The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report cited healing, reconciliation, and restoring the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians as a critical priority for all Canadians. Moreover, the Commission exhorted Canada’s museums and galleries to work with Indigenous Peoples to better present their cultures and histories, including histories of assimilation, cultural loss and reclamation.

The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre is taking up the charge to realize this vision, through numerous education projects, that tell the story of Indian Residential Schools, broadly, and the story of the Shingwauk School and its Survivors, more specifically.

This project is a natural outgrowth of the work carried out by the partners, the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association (CSAA) and Algoma University, since the inception of the original Shingwauk Project in 1979. That project, inspired by Shingwauk’s Vision, began the still flourishing efforts to: research, collect, preserve and display the history of Residential Schools; develop and deliver projects of “sharing, healing and learning” in relation to the impacts of the Schools, and of individual and community cultural restoration; and accomplish “the true realization of Chief Shingwauk’s Vision.”

The partners have, since 1979, delivered numerous activities, including reunions, gatherings, symposia, healing circles, publications, videos, photo displays and other exhibitions, curriculum development, historical tours and the establishment of archive, library and heritage collections, and a website that allows users to access the SRSC’s archival holdings and others materials.