I’m doing now because I’m working murals in a big large scale with Atheana as well, and my grandson and we’re doing that. We’re moving out of our traditional part and into a contemporary world that we can reintroduce the value of this work. It’s not just a textile but we want to wrap people at every capacity, we’re not gonna totally just hold everything over everybody about reconciliation. And we’re gonna wrap not only our own people but other people who want to walk with us and be with us. So that’s what the foundation of that blanket is. My sister Wendy and I, and the ladies, we talked about that, we talked about this beginning and the ripple effect. I wrote a story about my grandfather called, Know Who You Are, Know Were You Come From, and our roots are planted firmly in the soil that our ancestors are buried, and our roots are steep now and they’re blooming again, and they’re gonna spread and the seeds will fall wherever they might, and it comes from your direction, the island direction, every direction, we are now all becoming what we were always supposed to be. 

I stand in who I am, and I stand strong, We’ve got all our ancestors behind us.