Aboriginal Healing Foundation archives to be located at Algoma U in Sault Ste Marie
Algoma U to house archive
By Brian Kelly - July 8, 2011
A national resource centre chronicling the aboriginal residential school system will be housed at Algoma University.
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation will transfer more than 6,000 items, including audio and video interviews with former residential school students, to the university and Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association beginning in September.
The move from Ottawa to Sault Ste. Marie will be done over two years, said professor of law and politics Don Jackson.
"The material that they've managed to collect, the work they've done and the reports from that work constitute perhaps the diamond of knowledge about the impacts of residential schools and colonialism on aboriginal communities," he said.
"This is not simply for academic researchers. This is designed for communities, community development, community relations."
A residential school centre began at Algoma in 1979 and moved to a space near the Doc Brown Lounge in about 2005.
That collection includes hundreds of artifacts, more than 24,000 photos and hundreds of thousands of documents.
Items from the Gail Guthrie Valaskakis Memorial Resource Centre will be housed in a temporary location on campus, with a permanent home expected on the Queen Street East site in about two years, said university librarian and archivist Ken Hernden.
"This is a national level collection," he said.
"For the university, it means the ability to enhance and continue a very special mission to support aboriginal communities in Northern Ontario."
Algoma became the province's 19th university in 2008, ending its status as an affiliate of Laurentian University.
Special collections such as the resource centre make Algoma stand out from other schools, said Hernden.
Algoma was one of several institutions to bid for the AHF collection. Its two proposals were submitted in August 2010 and March. The university learned of its successful bid in late July.
Algoma's selection was first announced by AHF representatives Mike Degagne and Garnet Angeconeb on Friday during the Shingwauk Residential Schools Gathering and Conference. About 300 people attended the two-day gathering at the university campus.
Fran Fletcher-Luther, an elder with Missanabie Cree First Nation and Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association, welcomed the donation.
"I think (Chief Shingwauk) would be very happy to see what is happening here today," she said.
The Garden River chief went to York in 1832 to petition the governor for a teacher. A missionary/teacher arrived the following year.
AHF was founded following the final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996. The foundation's work ends in 2014.
"We essentially have the archival and research capacity to serve a national goal — that is the healing and reconciliation between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people coming out of the whole colonial period," said Jackson.
"The fact that we've got (the resource collection) has basically put us in a position, not only of tremendous responsibility, but also tremendous opportunity."