Meeting the Survivors of the Shingwauk Institute
Stephanie Dean, Rose Watson, Coridelia Gibson, Angela Boychuk and Jeanette King in front of the Shingwauk Institute, September 2025
The middle of September is a glorious time to travel up through Northern Ontario. The end-of-summer light shimmers off inlets, bays and rivers, off mountainous rocks that flank the highway on both sides, and across forests where there is a first glimpse of changing colours. The geography of this land is impactful, and one’s imagination returns to a time when the only inhabitants were the ancestors of those our journey was taking us to meet. Such were my thoughts last week as we wound our way around the sculpted shorelines of Georgian Bay, enroute to Sault Ste Marie.
How was it that we found ourselves on this trip heading north? We are a group of volunteers from The Remembering Project, who’ve been asked to locate information on the life stories of the children of Shingwauk Residential School (1873-1970) in Sault Ste Marie. In light of this work, NORDIK Institute - a research organization affiliated with Algoma University - had extended an invitation for volunteers to meet with survivors of the residential school system and to participate in training, with a focus on decolonizing knowledge. We viewed this opportunity as a privilege, as we would be engaging with community elders who had much to teach us through their shared wisdom.
To orient our thoughts and to prepare us for the nature of this trip, Ben Rowswell, convenor of the Circle of Democratic Solidarity —under which The Remembering Project falls—stopped enroute to introduce us to Spanish, Ontario on the north shore of Lake Huron. Here sits the carved-out ruins of St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School for girls, established in 1914. Just across the road, in what is now an open field, is the location of what was formerly the boys’ school, St. Peter Claver school, which was later renamed St. Charles Garnier, and operated until its closure in 1958. These two schools, located on a 600-acre site, are where First Nations and Métis children were brought from as far away as Manitoba, Northern Ontario and Quebec and represent the largest residential schools in Ontario run by the Catholic Church and the Government of Canada.
In keeping with the Indigenous practice of laying tobacco on sacred ground where children are buried, we paid our respects to their spirits, acknowledging their past suffering. We also noticed other small tokens left in this same spot, a gentle reminder that these children still matter. The only noise disturbing the quiet was the sound of birds and August Cicadas and so lovely was this pastoral setting, I was struck by its inherent irony: like a battle field, this land was once the scene of atrocities but now, long after the fact, has become instead the gentle resting place of little ones.
Upon our arrival in Sault Ste Marie, our three days of training began. On the first morning we were ushered into a large room where chairs had been placed in a circle, about thirty in all. I have worked extensively in theatre and the circle is considered a critical formation as it naturally brings the collective body together into a single space by virtue of its shape, establishing a natural sense of unity and balance. There is no hierarchy, only an invitation to communicate. To the Anishinaabek, the circle is a spiritual symbol and regarded as a sacred place for healing and learning.
The agenda that day featured the KAIROS blanket exercise, facilitated by knowledge-keeper, Phil Jonesan. When he told us the following day that he also is an activist, advocating on behalf of disenfranchised First Nations youth, our second facilitator, Dr. Kathy Absolon, bestowed upon him the title of KK and AK: knowledge-keeper and ass-kicker! The broad smile on Phil’s face showed his genuine appreciation of this title and we in turn applauded his two vitally important cultural roles!
Before we set out to participate in the blanket exercise, we were asked to introduce ourselves, a common practice on the first day of a new session when a group of strangers are brought together, but it quickly became apparent to those of us who were visitors from Ontario and abroad, that the survivors of this region knew each other well and clearly share a long history together. Several in fact had attended Shingwauk Residential School at the same time, so their friendship extends back many years. It also became evident that these were the ‘elders’ of their community and whenever they spoke, they were shown much respect through the processes of active listening and without interruption.
The blanket exercise was preceded by a powerful song performed by Phil, who used the sacred object of the drum and his voice to establish a sense of ‘presence’ in the space and an interconnectedness. Over our next three days together, singing and drumming was performed at the start and end of each session, at which time our facilitator would always share with us the essence and history of the music and language. The beating throb of the drum and the richness of the vocalization was transformative, and instilled a pervading sense of calm and ceremony.
Phil’s opening song was followed by smudging, a healing practice whereby the smoke from burning sage is used to release the person from negative spirits, moving one instead towards their reunification with Mother Earth. One of the elders, Delores, told a volunteer to cup her hands and pull the smoke towards her body: her ears, her eyes, her mind and her heart. I had never before witnessed this practice but I understood that I was participating in an important ceremony that, owing to its calming influence, was also preparing us for the work that lay ahead.
The blanket exercise takes participants through the history of colonization. Phil invited us to stand on blankets spread out across the floor, which symbolized the whole of Turtle Island before the arrival of the Europeans. Through his narrative, we learned about the early history of the Aboriginal peoples, their rich culture, their customs and their close relationship to the land. Over time, with the arrival of the settlers, the story becomes fraught as colonization takes place, and this was characterized through the gradual reduction of blankets and the removal of participants from the floor as they succumbed to disease, starvation, war, and genocide. I was eliminated early on through my ‘death’ from a gifted blanket deliberately contaminated with smallpox, and so was able to observe the enactment.
