Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig, Algoma U sign education agreements

A pair of agreements signed between Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig (SKG) and Algoma University will transfer some Anishinaabe programming to the Indigenous post-secondary institution and enable it to move ahead with its own land-based school of education. 

SKG board chair and Batchewana First Nation Chief Dean Sayers joined Algoma University President Asima Vezina in officially signing off on the agreements — with a pair of large eagles perched on a tree behind the school looking on, a symbol of great spiritual significance in Anishinaabe culture — during an event held at SKG Friday. 

“It speaks to respect and how Algoma University and Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig will be good partners together moving forward,” Vezina told SooToday Friday. 

The collaborative education agreement signed between the two schools will see Algoma University’s Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) and Anishinaabe Studies programs transferred to SKG within the next two years as the Indigenous post-secondary institution works towards becoming a true standalone university with its own accreditation and degree-granting status.    

“That’s always been the vision — First Nation control over First Nation education, so it comes from our lands, from our worldview, from our history which a lot of it is verbal history,” said Dianne Roach, director of operations for SKG. “None of this was ever taught in elementary school, high school, so it’s an opportunity for us to bring our knowledge keepers together, our leadership and to finally tell our truth, and to carry on those traditions and practices that were taken away through residential school and through our regular school system because none of this was ever taught.”

“The idea of the collaborative agreement is how our relationship will actually work on the ground, the operationalizing of the agreement,” said Vezina. “It’s taken us a couple years to really work through all of the ins and outs of what it will look like.

“Part of what it looks like is that once Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig has degree-granting authority as one of the Indigenous institutes — they’re working on that right now — the Anishinaabe Studies, the Anishinaabemowin would be taught here by SKG.” 

It wasn’t lost on those in attendance the significance of that agreement, given that Algoma University is on the former grounds of Shingwauk Residential School, which operated in Sault Ste. Marie from 1875 to 1970.

“That was geared to taking away our language and our culture, and the two programs that we are working towards attaining as a standalone university is the Anishinaabemowin and the Anishinaabe Studies, so that’s significant in and of itself because those are what were taken away, and those are programs that we’ll be offering,” Roach said. 

The second agreement signed Friday, meanwhile, is a memorandum of understanding geared towards creating an Anishinaabe land-based school of education, which will be a four-year Bachelor of Education degree program. 

“It would be land based, it would be geared to teaching our teachers to teach outside, so having our kids be outside on the land and developing those partnerships with First Nation communities and really creating a lens of all of what nature can provide to us,” Roach said. 

“The program that they envision will be to develop teachers through an Indigenous worldview as opposed to what we have right now — teacher training programs that are predominantly westernized in their approach,” said Vezina. “Western education has not maybe served our Indigenous people as well as it could, and I think what we heard today is that Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig would like to be able to develop here.

“We’re investigating that together, and we’ll be putting some resources in to do some research and establishing a model where we can lift SKG up to do this work for our communities and for our country, and I think we’re just very happy to have been asked to be part of this work,” Vezina continued. “We’re not sure where it will all go, but I think the first step is to look at a model for partnership and how can we work together to bring this to fruition.”

Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig first began offering courses in Anishinaabe studies on the grounds of Algoma University in 2008, eventually opening the doors to its new, $11.9-million building situated across the street from the university in 2022.