Anishinabek Discovery Centre nearing completion (8 photos)

The new home of Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig (SKG) - also known as the Anishinabek Discovery Centre - isn’t quite done yet, but there’s a lingering sense of excitement as construction of the new headquarters for the Anishinaabe post-secondary institution ramps up.

Officials with the school say that “substantial completion” of the $11.9 million facility is set for November, and that the building - situated across the street from Algoma University - should open its doors sometime in early 2019.

“Early on there was confusion of what the building was going to be,” said SKG data project manager Dustin Hoogsteen during a tour of the construction site. “People thought it would be like an interpretive centre, or a tourist centre, but it’s actually our home for our university, this is where all of our teaching will be done.”

“We’re moving out of Algoma University - they’ve been gracious hosts for us, helping us deliver our courses for the last little while, but we’ll have our own building now.”

The Anishinabek Discovery Centre will house SKG classrooms and administrative offices, in addition to a student lounge, cafe, art gallery and performing arts space. The sprawling room in the middle of the structure will be used for libraries and archives that will also include a national chiefs library, which was backed by an Assembly of First Nations resolution this past summer.

Mitch Case, director of student services, outreach and resources for SKG, says that the room will be hermetically sealed, and will be available for First Nations in the region to use in order to store archival materials.

“Communities maintain ownership of it, we’re not looking to swoop in, take all their cool stuff and leave,” Case said. “They maintain ownership of it, we’re simply going to take responsibility for looking after it.”

The school has also been engaged in talks with Josephine Mandamin - who began the Mother Earth Water Walk more than a decade ago - surrounding the establishment of a space within the new building - the library and archive room, possibly - to house water walk memorabilia from years past.

“We could be housing all the media clippings and all of those sorts of things - all of the documents for itineraries and planning and putting together the walks, so students can get a sense of how that happens and the behind-the-scenes of that,” Case said. “We could very well end up with a collection of Josephine’s old sneakers, you know?”

The roof above the library and resource room is crafted from spruce, and is probably the most unique feature of the Anishinabek Discovery Centre.

Case credits the guidance of former SKG academic and spiritual advisor Eddie Benton-Banai for the design of the roof, while Six Nations-based Two Row Architect has overseen the project right from the very first conceptual drawings that were drafted for the school 11 years ago.

“That dome structure is modelled after the teaching lodge,” Case said. “Those lodges have stood in our communities for thousands of years.”

“As much as the building is a contemporary architectural statement, it’s also a living classroom the way that it’s built...everything’s deliberate,” Hoogsteen added.

For instance, the new home for SKG will include a large, open area facing the St. Marys River that will be regarded as an another classroom.  

“We’re doing a lot of land-based and culture-based curriculum, so we’re actually able to take what we’re learning from the classroom - from Anishinaabe worldview - and moving it outside and seeing that worldview in practice, and really living that worldview in a more practical way,” Hoogsteen said.

“It’s really about fulfilling [Chief] Shingwauk’s vision in terms of taking the next step in expanding the scope of the Anishinaabemowin program, the language program, [and] bringing online very shortly the Anishinaabe Studies program, and then creating an academic institution here that has a really symbiotic and reciprocal relationship with the communities,” Case said. “That’s the goal and the vision.”

During the groundbreaking ceremony in September 2017, the federal government announced that it provide SKG with $5.1 million in additional funding, bringing the total cash contribution from the federal government up to $10.2 million for the project.