At the outset of the exercise there had been an air of joviality: we laughed and jostled each other inside the circle. Some of the elders and their adult children even tried to push back on Phil’s attempts to remove blankets (an action which represented the loss of land), but their efforts to partake in ‘resistance’ failed, and gradually more and more blankets disappeared, which of course denoted the pilfering of land and/or the early establishment of reserves. Over time, the majority of participants had stepped out of the circle owing to their demise, until only a few players remained in the centre space. The room had taken on an air of gravity and somberness, as we confronted the brutal tragedy of the story: the tremendous suffering of the First Nations, stretching back over hundreds of years, right through to present time, owing to the dark history of colonization.
At the conclusion of our activity, we were each invited to speak, one at a time. We, the non-Indigenous, were visibly affected by our implicit role in historical wrong-doing. Even more stirring, were the stories of the elders, these brave survivors of the residential school system, who shared with us their anguish, not only for their lost childhoods but also for the trauma experienced by themselves and their families. They did not hold back as they told us their hard truths and wept openly. We were called to bear witness to their deep sorrow. But more importantly, we were also called to bear witness to their strength and resilience. In his book, 52 Ways to Reconcile, author David A. Robertson writes that “crying is pain leaving your body” (152). Later in the session, the survivors’ tears turned to uproarious laughter, and recognizing the value of humour, Robertson says that, in turn, “[laughter] is the pathway to healing” (153).
As we approached the end of our challenging work on that first day, the survivors stood in a circle and beckoned us all to hold hands as we closed our eyes and let the final strains of song and drum wash over us. It was a powerful moment of solidarity, dare I say, ‘inclusion’, because in that moment these proud elders had extended a gentle hand to those of us in the space who historically bear responsibility for the wrongs done to their people.
That evening, and over the course of the next two evenings that followed, we gathered at the home of NORDIK Institute’s Project Manager, Tara Burrell and her wonderful team of cooks and bakers to share a home-made meal in her garden. The autumn air rang with the sound of merriment and chatter, a release from the emotional intensity of our day. Both our work and PLAY had fostered a sense of community and belonging. That thirty human beings, from starkly different international and cultural backgrounds, could come together with such a spirit of harmony speaks volumes about the importance of those connections we were making, one with the other.
Over the two days that followed, we worked with Dr. Kathy Absolon, author of Kaandossiwin: How We Come To Know, on the subject of Decolonizing Knowledge. As promised, she did not let the ‘settlers’ in the room off lightly, beginning with her oral telling of the Anishinaabe Creation story, at least a shortened version as there are a multitude of narratives associated with this legend. But her story did take us as far as the dark influence of European colonization on this continent, which was her starting point for the workshop.
We had witnessed on our first day the survivors’ grief as a direct result of the violence they and their ancestors had endured, and now Dr. Absolon was establishing a different focus in terms of our work with her: a call to action on the part of the non-Indigenous to take on the role of ‘advocate’ through our own political and social means. A teacher of Wholistic knowledges in the Aboriginal Field of Study, Faculty of Social Work, at Wilfrid Laurier University, she herself has spent her academic career working tirelessly on behalf of the Anishinaabe, a journey that began when she was confronted as a young woman with the truth of her own mother’s experience in the residential school system. Within that setting she has used her voice to ensure that any decisions made which involve First Nations must be made with their presence at the table. “Nothing About Us Without Us,” is a phrase she repeated slowly and with much authority. Looking directly at the non-Indigenous persons present in the room she endowed us with a renewed sense of responsibility which included, as she put it, “to lift your hand off the snooze button” and work instead “to advance the interest of those directly impacted by Canada’s residential school legacy” as Ben puts it.
The survivors we met during this intensive training session were themselves strong examples of this same remarkable resilience. One such respected elder was Dr. Shirley Horn, who has worked diligently over the years as a cultural leader of her community, and who reminded us that despite her age (85), she is committed to safeguarding the next generation through her work as an “architect of a more just and reconciled future.” (Life After Residential School: Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association).
This same spirit of resistance was evident in another survivor, Marjorie Cachagee Lee, who recounted her initiatives as a child to outmanoeuvre the staff at residential school. She, together with two other elders, demonstrated for us the secret and silent ‘sign language’ they once used to communicate with each other as children, when they were forbidden to use their voices by the clergy. On other occasions, she sought to protect her fellow students from discovery by the staff when they took refuge in the Cubby Hole under the stairs at the Shingwauk Residential School, until their hiding spot was discovered and turned into a place of cruel punishment.
Marjorie, together with Shirley, Daisy Kostus, John Saylors, Margaret Diamond, Nellie Mitchell and George Diamond, are founders of the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association. The CSAA is one of Canada’s oldest and most influential survivor organizations, its members deeply involved in the class action lawsuits against the churches who operated residential schools in the 1990s and 2000s.
We want to extend our deepest gratitude to Tara Burrell and her dedicated team at NORDIK Institute for hosting this event and giving to us this opportunity to build bridges. To share space with this remarkable group of elders and their adult children, to listen to their truths, and be able to welcome this chance to establish lasting relationships with them, has been a profound and transformative experience. They are wise. They are proud. They are kind. We are honoured to be engaged with them through their work and recognize that we have an equal responsibility to take action and to share this gift of truth with others. MIIGWECH!
Angela Boychuk
