Residential school, reconciliation at forefront of upcoming talks

The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) sees its ongoing community dialogue sessions as the beginning of a broader engagement with people in Sault Ste. Marie in terms of talking about reconciliation and the legacy of the residential school system locally.

The first two dialogue sessions were held earlier this week at Algoma University and Shabby Motley Handcraft.

“The community dialogue sessions came out of a desire to talk about the new exhibition space in Shingwauk Hall, but also to engage broader audiences about the history of residential schools in the Sault, and what education around that history and reconciliation might look like in the Sault,” said SRSC researcher/curator Krista McCracken.

The SRSC played a leading role in the development and establishment of Reclaiming Shingwauk Hall, a permanent exhibition launched earlier this month detailing the experiences of Indigenous children who attended the Shingwauk and Wawanosh residential schools.

The Reclaiming Shingwauk Hall exhibition is housed on the third floor of the Shingwauk Indian Residential School, which closed its doors in 1970.

McCracken says that some people remain unaware of the former residential school, which operated for over a century and is part of the present-day Algoma University campus.    

“I think the awareness is getting better, but I think there’s definitely still more we can do to raise awareness,” McCracken said. “I still routinely meet people who don’t know that this was a residential school building, or just found out within the past couple of years.”

The community dialogue sessions - funded by a grant provided by the Inspirit’s ChangeUp program - are primarily geared toward frontline workers and people who work in the education sector who could stand to benefit from the knowledge in their day-to-day work.

“We really see these sessions as the start of broader engagement with the Sault Ste. Marie population talking about reconciliation and residential schools,” McCracken said. “We do have plans to use these sessions as a springboard to help develop a facilitation guide for people who are looking to have these conversations in their own workplace, and also to start to build an education toolkit.”

The series of four discussions - each of them facilitated by Indigenous people - have a central theme of healing and reconciliation through education.

“Reconciliation is about having these types of conversations about acknowledging the truth and the past that has happened in this country, and working towards better or good relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks,” McCracken said. “It’s not specific, necessarily, to residential schools - it includes so much more in the colonial past of this country too.”

The next community dialogue session takes place Aug. 21 at Algoma University’s Doc Brown Lounge from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. and is scheduled to include a tour of the Reclaiming Shingwauk Hall exhibition.

The fourth and final session is set for the evening of Aug. 22 at the Sault Ste. Marie Indian Friendship Centre beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Both events are open to the public.

More details on next week’s talks can be found here.