A sacred fire burned on the grounds of the former site of the Wawanosh Home for Girls Tuesday morning as Garden River First Nation launched Sahkahjewaosa: Bigii Weh Wok – They are Coming Home, a project dedicated in part to searching the grounds of both Wawanosh and Shingwauk Indian Residential School for unmarked graves of the children who never came home.
Project stakeholders and representation from Anishinabek Nation participated in a sunrise ceremony on the former Wawanosh grounds, which have been home to Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 in Sault Ste. Marie since 1967. A new nine-storey, 107-unit veteran housing project and facilities for the legion are currently being constructed on the site.
In a news release issued prior to the ceremony, Garden River First Nation Chief Andy Rickard said Sahkahjewaosa: Bigii Weh Wok – They are Coming Home is a project intended to create a historical record for each survivor while contributing to the public education on the legacy of the two institutions, and for the “memorialization and commemoration of the lives and histories of those children who did not return home.”
“That’s what we want, is that education piece so that they understand that the grounds that these developments are happening on are on our traditional territories. It’s important,” said Rickard. “Much of the discussion this morning is that those spirits still are here, unresolved, and it was important for our spiritual leaders, some of the elders in our community to carry this out and to ensure that we’re doing this work in a good way and starting off correctly in that ceremonial and spiritual standpoint.”
Ontario Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer and Kimberly Murray, Canada's special interlocutor for unmarked graves at former residential schools, also attended Tuesday’s sunrise ceremony at the former Wawanosh site.
“It’s absolutely important for all Canadians to know the history in Canada and the colonial genocide that happened against Indigenous people,” said Murray, speaking with reporters Tuesday. “Part of commemorating the grounds and protecting them is really bringing honour and respect and dignity to those children, because they didn’t have that honour, respect and dignity when they were young.
“Everybody needs to know about it — it’s so important so it never happens again. We can’t let this happen ever again to anybody in this country.”
Murray says the Wawanosh site on Great Northern Road is one of many examples in Canada where the lands that Indian Residential Schools were originally on are not in the possession of First Nations nor any level of government.
“Access to the land for community members is really important — access to search the grounds if that’s what survivors and leadership want to see happen, and that needs to be done in collaboration with individuals. We also have situations where there’s conversations happening where lands may be returned to the First Nation,” said Murray. “We know that the federal government expropriated lands to build the institutions, and when they closed, they didn’t necessarily give those lands back to Indigenous communities.”
The Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association — an organization composed of Shingwauk school survivors and their family members — partnered with Algoma University and other stakeholders for its own search of the Shingwauk site beginning in 2021.
It had also been working with Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 and SalDan Developments Ltd. in order to establish a new, highly-visible Wawanosh memorial. The current memorial can be seen on the corner of Great Northern Road and Willoughby Street.
At that time, the organization told SooToday it believed there are no unmarked graves at the former site of the Wawanosh school, which was one of Canada's first residential schools for girls when it opened its doors in 1879.
Nine girls at the institution either died or left due to illness.
Last year, SooToday reported that both Garden River and Children of Shingwauk had been attempting to access the same pot of federal and provincial dollars earmarked for unmarked residential school burials.
“It’s a little bit of a jurisdictional matter because obviously Algoma [University] has land there within their responsibility, and that’s where some of that ground-penetrating work has happened,” said Rickard. “But for the work that still needs to happen on the rest of the grounds, that’s under the mandate of the Shingwauk Education Trust, and that’s who Garden River’s partnered up with to ensure that we carry that out in a good way.”
Rickard says there’s no time frame for the site searches that will be eventually carried out at the Shingwauk and Wawanosh sites.
“I think what we’re learning from other projects from across Canada is that you need to take your time, and we need to make sure there’s proper support services and programs for the people in our communities because that’s the number one thing, is we want to make sure people are safe, that they’re able to deal with some of these matters that are bringing up unresolved trauma,” said the chief.
Murray — who has a two-year mandate from the federal government to complete a final report with recommendations on how to protect the burial grounds of children who never made it home from residential schools — says she’s been meeting with survivors and Indigenous leadership in communities across Canada to hear about the barriers people are facing in searches for unmarked burials and looking at ways of improving the process.
“It’s so important that everybody be educated, everybody understand so that doesn’t happen again, and we really as a country have to fight those denialists that are out there, because that’s violence — that’s violence against Indigenous people, and it’s violence towards reconciliation and the more Canadians that are fully aware of the truth that can address the denialists, the better we will be as we move towards reconciliation,” she said.
SooToday reported last year that Garden River First Nation received a three-year funding commitment from the federal and provincial governments to assist with searches on grounds associated with the former sites of both Shingwauk Residential School and Wawanosh Home for Girls, and to establish protocols around the remains, memorialization, identification and commemoration of children of families associated with its community.
A national residential school crisis line has been established to provide support to former students and their families. The 24-hour crisis line can be accessed at 1-866-925-4419. The Community Assistance Program (CAP) can also be accessed for citizens of the Anishinabek Nation at 1-800-663-1142.