The haunting photo was one of a series of the Kamloops Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times. Amber Bracken also won first prize in the contest’s Contemporary Issues category in 2017 for images of protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. As reported by the AP:
This latest photo win came less than a week after Pope Francis made a historic apology to Indigenous peoples of Canada, for mistreatment in catholic schools
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada won the prestigious World Press Photo award Thursday.
This image provided by World Press Photo which won the World Press Photo Of The Year award by Amber Bracken for The New York Times, titled Kamloops Residential School, shows Red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside commemorate children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, an institution created to assimilate Indigenous children, following the detection of as many as 215 unmarked graves, Kamloops, British Columbia, 19 June 2021. (Amber Bracken for The New York Times/World Press Photo via AP)
The image was one of a series of the Kamloops Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times.
This image provided by World Press Photo which won the World Press Photo Story Of The Year award by Matthew Abbott for National Geographic Magazine/Panos Pictures, titled Saving Forests With Fire, shows Nawarddeken elder Conrad Maralngurra burns grass to protect the Mamadawerre community from late-season ‘wildfires’, in Mamadawerre, Arnhem Land, Australia, May 3, 2021. The late-evening fire will die out naturally once the temperature drops and moisture levels rise. (Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures/World Press Photo via AP)
“It is a kind of image that sears itself into your memory. It inspires a kind of sensory reaction,” Global jury chair Rena Effendi said in a statement. “I could almost hear the quietness in this photograph, a quiet moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization, not only in Canada but around the world.”
This image provided by World Press Photo which won the World Press Photo Story Of The Year award by Matthew Abbott for National Geographic Magazine/Panos Pictures, titled Saving Forests With Fire, shows Stacey Lee, 11-years-old, left, setting the bark of trees alight to produce a natural light source to help hunt for file snakes (Acrochordus arafurae), in Djulkar, Arnhem Land, Australia, on 22 July 2021. (Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures/World Press Photo via AP)
It was not the first recognition for Bracken’s work in the Amsterdam-based competition. She won first prize in the contest’s Contemporary Issues category in 2017 for images of protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.
This image provided by World Press Photo which won the World Press Photo Story Of The Year award by Matthew Abbott for National Geographic Magazine/Panos Pictures, titled Saving Forests With Fire, shows A black kite (subspecies Affinis of Milvus migrans) flies above a cool-burn fire lit by hunters earlier in the day, in Mamadawerre, Arnhem Land, Australia, May 2, 2021. The raptor, also known as a firehawk, is native to Northern and Eastern Australia, and hunts near active fires, snatching up large insects, small mammals, and reptiles as they flee the flames. (Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures/World Press Photo via AP)
Her latest win came less than a week after Pope Francis made a historic apology to Indigenous peoples for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools and begged for forgiveness.
This image provided by World Press Photo which won the World Press Photo Story Of The Year award by Matthew Abbott for National Geographic Magazine/Panos Pictures, titled Saving Forests With Fire, shows A group of Nawarddeken women elders hunt for turtles with homemade tools on floodplains near Gunbalanya, Arnhem Land, Australia, Oct. 31, 2021. They spent all day finding just two turtles, which are a popular delicacy. Soon the grass will be burned to make the hunt easier. (Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures/World Press Photo via AP)
Last May, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 gravesites near Kamloops, British Columbia. It was Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school, and the discovery of the graves was the first of numerous, similar grim sites across the country.
This image provided by World Press Photo, part of a series titled Amazonian Dystopia, by Lalo de Almeida for Folha de Sao Paulo/Panos Pictures which won the World Press Photo Long-Term Project award,, shows A boy rests on a dead tree trunk in the Xingu River in Paratizao, a community located near the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, Par·, Brazil, on August 28, 2018. He is surrounded by patches of dead trees, formed after the flooding of the reservoir. (Lalo de Almeida for Folha de Sao Paulo/Panos Pictures/World Press Photo via AP)
“So, we started to have, I suppose, a personification of some of the children that went to these schools that didn’t come home,” Bracken said in comments released by contest organizers. “There’s also these little crosses by the highway. And I knew right away that I wanted to photograph the line of these crosses with these little children’s clothes hanging on them to commemorate and to honor those kids and to make them visible in a way that they hadn’t been for a long time.”
This image provided by World Press Photo is part of a video composed of digital and film photographs titled Blood is a Seed (La Sangre Es Una Semilla) by Isadora Romero which won the World Press Photo Open Format award, and questions the disappearance of seeds, forced migration, colonization, and the subsequent loss of ancestral knowledge. (Isadora Romero/World Press Photo via AP)
Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world featured in two other of the annual competition’s top prizes. The winners were chosen out of 64,823 photographs and open format entries by 4,066 photographers from 130 countries.
“Together the global winners pay tribute to the past, while inhabiting the present and looking towards the future,” Effendi said.
Australian photographer Matthew Abbott won the Photo Story of the Year prize for a series of images for National Geographic/Panos Pictures that document how the Nawarddeken people of West Arnhem Land in northern Australia fight fire with fire by deliberately burning off undergrowth to remove fuel that could spark far larger wildfires.
This image provided by World Press Photo, part of a series titled Amazonian Dystopia, by Lalo de Almeida for Folha de Sao Paulo/Panos Pictures which won the World Press Photo Long-Term Project award,, shows Massive deforestation is evident in Apui, a municipality along the Trans-Amazonian Highway, southern Amazon, Brazil, August 24, 2020. Apui is one of the region’s most deforested municipalities. (Lalo de Almeida for Folha de Sao Paulo/Panos Pictures/World Press Photo via AP)
The Long-Term Project award went to Lalo de Almeida of Brazil for a series of photos for Folha de São Paulo/Panos Pictures called “Amazonian Dystopia” that charts the effects of the exploitation of the Amazon region, particularly on Indigenous communities forced to deal with environmental degradation.
In regional awards announced previously, Bram Janssen of The Associated Press won the Stories category in Asia with a series of photos from a Kabul cinema and AP photographer Dar Yasin earned an honorable mention for photos from Kashmir titled “Endless War.”
By MIKE CORDER
Yasin, together with Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for their coverage of the war in Kashmir.
