One Painting, One Little Girl, One Genocide

History is painted by the victors. Except when it’s not. Those are among the greatest paintings in art history.

Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808 (1814) Theodore Gericault’s Raft of the Madusa (1818-19). Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration Series” (1940-41). Amy Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor (2020).

These artworks reveal history as experienced by the oppressed, not history enforced by the powerful. A people’s history, not a dictator’s history. History as seen from the barrel end of a rifle, not the trigger end.

Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation, b. 1965) follows in this grand tradition of history painting. The Denver Art Museum premiers the artist’s first major survey in the United States in partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts during “Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors,” on view from April 20, 2025, through August 17, 2025.

The title, of course, mirrors the well-trod expression: history is written by the victors. Those who vanquish their enemies are the ones who write the books and songs and movies about what took place, why, and how.

History is generally written by the victors. Painted by the victors. Sanitized by the victors.

“Massacres” described as battles. Forced starvation and stolen land spun into bedtime stories of inevitable progress. Indigenous people rebranded “savages.” Genocide rebranded as “Western expansion” or “self-defense.” Nature rebranded as “resource.” Invaders called “settlers.” Butchers called “discoverers” and “heroes.” Enslavers = “farmers.” Robber barons = “entrepreneurs.”

Through 41 monumental works–heart-breaking, stomach churning, violent depictions of colonization, the wanton destruction of wildlife, Indigenous children kidnapped from their homes by Catholic nuns and Royal Canadian Mounted Police–the exhibition presents Monkman confronting a range of agonizing subjects through large-scale history paintings: the absence and erasure of Indigenous artists in the art history canon, the representation of 2SLGBTQ+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus) people in art, the ongoing project to decolonize bodies and sexuality while challenging gender norms, and generational trauma inflicted by forced residential and boarding school experiences.

That last subject is where Monkman’s artistic brilliance achieves its greatest height.

The Sparrow

Canada’s residential schools and America’s Indian boarding schools were tools of genocide. Native kids were forcibly and illegally removed from their families–kidnapped–and sent hundreds of miles away to “schools” that more closely resembled concentration camps. Forced labor. Physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse. Forced indoctrination into Christianity. Into “white” thinking.

Native children were forbidden from practicing or learning their languages, cultures, or spirituality. Punished–severely–when they tried.

An untold number died in the custody of these schools. Children were of course not free to come and go as they pleased. The schools operated from the late 19th century into the later part of the 20th century in some cases. The generational trauma caused continues.

How could this century long atrocity experienced by hundreds of thousands of stolen children and robbed parents be summarized in a single artwork? Not a 700-page book or a 5-hour movie, but one painting?

That’s what artists do.

That’s what Kent Monkman has done in his Compositional Study for The Sparrow (2022) on view in the show. Monkman distills that universe of pain down into one little girl.

Using a baseball analogy, no painter throws harder than Kent Monkman. His pictures are 98-mph up and in. Nasty. Confrontational.

With the residential schools and The Sparrow–the worst of the worst, the definition of cultural genocide–Monkman doesn’t rare back and throw as hard as he can to strike out the batter, he throws a looping, off-speed curveball to devastating effect.

The Sparrow isn’t noisy and roiled and full of figures. It’s quiet. Solitary.

One little girl wearing a nightgown stretches toward a sparrow which has landed upon the open window of a boarding school barracks. A gentle breeze blows through the window, catching the curtain and the girl’s closely clipped hair–a reference to how the schools stripped Indigenous children of their customs and heritage.

The sun shines on her face. A gentle sun penetrating her prison. A moment of warmth.

The sparrow is freedom. The outside. Nature.

The life Indigenous people across what is now called North America once knew. The life this little girl’s ancestors knew. The life–the freedom–she never will due to European colonization.

The girl strains on tiptoe to touch the sparrow, to reach freedom, but she’s not tall enough. The bird–freedom–remains just out of reach.

Why?

The cross conspicuously placed on the back wall holds those answers.

History as written by the victors. Cultural and literal genocide rebranded as “missioning” and “civilizing.” Dominance rebranded as “religion.”

It’s all right there.

A painting to weep over.

A story to weep over.

Kent Monkman painting history, not from the winner’s side.

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