VANCOUVER - A 32-foot mural painted along the outside of Spencer Middle School in Langford is taking on an additional meaning online.
At a launch ceremony on Sunday, Sierra Club BC, artist Charlene George, members of the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations and others celebrated the debut of "Seeing Through Watchers' Eyes," an online companion to George's mural "Through Watchers' Eyes."
Described as a curriculum, the online component of the work features more than 300 slides arranged using Prezi presentation software.
The presentation includes audio, visual and written components, including oral histories and written testaments from Indigenous people, as well as contemporary and archival photographs.
It invites viewers to begin anywhere and learn more about the mural itself and the scenes of the natural world and Indigenous life it depicts.
Kati George-Jim, a facilitator for the project, told CTV News Vancouver Island the mural and its online companion "highlights an Indigenous worldview" and focuses on "place-based knowledge."
"It offers a different way of engaging, through images and through oral storytelling," George-Jim said.
Part of the purpose, according to the mural website, is to invite the public "into a new way of seeing and relating to the natural world" as it confronts the climate crisis.
